Reclaiming a Lost Hero of World War II

In November 1943, Marine 1st Lt. Alexander Bonnyman, Jr. was mortally wounded while leading a successful assault on a critical Japanese fortification on the Pacific atoll of Tarawa, and posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military honor. The brutal, bloody 76-hour battle would ultimately claim the lives of more than 1,100 Marines and 5,000 Japanese forces.

But Bonnyman’s remains, along with those of hundreds of other Marines, were hastily buried and lost to history following the battle, and it would take an extraordinary effort by a determined group of dedicated civilians to find him.

In 2010, having become disillusioned with the U.S. government’s half-hearted efforts to recover the “lost Marines of Tarawa,” Bonnyman’s grandson, Clay Bonnyman Evans, was privileged to join the efforts of History Flight, Inc., a non-governmental organization dedicated to finding and repatriating the remains of lost U.S. service personnel. In Bones of My Grandfather, Evans tells the remarkable story of History Flight’s mission to recover hundreds of Marines long lost to history in the sands of Tarawa. Even as the organization begins to unearth the physical past on a remote Pacific island, Evans begins his own quest to unearth the true history of his grandfather, a charismatic, complicated hero whose life had been whitewashed, sanitized and diminished over the decades.

On May 29, 2015, Evans knelt beside a History Flight archaeologist as she uncovered the long-lost, well-preserved remains of his grandfather. And more than seventy years after giving his life for his country, a World War II hero finally came home.

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Clay Bonnyman Evans has been a journalist and writer for more than three decades, having worked for such publications as the Los Angeles Times, Orange County Register and Daily Camera (Boulder, Colorado).

He is the author of three previous books and hundreds of stories for such publications as Princeton Alumni Weekly, New Mexico Magazine, the Denver Post, Occidental Magazine, Marathon & Beyond, Trail Runner, the Coloradan, and others.

Evans is the only living grandson of Marine 1st Lt. Alexander Bonnyman, Jr., who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor after he was killed in action on the tiny central Pacific atoll of Tarawa on November 22, 1943. Learn more

Starting in 2010, Evans became a volunteer with the nonprofit organization History Flight, Inc., in its search for hundreds of Marines buried on Tarawa in 1943 and never recovered.

He was present in May and June 2015 when a History Flight archaeological team located and recovered his grandfather’s remains, in a trench alongside those of more than forty other Marines killed on Tarawa. Evans arranged for three days of memorial events for the burial, with full military honors, of Lt. Bonnyman in his hometown of Knoxville, Tennessee on September 27, 2015.

Evans lives with his wife in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina and Boulder, Colorado.