https://dpaa-mil.sites.crmforce.mil/dpaaProfile?id=a0Jt000001J4tNdEAJ

On October 23, 2000, the Central Identification Lab-Hawaii (CILHI, now DPAA) accounted for Private First Class Ashley W. Hicks, missing from World War II.

Private First Class Hicks, who entered the U.S. Marine Corps from California, was a member of Company A, 2nd Marine Raider Battalion. On August 17, 1942, members of the 2nd Raider Battalion participated in an attack on a Japanese seaplane base on the small island of Butaritari, Makin Atoll, in the Gilbert Islands. PFC Hicks was killed in action in the ensuing battle. On August 19, local villagers buried him in a communal grave on Butaritari with other Marines who had died during the assault. His remains were not returned to the U.S. at the time. In 1999, a CILHI investigative team traveled to Butaritari where they interviewed a villager who participated in the burial. The team was led to the mass gravesite, located under an abandoned coral road. The site was excavated and the comingled remains were recovered and transferred to CILHI, where analysts used forensic analysis to successfully identify PFC Hicks' remains.

Private First Class Hicks is memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.

Hicks, Ashley W, PFC