This Japanese sword was sent home from Guadalcanal by Gunnery Sergeant Sidney Asa Cook. The sword has been damaged by several machine gun bullets down the length of the scabbard. However, amazingly, the blade itself was not hit. The heavily worn sword has high quality mixed metal fittings and a silver Mon. The blade is unmarked.
Gunnery Sergeant Sidney Asa Cook was a member of Company “E”, 2nd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division. Sergeant Cook “Participated in, under actual combat conditions, in offensive operations against the Japanese Army, on Guadalcanal, British Solomon Islands, from November 4, 1942 to February 9, 1943, both dates inclusive.” On February 9, 1943 Sergeant Cook embarked aboard the USS American Legion and arrived at Wellington, New Zealand February 17, 1943. In November 1943, Cook was assigned to Company E, 2nd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, which landed against stiff Japanese resistance on the small island of Betio in the Tarawa Atoll of the Gilbert Islands, in an attempt to secure the island. Over several days of intense fighting at Tarawa, approximately 1,000 Marines and Sailors were killed and more than 2,000 were wounded, but the Japanese were virtually annihilated. Cook died on the first day of the battle, Nov. 20, 1943. In the immediate aftermath of the fighting on Tarawa, U.S. service members who died in the battle were buried in a number of battlefield cemeteries on the island. In 1946 and 1947, the 604th Quartermaster Graves Registration Company conducted remains recovery operations on Betio, but Cook’s remains were not recovered. On Feb. 8, 1949, a military review board declared Cook’s remains non-recoverable. In June 2015, a nongovernmental organization, History Flight, Inc., notified DPAA that they discovered a burial site on Betio Island and recovered the remains of what they believed were 35 U.S. Marines who fought during the battle in November 1943. The remains were turned over to DPAA in July 2015. DNA analysis and circumstantial evidence were used in the identification of Gunnery Sergeant Sidney Asa Cook's remains.