A World War II Marine Raider from Cincinnati who went missing during a brutal jungle assault in the Solomon Islands 83 years ago will finally return home after the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency confirmed his identification.
DPAA announced March 4 that Pfc. Norton V. Retzsch, 25, of Cincinnati, was accounted for on April 1, 2025. The agency used dental records, anthropological analysis and mitochondrial DNA sequencing to confirm his identity, finally bringing closure for a family that has waited decades for answers. His burial is scheduled for April 13 in Marana, Arizona.
Joining the Marines and Shipping to New Georgia
A 1937 graduate of Hughes High School in Cincinnati, Retzsch joined the Marine Corps in September 1941 at the age of 23.
He shipped out to the Pacific with Company C, 1st Marine Raider Battalion, 1st Marine Raider Regiment, one of the Corps' elite units built for amphibious raids and jungle warfare behind enemy lines. On June 30, 1943, American forces launched Operation Toenails, a multi-pronged campaign to seize the Japanese-held island of New Georgia in the central Solomon Islands.
Col. Harry Liversedge's Northern Landing Group, built around the 1st Marine Raider Battalion and two Army infantry battalions, went ashore at Rice Anchorage on July 5 and began hacking through dense jungle toward the enemy garrison at Enogai.
On July 9, Company C pushed toward Japanese positions near Enogai Point. The Marines walked into a prepared ambush. Retzsch and two other Raiders from the company never came back from the fight. In the weeks that followed, a Marine patrol operating on the nearby Dragons Peninsula encountered an enemy soldier carrying Retzsch's dog tag.
According to an account from the battalion chaplain, Father Paul Redmond, a voice from the jungle answered a challenge with "Rites," prompting the patrol to open fire. Retzsch had always insisted his surname was pronounced "Reetz," and the mispronunciation gave the Japanese soldier away.
Decades of Dead Ends
After the war, the 604th Quartermaster Graves Registration Company searched the Bairoko Harbor and Enogai Inlet area from November to December 1947 but found no trace of Retzsch. The military declared him non-recoverable in 1949 and inscribed his name on the Tablets of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial in the Philippines.
What the military did not know at the time was that Retzsch's remains had likely already been recovered. In December 1943, unidentified remains buried at the Enogai Cemetery were exhumed and transferred first to a New Georgia cemetery, then to Finschhafen, Papua New Guinea, where they were designated as Unknown X-182. After multiple failed identification attempts, X-182 was interred at the Manila American Cemetery in 1950.
The case remained dormant for decades until DPAA turned its attention back to New Georgia. Agency researchers flagged a group of unidentified remains from the Enogai and Bairoko area as possible matches for missing Raiders, and in January 2019, X-182 was pulled from the Manila cemetery and sent to the DPAA laboratory.
Finally Coming Home
The identification hinged in part on a DNA sample submitted to the military in 2006 by Kim Opitz, Retzsch's great-niece. Opitz, a freelance writer in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, told KARE 11 News that her family never stopped hoping.
"My mother never, never let us forget about him," Opitz said. "We never thought that we would know what happened. It was just always going to be a mystery."
When DPAA contacted her in 2025 to confirm the identification, the news was shocking.
"It was like elation, like I've never felt so spiritually high," Opitz told the station. "He's going to be brought home with honors."
Retzsch's family remembered him as a lifeguard with a romantic streak who had married only half a year before heading off to war. His wife Margaret responded to his loss by joining the fight herself, enlisting in the Marine Corps Women's Reserve and rising to the rank of sergeant before her honorable discharge.
Margaret remarried after the war. She passed away in 2005.
The Manila American Cemetery has since updated its Tablets of the Missing with a rosette beside Retzsch's name, signifying that the Marine is no longer unaccounted for.
Opitz urged other families of missing service members to reach out to DPAA.
"If you're still looking, there's still a chance," she said.
