News

Planning begins for bringing home the remains of Guadalcanal casualty Luther Rhodes

Marvin Rhodes holds a photograph of his late brother, Luther, as he and other family members pose for a photograph Thursday. The family gathered this week to learn more about Luther’s death during World War II.

By Amy McCraw, Published: January 16, 2026

The remains of Luther Rhodes, a young Marine who died while fighting the Japanese in World War II, will finally return to Edneyville for burial as soon as the family is ready and arrangements can be made.

The remains could be returned home for a funeral in as soon as 45 days or possibly later depending on the wishes of the family, Donavan Mansfield, who is the head of the United States Marine Corps Repatriation Program, told a group of about 40 family members and friends gathered on Thursday at Edneyville United Methodist Church.
Mansfield and Kaley Vincent, a Navy mortician, flew to the area from Quantico, Va., on Thursday to meet with Rhodes’ brother, Marvin, and other family members for an official Identification Briefing on the status of Rhodes’ remains.
The meeting was the first step in the process of returning the remains to the Rhodes family for a long-delayed funeral.
“I like to call it coming home ceremonies,” Mansfield said. “Funerals, they carry this negative connotation. The funerals that take place from what we do, it is more of a celebration because he is bringing his brother home, something we thought may never happen.”
Mansfield is a civilian representative of the Marine Corps who works with the government’s Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency to find soldiers who went missing in war. During Thursday’s meeting, he explained as much as is known about the circumstances of Rhodes death on Guadalcanal in 1942, how his remains were eventually identified through DNA science and the procedure for bringing those remains home to Edneyville.
Luther was the fourth child in a family of 10 siblings - five boys and five girls – who grew up in Edneyville.
Marvin, 83, was the baby of the family and not yet born when Luther, at the age of 17, persuaded his father to sign for him to join the U.S. Marine Corps on Nov. 11, 1941.
Luther Leru “Dusty” Rhodes was a private first class serving in the Marines when he was killed less than a year later on Oct. 7, 1942 while fighting in the battle of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. The battle was America’s first offensive of the war in the Pacific.
Mansfield described the harrowing circumstances the Marines faced during the fight for Guadalcanal.
A limited number of Marines, who were trying to hold Henderson airfield on the island, repelled repeated Japanese attacks. And their resources were cut by 50 percent during the battle because the Navy ships that carried their supplies were forced to pull away from the area.
“Whenever I tell these stories, I can’t emphasize enough the mettle, the fortitude,” Mansfield said. “These were marines, but they were 18, 19, 20-year-old kids at the same time - and just the things they had to overcome during these engagements and keep going forward and keep going forward and just insurmountable odds and just battle after battle, success after success. If you did the math on it, there is no chance it should have even occurred that way.”
The fact that the Marines held off the Japanese and won the battle of Guadalcanal is evidence of the unique character of the men who fought there, he said.
“I can’t emphasize enough how different they were. I tell people all the time that they were just built different, men like Luther. I can’t emphasize enough how proud Marvin and the whole Rhodes family should be this week to have that legacy attached to their family name. It’s incredible what these young men had to overcome.”
Luther was killed in action at the Matanikau River on Guadalcanal on Oct. 7, 1942 and buried in the First Marine Division Cemetery on the island.
Mansfield said an examination of his remains indicated that Rhodes likely died from small arms fire during the battle. A concussive blast that injured Rhodes lower extremities might have also caused his death, but it was difficult to determine if that injury happened before or after the gunshot wound, he said.
First-hand accounts at the time, revealed that Rhodes’ body was recovered after the battle and buried in a crude Marine cemetery on the island.
Mansfield said that during the time Marines were buried on Guadalcanal markers were often lost or offset in a way that made it impossible to identify many of the graves, and casualties such as Rhodes were determined to be unknown.
Bodies of the unknown soldiers buried on Guadalcanal were later removed and buried at The National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. The cemetery, known as the Punchbowl, is in an extinct volcano near the center of Honolulu, Hawaii.
Rhodes’ body remained the at the cemetery until 2019 when advances in DNA technology made officials at the DPAA believe they could identify some of the remains of the Marines who were moved to the cemetery from Guadalcanal.
“Once science caught up and we got to the point where we felt like we could accurately identify these Marines, they were disinterred, Luther being one of them,” Mansfield said.
Marvin Rhodes had provided the DPAA with a sample of his DNA years earlier but had given up hope a few years ago that his brother’s remains would ever be found.
Not too long after Marvin gave up on locating his brother’s remains, leaders at Hendersonville’s Hedrick-Rhodes VFW Post 5206 decided to take on an effort to locate the 13 soldiers from Henderson County who were missing in action during World War II.
Luther Rhodes was the first MIA they decided to try to locate.
Leaders at the VFW contacted U.S. Senator Tedd Budd’s office, where a distant relative of Rhodes happened to work on staff, and asked for help. In September, shortly after Budd’s office became involved, Marvin received the call telling him his brother’s remains were found. At the time, he said that he hoped to have a funeral and burial at Edneyville United Methodist Church in the spring.
Once a date for the funeral is set, Rhodes’ remains will be sent to his family.
Mansfield explained each step of the journey home to the group gathered Thursday.
The skeletal remains will be covered in a green, wool blanket and placed in a casket. A Marine Corps uniform tailored for Rhodes with any medals he earned will be placed over the banket in the casket.
A Marine, probably from North Carolina, will travel to Hawaii and escort the casket while it is flown back to North Carolina.
Once the plane lands at an airport in the state, a Marine squadron will be on the tarmac to move the casket from the plane to a waiting hearse that will carry the casket to a funeral home. The Marine squadron will also take part in the funeral.
If the airport allows it, Mansfield said he encouraged family and friends to meet the plane and Marine squadron on the tarmac.
“I hope they will allow everyone in this room to stand there and witness it,” he said.
Henderson County’s VFW continues working to locate other soldiers from Henderson County who are missing in action from World War II.