James P. Reilly and Michael J. Reilly, fraternal twins born Nov. 9, 1923, remained close throughout their abbreviated life together. As allies and co-conspirators, they were always within each other's orbit, attending the same public schools in Queens, playing sports together and jointly enlisting in the Marines.
During World War II, when they were 20, the brothers were part of a unit that stormed the beach of a small Japanese-held island in the Pacific. It would be their last hour together.
James was killed by gunfire, his body falling only feet from Michael; he was interred in a battlefield grave that would be lost for decades, until it was rediscovered this year.
On Monday, the twins' birthday, James' remains were buried once again, this time in a cemetery in Central Florida, 60 yards from the grave of Michael, who retired as a detective from the New York Police Department in 1973 and died in 2005.
The burial has provided some comfort to the Reilly family, for whom James had long been little more than a vague idea. There were some faded photos — the twins at their first communion, both men in their military uniforms — and a few documents, including a Western Union telegram sent by a Marine general to the twins' father notifying him of James' death.
But the family's collective memory of James had for years been, at best, fragmentary. The twins' parents died in the 1960s, and Michael, who lived until he was 81, mostly kept his thoughts of James bottled up, a silence that spoke volumes about his deep heartache.
"Dad was very quiet about this," said Mary Smith, 49, one of Michael's daughters. "I think this was part of the way he coped with it. He had to bury it deep. If it came to the surface, it would be too much for him."
The brothers shipped out with the 8th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division to the Pacific theater and were among 18,000 Marines deployed to seize the Tarawa Atoll from the Japanese.
They were part of an assault force that stormed the beaches of the island of Betio on Nov. 20, 1943, under heavy fire from Japanese troops.
As the Americans waded ashore, their landing craft impeded by the coral reefs, James was shot not far from Michael and died in the water.
Michael found shelter behind a pier and survived the battle, which lasted three days. It ended with the American capture of Betio, but with heavy casualties: More than 1,000 Marines were killed.
James, like others, was buried in a shallow, communal grave near the shoreline; the war in the Pacific was intensifying, and the Allies had no time to repatriate the bodies to the United States.
"Present situation necessitates interment temporarily in the locality where death occurred accordingly please accept my heartfelt sympathy," read the telegram to the brothers' father, also named Michael J. Reilly.
Michael Reilly later told the Long Island Star-Journal that around the same time, he received a letter his sons had written while aboard a troop transport ship, heading, they said, to "an unknown destination."
"Both boys wrote in the letter, dated Nov. 17, 1943, that they had been in New Caledonia and New Zealand 'and had a good time,'" the article said.
After the war, the remains of thousands of U.S. service members were recovered overseas, including hundreds from Betio, in the Republic of Kiribati. But for years James' body was among hundreds that, despite search efforts in the atoll, could not be located.
In June, however, History Flight, a Florida-based nonprofit group dedicated to recovering the remains of U.S. service members, announced it had discovered a long-lost burial trench on Betio and found the remains of at least three dozen Marines.
Those remains were repatriated to the United States and tested by a federal agency.
In August, Paula Melendez, 36, a granddaughter of Michael's now living in New Hampton, New York, received a call from a military official who said her great-uncle's remains had been found and identified.
"It's emotional. We cried a lot, but we're happy because he's home," Melendez said.
"I think for the family it is a great consolation," Smith added. "He'll be close to Dad."
Family members held a small funeral for James in Bushnell, Florida, on Monday. A table in the funeral home was decorated with several artifacts from his life, including several photos, the telegram and the yearbook page. A video monitor showed a recording of a Marine honor guard transferring the coffin containing James' remains from an airplane to a hearse at an airport in Tampa.
James was buried in Florida National Cemetery during a ceremony attended by a Marine honor guard and members of the Florida Patriot Guard.
Family members said that since learning about the recovery of James' remains, their thoughts have often turned to Michael, and the fact that he never knew what happened to his brother's body.
Michael, a corporal, was honorably discharged in 1946, then joined the Police Department. He moved to Florida after he retired and worked as a security guard.
He did not talk much about the war or his brother, and the rest of the family respected this. But a few years before he died, his wife, Joan Reilly, gently broached the subject.
"I said to him, 'Mike, do you think of Jimmy?' because he never wanted to talk about the war or that," Joan Reilly, 85, recalled. "And he looked at me and said, 'Joan, I think of him every day.'"