Marine Cpl. Claire Goldtrap is coming home for his birthday. It’s been more than 75 years.

In November 1943, “Goldy,” a 21-year-old Hobart native, fought in an amphibian tractor battalion against the Japanese on the remote Pacific island of Betio in the Tarawa Atoll of the Gilbert Islands.

He was among 18,000 Marines that stormed Betio as part of Operation Galvanic.

Goldtrap died on the first day of the battle, Nov. 20, 1943. Over several days of fighting at Tarawa, the Japanese were routed, but roughly 1,000 Marines and sailors were killed and more than 2,000 were wounded.