Battle for Tarawa
Image taken from ibiblio.org
The war in the Pacific had been going in the Americans’ favor for almost two years. The southern pacific islands had been taken and the Japanese navy was almost decimated. The Marines began their island-hopping campaign through the central pacific. Using this strategy, the Marines would land on islands one by one taking them down using amphibious force with their naval bombardment and aircraft strikes. They would then land on the island by the thousands and fight the well entrenched Japanese soldiers.
Tarawa was an atoll of islands. The biggest of them was known as Betio. This would be where the Marines would land. The airfield on this island would be used for planes to take off and drop their bombs on the Japanese held islands in the Philippines and Japan itself. In order to take the Philippines they would need to take the Marshall islands which would be used as airfields. The first step was to take the Tarawa atoll which could then bomb the Marianas and then push on towards Japan.
The Japanese were well aware of the strategic importance of the Tarawa Atoll. They used thousands of forced laborers and other construction battalions to build a well-fortified island defense which would hold back the Marines. The Japanese commander on the island spoke that “it would take a million men a hundred years to take this island.” This statement proved the readiness of the Japanese land forces to hold the island at almost any cost.
The battle began on November 20 of 1943. The invasion force was the largest yet assembled in the Pacific. Consisting of hundreds of ships and thousands of Marines, the plan was ready to go. The 2nd Marine Division was tasked with taking the island. That morning, ships and bombers let loose their guns on the island. Every square inch was bombed and strafed. The Marines watching the bombardment assumed almost all of the Japanese land force would be wiped out before they arrived on the beach.
When the Marines landed they were greeted by mortar, machine gun, and artillery fire from almost every angle. A coral reef out to see prevented some of the landing crafts from making it all the way to the beachhead. The Marines had to wade through four feet of water under heavy machine gunfire to get to the beach where other Marines were hunkering down trying to avoid enemy fire. At the beach, there was complete chaos. Units were leaderless and were taking heavy casualties.
By the second day, the Marines had barely made it off of the beach. Since the island was very flat, moving became a problem. Whenever the Marines would try to take a machine gun nest with a squad of men, they would be hit by enemy fire from every angle. It took three days of slow and arduous fighting to seize the island. By the third day, the Japanese garrison was destroyed. Suffering thousands of casualties, the Marines would remember this battle as one of the bloodiest they had ever seen in the history of the Corps.
