THE BATTLE FOR TARAWA - A Validation of the U.S. Marines

At the Quebec conference in August of 1943, the Allied high command announced it's intention to launch an offensive in the Central Pacific, in the drive towards Japan. A prime objective of this drive, to be undertaken as a Navy-Marines operation, was to take the Marshall Islands. The Marshall Islands would serve as an air base from which further operations could be launched against the Marianas, and from there against the Japanese home islands. But 500 miles to the southeast of the Marshalls, an archipelago of atolls called the Gilberts stood between U.S. forward ground air bases and the Marshalls. The Gilberts had only one workable airstrip for refueling American aircraft and that was on the island of Betio in the western Gilbert Island atoll of Tarawa.

The Japanese commander in charge of the defense of Tarawa, Rear Admiral Keiji Shibasaki, said "A mission men cannot take Tarawa in a hundred years." He commanded 2,600 imperial marines, the best amphibious troops in the Japanese armed forces. With the importation of 1,000 Japanese workers and 1,200 Korean laborers the island airstrip of Betio had been transformed into one of the most formidable fortresses in the world, boasting 14 coastal defense guns(four of which were taken from the surrendered British garrison at Singapore), 40 strategically located artillery pieces, covering every approach to the island, a coconut-log sea wall four feet high lining the lagoon and over 100 machine gun emplacements behind the wall. All this was concentrated on an island only a mile long and a few hundred yards wide. Meanwhile an armada of 17 carriers, 12 battleships, eight heavy and four light cruisers, 66 destroyers and 36 transports carrying the 2nd Marine Division and a part of the 37th Infantry Division- some 35,000 soldiers and Marines headed for Betio in early November of 1943. In the moments before pre-invasion bombardment began, the task force naval commander, Rear Admiral Howard F. Kingman announced to the landing troops "Gentlemen, we will not neutralize Betio. We will not destroy it. We will obliterate it!" Neither Shibasaki nor Kingman knew what they were up against.

On November 20th at 2:15 A.M. the marine transports went to General Quarters. Last minute landing preparations were made and the marines received their last rites. At 5:05 A.M. the first battleship let loose a salvo on Betio's coastal batteries, followed shortly thereafter by the other battleships and destroyers in the task force. The shelling stopped only for enough time to let the dive bombers from the escort carriers pound the island. The first wave of amphtracks and Higgins boats moved in on the lagoon side of Betio. The formation was jolted to a stop 500 yards out by a reef which the amphtracks could climb over only with great difficulty. Simultaneously, a hail of fire opened up from the island, incinerating the lodged and incoming boats as well as mowing down the marines wading ashore. Few of the first wave survived. But a few got through, and with the help of four successive waves the marines established a beachhead up to a four foot sea wall.

By nightfall, the marines were pinned down on a stretch of beach 100 yards long and 20 feet inland. And rather than being obliterated, the Japanese marines had barely been scratched by the naval and air bombardment. While a brief respite between bombardment and the landings had occurred, the Japanese rushed to their gun posts and had delivered devastating fire. But because their communication lines had been cut, none of them knew what was going on. Therefore, according tot the Bushido Code, each isolated soldier or group of soldiers was obliged to either fight to the death or commit suicide unless ordered otherwise. Consequently, Japanese resistance was fanatical. Some Japanese swam out to disabled amphtracks that night and poured fire onto the marines from the rear- silenced only at great cost to the marines. And a lone Japanese seaplane-turned-bomber easily inflicted casualties on the concentrated beachhead. In all, the first day on Betio had been very costly for the 2nd Division- amphtracks and Higgins boats littered the lagoon, wounded marines everywhere, and dead bodies and parts of bodies everywhere: out of 5,000 men, 1,500 were dead or wounded.

At the beginning of the second day, three marine battalions held a small foothold on Betio's lagoon beach. They were ordered to attack at 6:00 A.M. while the 2nd Division reserves, the 1st and 3rd battalions of the Eighth Marines were brought up to the reef. As the Japanese defenders opened up on the wading-in marines, Colonel Shoup of Major Crowe's battalion at the far east side of the lagoon ordered a desperate attack to halt the slaughter of incoming marines. Only 450 of the 800 incoming men made it to the beach. But with this fresh reserve, the central battalion punched its way inland, across the airstrip, and seized a part of the island's sough shore. Meanwhile a high tide flooded the lagoon, allowing reinforcement boats to pass over the reef and come directly up to shore. The arrival of tanks in support of all three battalions on the beachheads proved critical that day. The tanks rolled up to the front lines, taking out Japanese pill boxes and other fortifications at close range.

By dusk, the 6th Marines, after having secured the nearby island of Makin, paddled over the reef in rubber boats and landed on the western beach. There, they met up with Major Ryan's ravaged western lagoon assault battalion. Reinforced, and having gained ground, the second day came to an end. Marine Colonel Shoup radioed the daily situation report back to the command ships: "Casualties: many. Percentage dead: unknown. Combat efficiency: we are winning." Meanwhile, Admiral Shibasaki was sending his last radio message to Tokyo: "Our weapons have been destroyed. From now on everyone is attempting a final charge. May Japan exist for ten thousand years!"

On the third day, all three battalions moved inland, with the 1st Battalion, 6th Marines sweeping up the southern shore of Betio. With infantry and flame thrower support, tanks blew apart the remaining fortifications in the central and western part of the island. Taking out pill boxes, machine gun nests and snipers took up much of this third day. But by nightfall, the marines held western and central Betio. At twilight, Shibasaki's troops made one final courageous 'Banzai' suicide charge. They rushed the 6th Marines, Company B in almost overpowering numbers. The marines began to break. Lieutenant Thomas phoned Major Jones, saying "We are killing them as fast as they come at us, but we can't hold much longer; we need reinforcements." Jones replied, "We haven't got them to send you; you've got to hold." In the face of heavy losses, the 6th Marines wavered, but didn't break. When dawn appeared, the marines still held their positions.

On the morning of November 23rd, the 6th Marines counted 300 Japanese bodies scattered around their positions. As it turned out, this group of Japanese had been the last large contingent on Betio with only small pockets of resistance remaining. And following a painstaking mop up of the eastern side of the island, Japanese resistance, with the exception of a few snipers who would continue to take pot shots at marines for the next several days, came to an end. For at 1:12 P.M., after 76 hours of fighting, Betio was declared 'secure'. Upon arriving at Betio that day, General Holland Smith ordered both the Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack to be raised over Betio(for Betio was to revert to the British as a Pacific trust after the war). The general then toured the island west of the airport. He noted that only seventeen Japanese had surrendered while only 129 Korean laborers had survived out of a total of 4,700 troops and construction workers

THE VALUE OF TARAWA In the 76-hour fight for Betio, 1,056 marines and sailors were killed, died of wounds or were missing and presumed to be dead. Some 2,300 men were wounded, but recovered. Meanwhile, at home, Americans were appalled by the losses at Tarawa, flooding Admiral Nimitz's mail with angry letters. But Tarawa had taught the navy and the marines some vital lessons in amphibious warfare which in the near future, would save thousands of lives. More amphtracks were to be built with better armor, including side protection for marines. Higgins boats were removed from landing operations. Landing craft were converted into supporting gunboats, able to come in close on the beach. Underwater demolition teams were organized to destroy natural and artificial obstacles before future atoll landing would take place. Precision rocket and naval attacks had proven their worth against the near impregnable fortifications. And the role of the tank in turning the tide of battle proved critical. All these lessons would be applied to future campaigns with great success.

The price for Betio had been relatively high, but within days, Betio was converted into a forward base for the assault on the Marshalls, with bomber and fighter sorties flying out within hours of the marines victory. And within nine weeks of the battle, an invasion task force under Admiral Nimitz left Tarawa to take the Marshall Islands.

"Sprawled bodies on beach tarawa, testifying to ferocity of the stuggle for this stretch of sand." November 1943.

A Marine platoon advances at Tarawa.

Marines on the beach at Tarawa.

was one of the lessons of tarawa to spend more time on training or was a year the standard procedure?

Based on what happened at Tarawa the Navy built the same sort of bunkers the Japs used and figured out the best way to wreck them. Seems like the problem at Tarawa was that they used a lot of armor piercing rounds fired at flat trajectories. The sand absorbed the kinetic energy of the rounds and the Japs were largely unaffected. Only direct hits of course were destroying the bunkers.

The Navy did learn how to wreck the bunkers and by Iwo Jima you see the Japs yielding the beaches to the Marines without contesting them with direct fire. They planned to fight inland.

A big thing the Japs did on all the islands was to use indirect (mortars and artillery) fire instead of direct fire to kill Marines. Marine arty that landed immediately went to work on counter-battery fire to suppress the Jap arty.

The U.S.S. Tennessee developed a technique where the anti-aircraft guns (the 40 MMs) led the assault waves of Marines up to the beach, shifting fire deeper and deeper inland as the LVT's (landing vehicle, tracked) approached the beach. There was no way the Japs could withstand that.

Semper Fidelis

Walt

The Marines called the atoll “Helen”. Charts of tides dating back to the 1800s.

Hawkins went in on the first wave. The man was fearless... so was Shoup, who became Marine Corps Commander.

The 2nd Marines fought the Jap Marines and many Marine companies suffered 75% casualties.

The Higgins boats couldn't make it over the reef in low-tide and the 8th waded in from hundreds of yards.

Sherrod went in early and his writing is accurate.

I have a close relation who was in that battle and he relates that it was all-around nasty - land, sea and air.

The Japs liked to do their air attacks very early in the morning or the fading light of dusk, to where they couldn't be easily seen to be tracked and shot at (unless you had some sort of secondary radar), but they could still see the Americans, particularly if they were ships underway at sea. All around bomb, strafe and torpedo free-for-alls.

At night, Jap boats and ships would try to slip into formation with the American armada and cause trouble, especially during awkward moments like air attacks. Some had large spotlights mounted onboard and would turn them on and aim them at American ships to try to help the Jap pilots out with target acquisition. I don't think the spotlight idea was a very good one. I was told that one Jap freighter with such equipment lasted less than a minute after having the poor judgement of closing in with and lighting up a South Dakota-class battleship. They got three 16-inch HE shells all at once from the aft turret for that stunt. Explosion, blinding flash, no more Jap freighter - there one moment, de-materialized the next. Due to the haste in snuffing the freighter, onboard the battleship there were a number of busted eardrums, clothes blown off some, an aft 40mm AA twin mount and a Kingfisher seaplane trashed (the Kingfisher pilot wasn't very happy with that) - but no major injury or loss of life.

There was the usual sub threat - accented when the escort carrier Liscombe Bay got nailed at around 0500 hours right in front of everybody right there in the armada. I was told there was a huge blast, a blinding flash and it sank within seconds. Anybody who was looking at it at the time it blew had their night-watching abilities messed up for a while.

The Japs were striving to drive off the American fleet support with all their antics so the Marines on-shore would be stranded to die on the vine at the mercy of the enemy, but we were too strong - we had to be - and it's darn good that we were.

One of the interesting things about the Japs that I read recently concerned their scout planes. You always hear about Jap fanaticism and there was lots of that of course.

But once the Japs learned about radar, their scout planes got VERY leery of searching for our task forces, even in 1942. They kept to low altitudes and as great a distance as possible from our ships, even if they contacted them. In contrast our PBY's could fly pretty much at high altitude and get a good view of their patrol area. This was an important factor in the big carrier battles of 1942.

Walt

Semper Fi Marines!

Am glad someone posted this, I have been reading Richard Wheelers book this last week and was going to put together
a post but my computer began acting up and so was offline
for a couple of days.

The heroism of the Marines at Tarawa stands as an example to us all.

As one sergeant stated, when told of the outcry in the states
over the casualty figures, " If the Marines can stand the dying, you'd think the public could stand to read about it."

Semper Fi My Brothers.

tet68

The battle for Tarawa just overwhelms you. How could those men do all that? Every American should know the story.

Hear, hear, but we will not see that coming from the left-wing academics infesting America's elementary and secondary schools, nor our colleges and universities. Instead, we'll get "discussions" of the "poor, downtrodden Japanese, who if we had only felt more for we could have had peace."

Snort. These people are useful idiot Chamberlains at best, and willing turncoat traitors at worst.

Every free person, especially Americans, should take the time to tell their children tonight about the battle. Let it not be forgotten.

United States Pacific Fleet as of 26 March 2002:
- Only six aircraft carriers (CVN, CV)
- Only 21 Amphibious ships (LHD, LHA, LSD, LST)
- Only 1,434 aircraft, USN and USMC, airplanes and helicopters
- Only 55,583 Marines.

I am worried about our strength.

In the "Sands of Iwo Jima" the first big battle scene is Tarawa.

I was at the 3rd Mardiv reunion in 1990 (although I was never in 3rd Mardiv) and there were some vets there from the Third Tank Battalion at Iwo, I think it was. Their Sherman tanks were heavily shelled by Jap 120MM mortars. The Sherman had an escape hatch in the very bottom of the floor. Somehow this escape hatch allowed some shrapnel from this very heavy shelling into the tank, or itself generated some shrapnel. The assistant driver was wounded as he sat inside the tank. According to one of the vets, he said, "Oh my God! I'm shot in the ass, how can I go home now!?"

Walt

This was one of the first major opposed landings in WWII. The training and lead-up time for later landings would have been shortened, due to now we knew more about what to give priority to in training, and more about what really did not need to be considered. When training for a landing at Tarawa, we would probably have trained for a lot of unnecessary eventualities, due to we really had no idea what to expect.

You probably know that the amphibian tractors were never designed for beach assault. They were designed strictly for adminstrative runs from ship to shore -- a cargo carrier. Some of the ones at Tarawa had some field fitted armor, but this was just another thing that the Marines did for mission accomplishment no matter what. Second MarDiv was just an awesome unit to take that island.

Semper Fidelis

Walt

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.