Battle of Tarawa (Betio), 20–23 November 1943

The battle, stage by stage

1. 20 Nov 1943, about 05:00–09:00

   Bombardment and the reef

   Betio, the largest islet of Tarawa Atoll, is about two miles long and no more than 800 yards wide, with an airfield down its middle. Rear Adm. Keiji Shibasaki's garrison, about 4,800 men by the Marine Corps' estimate (the 3rd Special Base Force, the Sasebo 7th Special Naval Landing Force, and construction troops and Korean laborers), holds roughly 500 pillboxes, blockhouses and emplacements, including four 8-inch Vickers coast-defense guns sold to Japan in 1905 (not, as legend had it, captured at Singapore). A gun duel opens before dawn, then hours of naval gunfire and air strikes. The minesweeper Pursuit, as control ship, and the destroyers Ringgold and Dashiell enter the lagoon. Everything depends on the tide: a loaded Higgins boat needs about four feet of water over the fringing reef, and a neap tide gives less. Only the amphibian tractors (LVTs) of the first three waves, carrying LT 3/2, LT 2/2 and LT 2/8, can be counted on to crawl over the reef; they cross the line of departure, 6,000 yards out, at 08:24. H-hour slips from 08:30 to 09:00, and a cease-fire at 08:54 gives the defenders time to man their positions. Just before H-hour 1st Lt. William D. Hawkins' scout-snipers storm the end of the long pier. (The approach arrow is interpretive.)

2. 20 Nov, 09:10–about 15:00

   Red Beaches 1, 2 and 3

   The LVTs touch down on Red 1 at about 09:10, Red 3 at 09:17 and Red 2 at 09:22, against fire that the bombardment has not suppressed. On Red 1 most of Maj. John F. Schoettel's LT 3/2 is shredded near the re-entrant, a cove whose strongpoints enfilade the beaches on both sides; Maj. Michael P. Ryan gathers survivors at the island's western tip and pushes about 500 yards down the west shore. On Red 2 Lt. Col. Herbert R. Amey Jr. is killed wading in and Lt. Col. Walter I. Jordan takes over LT 2/2's scattered survivors. On Red 3 Maj. Henry P. 'Jim' Crowe's LT 2/8, beside the pier, gets the best start, with modest penetration toward the airfield by 09:45. Behind the tractors, later waves in Higgins boats ground on the reef and must wade 500 to 1,000 yards under fire; Maj. Robert H. Ruud's LT 3/8 loses most of two companies trying to reach Red 3. SSgt. William J. Bordelon, of an assault engineer platoon of the 1st Battalion, 18th Marines, attached to the 2nd Marines, destroys several positions before he is killed; he is awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously.

3. 20 Nov, noon to nightfall

   Shoup's command post and the seawall

   Col. David M. Shoup, commanding the assault, wades in and at about noon sets up his command post some 50 yards inland from the pier, on the blind side of a Japanese bunker that is still occupied. Most of the Marines ashore are pinned behind a log seawall about four to five feet high; the few tanks that get ashore and the men who climb over the wall in small groups make the only gains. Maj. Wood B. Kyle's LT 1/2 lands on Red 2 piecemeal through the afternoon, many of its men not ashore until the next morning, and Ruud's survivors join Crowe on Red 3; Schoettel comes ashore at sunset. By nightfall about 5,000 Marines have landed and roughly 1,500 are dead, wounded or missing, holding less than a quarter of a square mile. LT 1/8 spends the night in its boats at the line of departure. The expected Japanese night counterattack never comes; Shibasaki's communications have been wrecked. By one account he and his staff were killed that afternoon by a destroyer's shellfire; Alexander has his last message to Tokyo going out early on 22 November.

4. 21 Nov (D+1)

   Green Beach and the south shore

   At dawn Hays' LT 1/8 wades in from the reef to Red 2 under crossfire from the re-entrant strongpoints and from snipers in hulks offshore, losing more than 300 men before reaching Shoup. Kyle's and Jordan's battalions, down to small parties, cross the airfield and seize a strip of the south shore, cutting the island in two. On the west end Ryan, with a repaired Sherman and naval gunfire called in by his attached naval officer, attacks at 11:20 and holds all of Green Beach within about an hour — the first beach where reinforcements can land dry. Hawkins is mortally wounded attacking pillboxes and is awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously; the airfield is later named for him. Lt. Col. Raymond L. Murray's LT 2/6 lands on Bairiki, the next islet east, at 16:55, and Maj. William K. Jones's LT 1/6 paddles ashore on Green Beach in rubber rafts after dark. Col. Merritt A. Edson comes ashore to take command at about 20:30. Smith later summed up the first two days: 'we were losing until we won.'

5. 22 Nov (D+2)

   The bombproof and the drive east

   At 08:00 Jones's LT 1/6, with two Shermans borrowed from Ryan, attacks east along the south shore, joins Kyle's and Jordan's lines within about three hours and gains some 800 yards by noon and about half that again in the afternoon. In the north, Hays attacks west against the re-entrant strongpoints with little gain. On the left of Red 3, Crowe's and Ruud's battalions take the coconut-log emplacement and the steel pillbox (the Sherman 'Colorado' breaches it), and 1st Lt. Alexander Bonnyman Jr., executive officer of the 2/8 shore party, leads engineers onto the top of the great sand-covered bombproof, driving its occupants into the open; he is killed there and is awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously. Lt. Col. Kenneth F. McLeod's LT 3/6 lands on Green Beach, and 2/10's pack howitzers fire from Bairiki. By evening about 7,000 Marines are ashore against perhaps 1,000 defenders.

6. 22–23 Nov, 19:30 to dawn

   The night counterattacks

   Facing destruction in their bunkers, the surviving defenders attack. At 19:30 about 50 Japanese infiltrate south of the airstrip; 1/6's reserve under 1st Lt. Lyle Specht kills them in two hours of close fighting. At 23:00 one group makes a noisy feint against Jones's Company A while another rushes Company B in silence; both are thrown back. At 03:00 Japanese machine guns open from wrecked trucks in front of the lines and are knocked out with grenades. At 04:00 about 300 men charge the same two companies, met by artillery on Red 2 and Bairiki and by the destroyers Schroeder and Sigsbee, which fire on the flanks of Jones's line until they have emptied their magazines of 5-inch shells. At first light the Marines count 200 dead within 50 yards of their lines and 125 more beyond; 1/6 has lost 40 killed and 100 wounded. Alexander judges that Jones's advance on D+2 and the repulse of the night counterattacks helped break the back of Japanese resistance.

7. 23 Nov (D+3), to 13:05

   Betio secured

   McLeod's fresh LT 3/6 passes through Jones's lines and drives down the narrow tail of the island behind tanks, engineers and flamethrowers, bypassing one bunker complex on the north shore that a rifle company later overruns; it reaches the eastern tip by 13:00, killing more than 450 Japanese for 34 Marines lost. In the west, Hays's 1/8 from the east and Schoettel's 3/2 from the west and south close on the re-entrant strongpoints, while Shoup sends an infantry platoon and two 75 mm half-tracks out onto the reef to fire into them from the lagoon; by 13:00 'it was all over.' Rear Adm. Harry W. Hill comes ashore at 12:45, and at 13:05 he and Maj. Gen. Julian C. Smith report the end of organized resistance, about 76 hours after the first landing. Of roughly 4,800 defenders, 146 are taken prisoner, all but 17 of them Korean laborers. Murray's 2/6 goes on to clear the rest of the atoll by 28 November.