The first question anyone would ask when inquiring about the battle of Tarawa is why? Why Tarawa? What made Tarawa so special that the newly created United States Central Pacific Force decided to consider such a risky and dangerous landing? The answer lies in the geography of the South Pacific and the strategic importance of the Gilbert Island Group to not only the United States, but to Japan as well. The British were aware of it and surveyed the Gilbert Island group. The United States Navy had known of the Gilbert Island group for over one hundred years when in 1844 Navy Lt. Charles Wilkes was the first American to visit the Tarawa, or Knox Island as it was called in those days. There he encountered a few natives and New Zealanders who had also discovered that this island chain was literally paradise. Up until 1943, the United States naval presence in the South Pacific was limited to the naval bases held in Australia and a few outlying outposts in the Philippines that were secured at the turn of the 19th century. At that time General Douglas MacArthur sought a faster supply route and wanted arrive at Japan’s doorstep sooner than his advisors had anticipated. Additionally, the Japanese were applying pressure on both the air and sea fronts to the Navy’s supply routes that were based in Micronesia. General MacArthur’s strategy up to this point was to leave the Japanese outposts to die of solitude and be kept out of the war; essentially to ignore them. MacArthur had been very careful up to this point to never progress faster than his land based air support could cover, but he wanted more and wanted to move on Japan much faster than previously. The battle of Guadalcanal had been fought and won and the majority of the Solomon Island group was also under the control of the United States, but a base closed to the wounded Pearl Harbor was needed to continue the push across the South pacific. Planners and advisors looked to the northwest and fixed their sights on the Gilberts. The Gilbert Islands consisted of sixteen islands and three of them could be used as airfields; Tarawa, Makin and Apamama. Tarawa, or Betio as the natives called it, was the largest of the three candidates. The strategic importance of Tarawa to the Central Pacific was significant because it lay only 2,400 miles from Pearl Harbor and 1,005 miles from Guadalcanal. The faster supply route that MacArthur sought lay within this atoll. The Japanese had long known of the strategic importance of the Gilbert Island group and had installed an outpost there the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Imperial Japanese Navy installed a crude air strip in Tarawa that enabled them to supply their other larger outposts without the risk of encountering an American submarine or battle cruiser. To win the Pacific meant that the air fields must be controlled to keep the supply lines open.
Upon arriving at the Casablanca Conference on 12 February 1943, expanding the effort in the South Pacific was of utmost importance and the planning was begun. It was at the Casablanca Conference it was also decided that any Allied invasions across the English Channel would be put on hold until 1944. This would free up landing craft from the European theater and they could be reassigned to the Pacific theater for the planned landing. Adm. Chester W. Nimitz dusted off the 1930’s era “War Plan Orange” and modified it for a new naval campaign. Planners had overlooked the Gilberts and used the Marshall Island Group as their first objective during the planning stages. The Marshal Islands were not suitable for a naval landing due to one small detail; the lack or aerial photographs. The best the navy had in 1943 were periscope photographs provided by their submarines in the Pacific. The closest air field to the Marshal Islands was based on Funafuti and the B-24 Liberators based there did not have the range needed to take the accurate aerial photographs needed for operational planning. As a result, the Gilberts were chosen because the aerial photos needed were more easily obtainable. To further compound the planning was the promise that Admiral Nimitz made to have the amphibious landing crafts returned to their respective theaters buy June 1944.
Code named “Operation Galvanic”, this battle was designed to be a military offensive that would involve the newly created Fifth Fleet and undertake the largest amphibious operation executed in the Pacific with the closest supply base over 700 miles away in Pearl Harbor. The operation was scheduled to begin on November 20, 1943 and last for 3 days. This assault would include over 200 ships crewed by over 35,000 troops, 6,000 vehicles and over 117,000 tons of cargo. For the landing party the Second Marine Division who were the recent victors in Guadalcanal were reorganized and selected for the primary assault on Tarawa. U.S. intelligence personnel believed that they would encounter heavy resistance in the way of heave air and submarine assaults could arrive within three days of the landing. What U.S. intelligence officials did not know was that the U.S. had all but decimated the Japanese Navy and they had no operational aircraft carriers in Micronesia to support their base on Tarawa.
The Imperia Japanese Navy first learned of the impending attack on the Gilberts from a naval lieutenant who as on aerial patrol on the morning of November 19, 1943. The green lieutenant, Kichi Yoshuyo, was unsure of what he was witnessing but radioed it in none the less; “Enemy contact report…fleet sighted…several carriers and other types too numerous to mention.” When word of the impending attack filtered through to Tokyo, the Japanese reaction could only be one of frustration. What the U.S. planners and intelligence did not fully know was that when the Japanese transport ship the Bangkok Maru was sunk by the USS Pollack (SS 180), she was carrying Japanese Army replacements for the outpost at Tarawa. The Japanese had sufficiently reinforced Tarawa on 15 September 1942 to begin constructing the airfield for their outpost. The Yokosuka 6th Special Navy Landing Force was instilled on Tarawa for garrison duty and on 17 March, 1943 the Sasebo 7th SNFL arrived to strengthen the Japanese hold on the island chain. The commanding officer for the Japanese Navy was Rear Admiral Shibasaki who arrived in August 1943. The opposition that the U.S. Navy and Marines would encounter would total 2,619 of Japan’s best troops; fully prepared to fight to the death.
The week before the execution of Operation Galvanic, the U.S. Navy had been conducting bombing runs in an attempt to soften up the landing area. In the week of 13 – 19 November 1943, the U.S. Navy had conducted 350 to 400 daily strikes on the Gilberts and the Marshalls. This operation was conducted from the USS Colorado under the command of Rear Admiral J. H. Hoover. In the same week prior to the planed landing on Tarawa, the Seventh Air Force and her B-24’s were bombing Tarawa dropping a total of 115 tons of munitions. This was the extent of any pre attack bombing campaigns that the U.S. Navy would conduct on the Gilbert Island group prior to the planned landing date of 20 November 1943. Early in the morning of the 20th, the Japanese fired a red star cluster and within an hour the remainder of the Japanese forces on Tarawa swung into action; firing at the USS Colorado and the USS Maryland. The Colorado and the Maryland responded in kind and the battle for Tarawa had officially begun. Aboard ship, the Marines in Combat Team 2 were set and ready to debark from the transports at 0340. The transport for carrier to shore line would prove to be a difficult one due to the extensive reef system that surrounded the lagoon on the north side of the island. Once the Marines had been driven to the reef edge in their LTV’s, they would then have to transfer to a Higgins boat for their final trip to shore. This plan sounded simple but it would prove to be anything but simple. The Japanese never considered a landing on the north side of the island so they never laid mines in the lagoon. The Japanese had effectively mined the rest of the shoreline but never thought that anyone would dare risk a landing over the reef system. The second problem with this plan was the tides, or lack thereof. All of the reports and weather predictions prior to the landing on Tarawa indicated that there would easily be a 6’ clearance for the Higgins boats to navigate over at high tide. This was not to be the case and there was an off shore wind that morning that was blowing the water out of the lagoon and this trapped or damaged 75% of the available Higgins boats.
On D-Day at Tarawa, 20 November 1943, almost everything that could go wrong, did. The Japanese were alerted early to the impending assault on the north side of the island and began firing from their garrisons at 0507 with the Colorado and the Maryland responding almost immediately. Aboard ship a cease fire was ordered because an air assault was expected from the Navy, only to discover that the timing was off and the air strikes were behind schedule by 30 minutes. Compounding this was the loss of communications aboard the Maryland. Her radio nets were knocked off line during the return fire and the crew was unable to have communications back up and working for several hours. This left Admiral Hill out of communications with the Colorado. The Colorado was carrying General Julian Smith, USMC; the other commander for the attack. Unknown to Lt. Col. David M. Shoup, Shoup would be leading the show on Tarawa for several hours. An additional problem was that the marines were climbing down the nets to the boats when it was discovered that they were out of position and adjustments needed to be made to optimize the floating over the reef system. The Marines were unconcerned by this because the general feeling was that after the Navy was done with their salvos, the Marines would only arrive to bury the bodies because no one could have lived through that assault. The final problem was that the LTV’s had to make a 10 mile run to the island before they could attempt to cross the reef system. This caused a delay on the H-Hour by 30 minutes at first and an hour the second time. The original H-Hour was set for 0830 but Admiral Smith moved it back twice. Not all of the Marines received the messages because of the lack of communications equipment carried by the landing parties and those who did have communications equipment were lucky if it worked because they were not water proof.
Once the Marines were underway the general mood was one of relaxed attention to the task at hand. All of that changed during the first wave. As some of the LVT’s made it across the reef, the Marines were met with heavy fire from the pill boxes and were almost immediately fired upon. The surviving Marines had to wade the 700 yards ashore in 6’8’ of water, guns over their heads to make it to shore, praying that they were not hit in the process. Subsequent LTV’s would become trapped on the reefs and the Marines had no choice but to wade in. The Marines made contact with Red Beach One at 0910, Red Beach Two at 0917, and Red Beach Three at 0922. The surviving Marines gathered and began their attack, but to their horror as they watched the remaining waves wade ashore, all they could do is watch their fellow Marines fall into the water either from weapons fire, stumbling into an unseen hold on the beach floor, or drowning under the weight because they were dropped off in too deep of water and their packs took them under. To the dismay of the Marines and the Navy, there were no transport boats available to land by 0100 that morning. The pill boxes were not the main problem for the Marines on that first day; it was the Japanese snipers in the palm trees that proved to be the most troublesome. U.S. Intelligence never factored that the Japanese would be so well hidden in the palm trees and with the Marines lacking their favorite weapon – the flame thrower- they had to wait until they made it in, if they did at all. As luck would have it, the Marines trained with the flame throwers arrived in the 8th through 12th waves and proved to be most effective. To many of the Marines surprise, numerous Japanese personnel chose to run into the flame instead of being taken alive, or shot. By midday the outcome of the assault on Tarawa was in doubt due to the heavy resistance that the Marines met on Tarawa. With fractured units and numerous dead, a number of “orphan” units were created and the assault continued as planned. By the end of the first day the Marines had succeeded in securing Red Beach Two and Red Beach One; Red Beach Three was still in doubt and Red Beach Three was the grand prize of the assault because on the huge pier that had been built there by the British when they were using the island as a trading outpost with the natives and nearby New Zealander’s.
On the morning of Day Two the 1/8 Marines landed over 300 men to support the activity on Red Beach Three. They were expecting heavy causalities again on day two but only encountered sporadic resistance to the landing assault. This was puzzling to the Marines, very puzzling because the question on everyone’s mind was “Where did they go?” The answer lies in the Japanese Code of Bushido, the “threat” of American cannibalism, and the lack of communications between the Japanese. The Japanese had been told many inaccurate facts about Americans as a whole and one of them was that the Marines would “eat” them if any Japanese soldier was captured alive. With the smell of death and burning flesh hanging over the island, this heightened their fears substantially. The Code of Bushido, the honor code of the Japanese Samaria, is one that all Japanese practiced religiously. When it became apparent to the Japanese that they might be captured several hundred of them committed Hari Kari so they would die with their Honor intact and more importantly not disgrace the Emperor. What the assault teams did not know was that the Navy had taken out all of the Japanese communication lines that were buried in the sand about 3’ in the beginning salvo from the Colorado and the Maryland. This was the decisive action that turned the tides of Tarawa to the favor of the Marines. In the remaining two days the Marines were met with hard fighting but they were winning. The airfield was officially secured when Admiral Hill and his staff came ashore at 1245.
The stateside reaction to the Battle of Tarawa was shock and horror at first as they were enjoying a long Thanksgiving week. As reports trickled in from Pearl Harbor the American public was stunned because they were not completely ready for the price that winning the war in the Pacific Theater would cost. Embedded reporters with the Marines during the Operation Galvanic drove the point home because they did what reporters do; report the events as they see them. To compound the problem with the civilian – military relationship was that the delay in releasing the official causality reports by the Marine Corps for 10 days. Some in the media tried to soothe the concerns of the public by comparing the assault on Tarawa to Pickett’s Charge during the three - day Battle of Gettysburg. Soon civilian society at home began to understand the price that was necessary to win World War II and pushed for better resources for the soldiers, sailors and marines. The final causality count for Tarawa was around 3,500 marines although only a handful of Japanese soldiers were taken alive.
The lessons learned from Tarawa were significant and affected future beach landings in both the Marshall Islands and on the beaches of Normandy. The radios that the troops carried were waterproofed so ground troops could remain in contact with other units. The Navy designated one ship in each carrier group or landing party to be responsible for communications only to avoid the loss of communications that happened on Tarawa. Future beach landings such as Normandy would not require troops to wade in over 700 yards and every attempt was made to ensure that the intelligence reports were checked and checked again to ensure that there was a reasonable idea of what the landing parties would encountered. The most significant lesson learned from Tarawa was that Tarawa represented a unifying moment in the civilian – military relationship within the United States. No longer was this a “far away war”, rather it was a long term event that required the full backing of the civilian population if the military was to be successful.