What Route Did the Marines Take to Get to Tarawa
Across THE REEF: The Marine Set on of Tarawa
past Colonel Joseph H. Alexander, USMC (Ret)
The Significance of Tarawa
The costs of the forcible seizure of Tarawa were two-fold: the loss of Marines in the assault itself, followed by the shock and despair of the nation upon hearing the reports of the battle. The gains at start seemed small in return, the "stinking little island" of Betio, 8,000 miles from Tokyo. In time, the practical lessons learned in the complex art of amphibious assault began to outweigh the initial adverse publicity.
The final casualty figures for the 2d Marine Partitioning in Operation Galvanic were 997 Marines and thirty sailors (organic medical personnel) dead; 88 Marines missing and presumed dead; and 2,233 Marines and 59 sailors wounded. Total casualties: iii,407. The Guadalcanal campaign had cost a comparable corporeality of Marine casualties over half dozen months; Tarawa's losses occurred in a period of 76 hours. Moreover, the ratio of killed to wounded at Tarawa was significantly high, reflecting the savagery of the fighting. The overall proportion of casualties amongst those Marines engaged in the set on was well-nigh 19 percentage, a steep but "acceptable" cost. But some battalions suffered much higher losses. The 2nd Amphibian Tractor Battalion lost over half the command. The battalion too lost all but 35 of the 125 LVT's employed at Betio.
Lurid headlines—"The Bloody Beaches of Tarawa"—alarmed American newspaper readers. Part of this was the Marines' ain doing. Many of the combat correspondents invited along for Operation Galvanic had shared the very worst of the hell of Betio the get-go 36 hours, and they merely reported what they observed. Such was the case of Marine Corps Master Technical Sergeant James C. Lucas, whose accounts of the fighting received front-page coverage in both The Washington Post and The New York Times on 4 Dec 1943. Colonel Shoup was furious with Lucas for years thereafter, only it was the headline writers for both papers who did the most harm (The Times: "Grim Tarawa Defence force a Surprise, Eyewitness of Battle Reveals; Marines Went in Chuckling, To Find Swift Expiry Instead of Easy Conquest.").
Nor did extemporaneous remarks to the media past some of the senior Marines involved in Performance Galvanic help soothe public concerns. Kingdom of the netherlands Smith likened the D-Mean solar day assault to Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg. "Cerise Mike" Edson said the assault force "paid the stiffest price in man life per square yard" at Tarawa than whatever other engagement in Marine Corps history. Evans Carlson talked graphically of seeing 100 of Hays men gunned down in the water in five minutes on D+ane, a considerable exaggeration. It did non aid matters when Headquarters Marine Corps waited until 10 days later on the battle to release casualty lists.
The atmosphere in both Washington and Pearl Harbor was particularly tense during this period. General MacArthur, still bitter that the second Marine Partition had been taken from his Southwest Pacific Control, wrote the Secretary of War lament that "these frontal attacks by the Navy, as at Tarawa, are a tragic and unnecessary massacre of American lives." A adult female wrote Admiral Nimitz accusing him of "murdering my son." Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox called a press briefing in which he blamed "a sudden shift in the wind" for exposing the reef and preventing reinforcements from landing. Congress proposed a special investigation. The Marines were fortunate to have General Alexander A. Vandegrift in Washington as the newly appointed 18th Commandant. Vandegrift, the widely respected and highly decorated veteran of Guadalcanal, quietly reassured Congress, pointing out that "Tarawa was an assault from get-go to end." The casualty reports proved to exist less dramatic than expected. A thoughtful editorial in the 27 December 1943 issue of The New York Times complimented the Marines for overcoming Tarawa'south sophisticated defenses and fanatical garrison, warning that hereafter assaults in the Marshalls might result in heavier losses. "We must steel ourselves now to pay that price."
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| A Marine combat correspondent assigned to the Tarawa performance interviews a Marine from the 18th Engineers, 2d Marine Sectionalization, during the form of the fighting. LtGen Julian C. Smith Collection |
The controversy was stirred again after the war when General Kingdom of the netherlands Smith claimed publicly that "Tarawa was a mistake!" Significantly, Nimitz, Spruance, Turner, Loma, Julian Smith, and Shoup disagreed with that assessment.
Admiral Nimitz did not waver. "The capture of Tarawa," he stated, "knocked down the front end door to the Japanese defenses in the Central Pacific." Nimitz launched the Marshalls campaign only x weeks after the seizure of Tarawa. Photograph-reconnaissance and attack aircraft from the captured airfields at Betio and Apamama provided invaluable support. Of greater significance to success in the Marshalls were the lessons learned and the conviction gleaned from the Tarawa experience.
Henry I. Shaw, Jr., for many years the Chief Historian of the Marine Corps, observed that Tarawa was the primer, the textbook on amphibious assault that guided and influenced all subsequent landings in the Central Pacific. Shaw believed that the prompt and selfless analyses which immediately followed Tarawa were of great value: "From analytical reports of the commanders and from their critical evaluations of what went incorrect, of what needed improvement, and of what techniques and equipment proved out in combat, came a tremendous outpouring of lessons learned."
All participants agreed that the conversion of logistical LVTs to assault craft made the divergence between victory and defeat at Betio. There was farther consensus that the LVT-1s and LVT-2s employed in the performance were marginal against heavy defensive fires. The Alligators needed more armor, heavier armament, more powerful engines, auxiliary bilge pumps, self-sealing gas tanks—and wooden plugs the size of 13mm bullets to keep from being sunk by the Japanese M93 heavy machine guns. Virtually of all, at that place needed to be many more LVTs, at least 300 per partitioning. Shoup wanted to go on the apply of LVTs every bit reef crossing set on vehicles a hugger-mugger, simply at that place had been also many reporters on the scene. Hanson W. Baldwin broke the story in The New York Times as early on as 3 December.
Tarawa Today
Tarawa is one of the few Pacific battlefields that remained essentially unchanged for the half century that followed Earth War Two. Visitors to Betio Isle tin can readily see wrecked American tanks and LVTs along the beaches, equally well as the ruins of Japanese gun emplacements and pill boxes. Admiral Shibasaki's imposing concrete bunker still stands, seemingly every bit impervious to time equally it was to the battleship guns of Task Force 53. The "Singapore Guns" still balance in their turrets overlooking the approaches to the island. A few years ago, natives unearthed a cached LVT containing the skeletons of its Marine Corps crew, one still wearing dog tags.
General David M. Shoup was recalled from retirement to active duty for nine days in 1968 to represent the United States at the dedication of a large monument on Betio, commemorating the 25th ceremony of the battle. Equally Shoup afterwards told The National Observer, "My first reaction was that Betio had shrunk a great deal. It seems smaller in peace than in war." Equally he toured the ruined fortifications, Shoup recalled the fell, desperate fighting and wondered "why two nations would spend so much for so little." About vi,000 Japanese and Americans died on the tiny island in 76 hours of fighting.
Xx years after Shoup'southward dedication ceremony, the American memorial had fallen into disrepair; indeed, it was in danger of existence torn down to make room for a cold-storage found for Japanese fishermen. A lengthy campaign by the 2d Marine Division Clan and Long Beach-journalist Tom Hennessy raised plenty funds to obtain a new, more than durable monument, a nine-ton block of Georgia granite inscribed "To our swain Marines who gave their all." The memorial was dedicated on twenty November 1988.
Betio is now role of the new Republic of Kirbati. Tourist facilities are beingness developed to accommodate the big number of veterans who wish to return. For now, the small island probably resembles the mode it appeared on D-24-hour interval, 50 years ago. American author James Ramsey Ullman visited Tarawa earlier and wrote a fitting eulogy: "It is a familiar irony that old battlefields are often the quietest and gentlest of places. It is true of Gettysburg. It is truthful of Cannae, Chalons, Austerlitz, Verdun. And it is true of Tarawa."
Naval gunfire support got mixed reviews. While the Marines were enthusiastic virtually the response from destroyers in the lagoon, they were critical of the extent and accuracy of the preliminary battery, particularly when it was terminated and so prematurely on D-Day. In Major Ryan's evaluation, the meaning shortcoming in Operation Galvanic "lay in overestimating the damage that could be inflicted on a heavily dedicated position by an intense but limited naval bombardment, and by not sending in the assail forces shortly enough after the shelling." Major Schoettel, recalling the pounding his battalion had received from emplacements within the seawall, recommended direct fire against the face of the embankment by 40mm guns from close-in destroyers. The jerky, saturation fires, deemed sufficient by planners in view of the requirement for strategic surprise, proved substantially useless. Amphibious assaults against fortified atolls would most of all need sustained, deliberate, aimed fire.
While no one questioned the bravery of the aviators who supported the Betio set on, many questioned whether they were armed and trained fairly for such a hard target. The need for closer integration of all supporting artillery was axiomatic.
Communications throughout the Betio assault were atrocious. Just the ingenuity of a few radio operators and the bravery of individual runners kept the assail reasonably coherent. The Marines needed waterproof radios. The Navy needed a defended amphibious command ship, non a major combatant whose big guns would knock out the radio nets with each salvo. Such command ships, the AGCs, began to appear during the Marshalls entrada.
Other revisions to amphibious doctrine were immediately indicated. The nature and priority of unloading supplies should henceforth become the phone call of the tactical commander ashore, not the amphibious task strength commander.
Betio showed the critical demand for underwater swimmers who could stealthily assess and report reef, embankment, and surf conditions to the job force earlier the landing. This concept, start envisioned by amphibious warfare prophet Major Earl "Pete" Ellis in the 1920s, came quickly to fruition. Admiral Turner had a fledgling Underwater Demolition Squad on hand for the Marshalls.
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| Themes underlying the enduring legacy of Tarawa are: the tide that failed; tactical assault vehicles that succeeded; a loftier cost in men and fabric; which in the cease spelled out victory in the Key Pacific and a route that led to Tokyo. Section of Defence Photo (USMC) 63843 |
The Marines believed that, with proper combined artillery training, the new medium tanks would be valuable avails. Time to come tank grooming would emphasize integrated tank, infantry, engineer, and arms operations. Tank-infantry communications needed firsthand improvement. Virtually casualties among tank commanders at Betio resulted from the individuals having to dismount from their vehicles to talk with the infantry in the open.
The backpack flamethrower won universal acclaim from the Marines on Betio. Each battalion commander recommended increases in quantity, range, and mobility for these assault weapons. Some suggested that larger versions be mounted on tanks and LVTs, presaging the advent of "Zippo Tanks" in afterwards campaigns in the Pacific.
Julian Smith rather humbly summed upwardly the lessons learned at Tarawa by commenting, "We made fewer mistakes than the Japs did."
Military machine historians Jeter A. Isely and Philip A. Crowl used different words of assessment: "The capture of Tarawa, in spite of defects in execution, conclusively demonstrated that American amphibious doctrine was valid, that even the strongest isle fortress could be seized."
The subsequent landings in the Marshalls employed this doctrine, as modified by the Tarawa feel, to achieve objectives against similar targets with fewer casualties and in less time. The benefits of Operation Galvanic quickly began to outweigh the steep initial costs.
In time, Tarawa became a symbol of raw courage and cede on the role of attackers and defenders alike. Ten years after the battle, General Julian Smith paid homage to both sides in an essay in Naval Institute Proceedings. He saluted the heroism of the Japanese who chose to dice near to the last homo. Then he turned to his beloved 2nd Marine Partition and their shipmates in Task Force 53 at Betio:
For the officers and men, Marines and sailors, who crossed that reef, either equally assault troops, or carrying supplies, or evacuating wounded I can only say that I shall forever think of them with a feeling of reverence and the greatest respect.
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Source: https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/npswapa/extcontent/usmc/pcn-190-003120-00/sec8.htm
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