this was the crisis of the battle.”įortuitously for the Americans, the commander of the Japanese garrison, Admiral Shibasaki and many of those working with him died on D-Day, leaving the Japanese forces temporarily somewhat chaotic.īut of course, the Marines who had to stay on Betio that first night didn’t know that information. Smith, who led the division during the assault on Tarawa, later remarked, “ The night of D-Day was the greatest danger to our landing forces. In hindsight, many military leaders believe that if the Japanese had decided to counterattack on the first night, there is a good chance that the Americans would have lost the battle. Shoup noted, “ The situation does not look good ashore.” As the assault force commander Colonel David M. Things were not going as well as everyone thought or certainly wanted, especially in the first 30 hours. More soberly, veterans remembered that they couldn’t move without stepping on a body and that a man could lift his hand and get it shot off. “ This isn’t going to be a cakewalk!” many Marines quickly realized.Īs the landing craft began to drop waves of Marines off, the later waves at first thought that the rows of Marines ahead of them along the beach were waiting for orders to move, but come to find out that they were dead.
When the 2nd Marine Division of roughly 20,000 men-including the 2nd Marines, the 6th Marines, and the 8th Marines (infantry) the 10th Marines (artillery) and the 18th Marines (the composite engineer regiment)-landed on Betio on November 20, 1943, there was chaos within the first hour.Īlthough there had been a naval bombardment a couple of hours earlier, the Marines were not as surprised by the incredibly low tide as they were by the fact that so many of the Japanese had managed to survive the bombardment and were blasting away at those landing.īoats received heavy fire even before nearing the reef. In fact, the 2nd Marine Division would suffer a thousand casualties a day at Betio, the highest casualty rate sustained by any division in the war.ħ6 Hours of Battle (November 20-24, 1943) The Americans hoped to seize the Gilberts in the Central Pacific as a first step to their continued island hopping toward Japan.īetio and other islands in the Gilberts had the strategic benefit of airfields that would allow the Americans to reach new strategic points that were closer to Japanese strongholds in the Pacific.īut it would take 76 hours of intense fighting-called “ utmost savagery” by veterans-in order to finally seize the island from the Japanese defenders, many of whom were rikusentai, known by some as “ Japanese Marines.”ĭuring that time, the Marines suffered almost as many killed-in-action casualties-over 1,000-as in the six-month Guadalcanal campaign from late 1942 to early 1943. Betio Island was three hundred acres, or the size of the Pentagon building and parking lots, and it was the centerpiece of the Gilberts invasion known as Operation Galvanic.