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PART IVd. TARAWA — OBJECTIVE SECURED
November 22nd, 1943 dawned clear and hot across Tarawa atoll. On the main island of the atoll, codenamed "Helen," every Marine who fought there would remember the smell for the rest of his life. It was an indescribable stench of putrefying corpses, rotten food, and other odors to vile to think about. And the air was clogged with the dust and smoke of battle. The smell permeated everything, clothing, food, hair, skin. It was the odor of death, of the charnel house. Nevertheless, the Marines of the Second Division—bloodied, numbed, thirsty—strapped on their gear and moved into the assault. The morning began with an attack at 0700 by Landing Team 1/8. Supported by three light tanks of Company C, 2nd Tank Battalion, 1/8 was ordered to clear the boundary between Beaches red 1 and Red 2. Several redoubtable Japanese pillboxes remained intact in this area, and they proved to be too tough for the tanks, which were withdrawn late in the morning after one was knocked out by a magnetic mine. In the book Tarawa, the Story of a Battle, war correspondent Robert Sherrod described the Japanese defensive works:
So, the infantry Marines and combat engineers resorted to the proven methods of bangalore torpedoes, shaped charges, and flamethrowers to destroy the fortifications. It was a slow and methodical process that took most of the day. As the day wore on, Companies A and C made good progress. But Company B was held in position by intense enemy fire. The tanks were replaced by two 75mm halftracks of the 2nd Marines Heavy Weapons Company. These vehicles immediately received a heavy volume of enemy fire directed against them. One was forced to pull back when its' radiator was damaged. Although the attack achieved little in the way of ground won, it led to the destruction of several enemy strong points. Late in the afternoon, a small Japanese counterattack formed in 1/8's area, but the Marines repulsed it with little trouble.
Among the heroic Marines in 1/6 was 1stLt Hugh D. Fricks, of Seattle, Washington. He received a posthumous Navy Cross for his gallantry in the attack on 22 November 1943. His citation read in part:
From their positions near Red beach 3 oriented generally eastward, Landing Team 2/8, commanded by the tough Maj Jim Crowe, launched a concerted assault against three mutually-supported Japanese emplacements. The attack got off to a lucky start when an 81mm mortar round made a perfect hit on one of the emplacements, detonating the ammunition stored inside. The titanic blast completely destroyed the bunker. Another of the positions received effective fire from 1stLt Lou Largey's M4 medium tank Colorado. This left only the large Japanese bombproof near the Burns-Philps wharf. The attack was supported by combat engineers of the 18th Marines. Their officer, 1stLt Alexander Bonnyman, led them in the face of stout resistance to the top of the bombproof, the highest point on the island. The Japanese resisted fiercely, counterattacking the beleaguered Marines. His posthumous Medal of Honor citation recorded 1stLt Bonnyman's final minutes of life:
William Bonnyman's heroic sacrifice was not in vain. As the Japanese defenders rushed from the bombproof, they were cut down by weapons of every caliber from rifles to 37mm antitank guns of the 2nd Marines Regimental Weapons Company. The position was completely neutralized when a Seabee bulldozer came forward under heavy fire support and sealed the entrances with sand, preventing any escape for the defenders trapped inside.
During the course of the attack, LT 2/8 drove forward to the eastern edge of the airfield, to a point where it was endangered by encroaching fire from the advance of Landing Team 1/6 on the southern shore. Maj Crowe therefore pulled his front lines back about 150 yards as his Marines progressed with the dirty and dangerous job of mopping up the areas they had just secured. Robert Sherrod captured the feeling of the grinding and deadly fighting on D+2:
That afternoon, division commander MajGen Julian Smith came ashore from his command post aboard the USS Maryland to take control of the battle. Even now, the run-in to the beach head was hazardous, and the driver of Smith's amphibian tractor was wounded during ship-to-shore movement. Once established, Smith assumed tactical command of the battle from Col Edson. At 1601, Smith sent the following situation report to the Maryland:
As night approached, the Second Marine Division, battered, bloody, and bruised, had about 7,000 Marines ashore, opposed by roughly 1,000 surviving Japanese defenders. About two-thirds of Betio's landmass was now in American hands, leaving the Japanese garrison trapped on the island's eastern tail. Marine artillery and naval gunfire were now relentlessly pounding the enemy positions. Progress on D+2 had been slow, methodical, and Marines literally paid for each piece of newly-won ground in blood. Progress in the attack did not bode well for a speedy end to the fighting, but then something happened that would dramatically shorten the fight for Tarawa. NIGHTTIME BANZAI ATTACKS During the night of 22-23 November 1943, the remaining Japanese defenders launched a series of futile, suicidal Banzai attacks against the Marine defenses. The first occurred at around 1930, when a group of 50 Japanese troops attacked the defenses of Landing Team 1/6. In this preliminary attack, the Japanese initially opened a small gap in the Marine lines, but the enemy was destroyed when Marine reserve units came forward to seal the breach. Another attack developed against LT 1/6 at around 2300, and was again repulsed by the Marines. Fighting continued sporadically in the LT 1/6 sector as the night drug on. Then at around 0400 on 23 November, an estimated 300 Japanese launched an all-out assault on Companies A and B. In this urgent situation, forward observer 1stLT N. E. Milner called in 75mm howitzer fire to within 75 yards of the Marine defenses, and the destroyers USS Schroeder and USS Sigsbee fired from the lagoon non-stop at Japanese troop concentrations. Richard W. Johnston described the drama of this action in Follow Me! The Story of the Second Marine Division in World War II:
Pvt Jack Stambaugh, a rifleman in Company B, was one of the men who stood in the face of this onslaught. . His posthumous Navy Cross citation told of his courageous actions:
By dawn's early light, 300 Japanese corpses lay heaped in front of the Marine lines. MajGen Smith had followed the unfolding action, and he now passed the orders for the final push. The enemy's back was broken, and divisional elements attacked relentlessly through the morning of D+3. At 1310, Landing Team 3/6 reached the eastern tip of Betio, and organized resistance was finished. But mop-up—the filthy, dangerous job of rooting out the last enemy hold-outs—continued for two days. Out of more than 5,000 Japanese defenders, Marines ultimately only took 146 prisoners, most of whom were Korean forced laborers. Only 17 living Japanese were captured on Betio, the majority badly wounded.
And so, the battle of Betio came to a close. The airfield, scene of so much bloodshed, was quickly repaired and improved by Marine engineers and Seabees. It was christened Hawkins Field, after the indomitable 1stLt Hawkins of the 2nd Marine Scout-Sniper Platoon. And on the morning of 24 November 1943, transports slipped into the lagoon to carry away the survivors of the 2nd and 8th Marines. In the bright noontime sunshine, the American flag and the British Union Jack were raised in a simple ceremony. But the fighting for Tarawa Atoll was not yet over. Marines of Landing Team 2/6, under their commander LtCol Raymond Murray, had begun a long hike up the atoll's eastern spine starting on 25 November 1943 to clear Japanese defenders from the atoll's outlying islands. World War II Marine Leon Uris captured the feeling of this landscape in his novel Battle Cry:
LT 2/6 finally found the Japanese dug-in on the small island of Buariki. The Marines made first contact with the enemy on the evening of 26 November 1943. The next morning, the attack resumed, ultimately crushing the enemy garrison completely. Divisional elements also secured other islands as part of Operation GALVANIC. by 1 December 1943, this phase of the operation was completed, and MajGen Smith turned over command of Tarawa to the Navy on 4 December 1943. Two days later, Time Magazine made note of the battle:
THE RECKONING Tarawa was an expensive victory for the Second Marine Division. In the final tally, the division suffered 3,305 Marine casualties, and 85 casualties to attached Naval medical personnel. But the battle not only secured an important airfield, but also validated important tactical doctrines that would figure prominently in future campaigns on the drive to Tokyo. But, that was all in the future for the division. It would be nicknamed "the Silent Second," for its' sacrificial nights on Tarawa. It's new home, on the island of Hawaii, would be named Camp Tarawa, in honor of the fallen. And soon, telegrams begin arriving at the doors of 3,390 Marines and sailors of the Second Marine Division. And the American people got their first glimpses in theaters of the fighting on Tarawa. Marine combat cameramen had accompanied the assault forces, and their work was used to create the color motion picture With the Marines at Tarawa. This gritty look at the battle won the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1945 and showed the public for the first time the true nature of the war.
But the Marines of Tarawa were not mourned in just the United States. During almost a year spent in New Zealand, the young Americans had developed strong ties with the Kiwis. Although the Second Marine Division never returned to the wonderful land down under, its' Marines would write so much to New Zealand, that for the rest of the war, as much mail would be sent there as to the United States. It took weeks for the first death notifcations to reach Wellington, and soon the newspaper was filled with lists of Marines killed on Tarawa. The people were shocked and saddened by the loss of so many young men who they had come to know and love. For a long time after the war ended, New Zealanders who continue to commemorate the young Americans who had meant so much to them. One Kiwi faithfully submitted a tribute to the Wellington newspaper each year on the anniversary of the battle. It said:
EPITAPH AT THE GATE OF THE SECOND MARINE DIVISION CEMETERY ON BETIO ISLAND By Capt Donald Jackson, USMC To you, who lie within this coral sand,
CASUALTIES TABLES FOR THE ASSAULT ON TARAWA
NOTES: 1. Marine casualties extracted from Appendix B (page 72) of The Battle for Tarawa, by Capt James Stockman, USMC.
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