Hammel Eric - Bloody Tarawa: A Pictorial Record

BLOODY TARAWA

Eric Hammel and John E. Lane

With 307 photos and combat drawings

O n the morning of Saturday, November 20, 1943, the U.S. 2d Marine Division undertook the first modern amphibious assault against a well-defended beachhead. The objective was tiny Betio Island in Tarawa Atoll. The result was an immortal story of tragedy and near defeat turned around into an epic of victory and indomitable human spirit.

Built around the updated text of their 76 Hours: The Invasion of Tarawa, Hammel and Lane now reveal the graphic horror of warfare at its worst with the addition of more than 250 photos and combat drawings taken from U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps archives and several private collections. Many of the photos used in Bloody Tarawa have never been published before.

Although the admirals commanding the Tarawa invasion fleet had assured the Marines that Betio would be pounded to coral dust by a massive naval and air bombardmentthe largest of its kind ever seen to that timethe first waves of Marines found the Japanese defenses intact and manned by determined foes. Within minutes of the start of the head-on assault, the American battle plan was a shambles and scores of Marines had been killed or wounded. The assault virtually stopped at the waters edge, its momentum halted before many Marines ever dismounted from the amphibian tractors that had carried them to the deadly, fire-swept beach. Follow-up waves of Marines suffered grievous casualties when they were forced to wade more than 500 yards through fire-swept, knee-deep water because tidal conditions had been miscalculated by the invasions planners.

Follow the bloody battle for Betio in graphic detail as heroic American fighting men advance every life-threatening step across the tiny island in the face of what many historians agree was the best and most concentrated defenses manned by the bravest and most competent Japanese defenders American troops encountered in the entire Pacific War.

Books by Eric Hammel

76 Hours: The Invasion of Tarawa (with John E. Lane)

Chosin: Heroic Ordeal of the Korean War

The Root: The Marines in Beirut

Ace!: A Marine Night-Fighter Pilot in World War II (with R. Bruce Porter)

Duel for the Golan (with Jerry Asher)

Guadalcanal: Starvation Island

Guadalcanal: The Carrier Battles

Guadalcanal: Decision at Sea

Munda Trail: The New Georgia Campaign

The Jolly Rogers (with Tom Blackburn)

Khe Sanh: Siege in the Clouds

First Across the Rhine (with David E. Pergrin)

Lima-6: A Marine Company Commander in Vietnam (with Richard D. Camp)

Ambush Valley

Fire in the Streets

Aces Against Japan

Aces Against Japan II

Aces Against Germany

Air War Europa: Chronology

Carrier Clash

Aces at War

Air War Pacific: Chronology

Aces in Combat

Bloody Tarawa

Marines at War

Carrier Strike

Pacific Warriors: The U.S. Marines in World War II

Iwo Jima: Portrait of a Battle

Marines in Hue City: Portrait of an Urban Battle

The U.S. Marines in World War II: Guadalcanal

The U.S. Marines in World War II: New Georgia, Bougainville, and Cape Gloucester

The U.S. Marines in World War II: Tarawa and the Marshalls

How America Saved the World

Coral and Blood

The Road to Big Week

Islands of Hell

Always Faithful

The Steel Wedge

Marines on Okinawa

For a complete listing of all the military history books written by Eric Hammel and currently available in print or as ebooks, visit: http://www.EricHammelBooks.com A free sample chapter from each book is available in the sites Free section.

Please also visit http://www.PacificaMilitary.com

Text Copyright 1998 and 2011 by Eric Hammel and John E. Lane
Book Design and Layout Copyright 2011 by Words To Go, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be mailed to: Permissions, Pacifica Military History, 1149 Grand Teton Drive, Pacifica, California 94044.

ISBN 978-1-890988-47-0

Book Design and Type by Words To Go, Inc., Pacifica, California

Second edition

Includes the complete revised, updated text of 76 Hours: The Invasion of Tarawa plus 307 photos, many shown here for the first time.

In Memory of

John Eldridge Lane

Combat Marine

Authors Note

T his is a tough book, tough on its authors and tough on its readers. Many of the photographic images in it are what TV anchors would call disturbing when they are leading in to a story that shows the human toll taken by hurricanes, volcanoes, tsunamis, and the Holocaust. There are disturbing photographs in this book that show, quite graphically, what people do to other people when they fight organized wars.

While this is the first time that many of the photographs in this bookdisturbing and otherwisehave ever been seen in print, this is by no means the first book to show death on a battlefield in many of its sad and grotesque forms, just the first about Tarawa to do so. Some books show hundreds of tortured corpses lying in windrows upon Civil War battlefields. But the dead men in the Civil War photos are not the fathers, sons, brothers, husbands, uncles, and lovers of people we know, people who died so horribly within our living memory.

Our purpose is not to shock, and certainly not to offend. We offer an opportunity, rather, for sober reflection upon an heroic moment in our nations history.

There is a line inscribed upon the ruins of a great and ancient civilization, heroic words which when written were an admonition to kings who might covet the riches of that civilization. To those who view the ruins now, the inscription is a more poignant if ironic admonition: Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair.

The battle for Betio was, in its timeand nowa truly proud and heroic event in our nations history. The words in this book depict heroes going about the work of being heroes. So do many of the photographs. But there are disturbing images here, too. And there are images that are not disturbing because they are gory but disturbing because they are truthful. You need not despair, but you do need to reflect upon what you see, upon what bothers you about some of these images. If you do, and if you are ever called upon to cast a vote about a future war, you will at least know what glory looks like on the battlefield on which it takes placewhat dying a glorious death looks like after a day, or three days, in the sun.

This book is not, per se, an admonition against war. There are just wars, and the war depicted here was certainly one of them. But there have been wars our nation has entered into lightly, where lives have been misspent. The victims of such wars do not look different than the heroic Japanese and American martyrs of Betio look in many of the images you will see here. Remember them. Remember them all.

Glossary and Guide to Abbreviations

1stLt First Lieutenant

1stSgt First Sergeant

2dLt Second Lieutenant

ADC Assistant Division Commander

AKA Attack cargo ship

Amtrac Amphibian tractor; same as LVT