Tarawa: The 76 Hours That Changed Amphibious Warfare

The Marines were told the island would be taken quickly.

Betio was tiny—barely two miles long and only a few hundred yards wide in places. Naval guns and aircraft would pound the Japanese defenses before Marines reached the beach.

Then the landing craft approached the reef.

And stopped.

The water was too shallow.

Hundreds of Marines climbed over the sides and began wading toward shore through hundreds of yards of exposed water while Japanese machine guns and artillery opened fire.

By the time the Battle of Tarawa ended roughly 76 hours later, more than 1,000 Marines and sailors were dead.

The island had been captured.

But Tarawa had delivered a brutal lesson: an amphibious assault against a heavily fortified enemy could become one of the most dangerous operations imaginable.

Those lessons would help shape nearly every major Marine amphibious landing that followed in the Pacific War.

A Tiny Island With Enormous Importance

In November 1943, American forces were beginning their drive across the Central Pacific toward Japan.

The next objective was the Gilbert Islands.

At the center of the operation was Tarawa Atoll and the small island of Betio, where the Japanese had constructed an important airfield.

Betio looked insignificant on a map.

Militarily, it was anything but.

The Japanese had spent months turning the island into a fortress.

Bunkers were constructed from logs, concrete and sand.

Coastal guns covered approaches to the island.

Machine-gun positions were arranged to fire across the beaches.

Trenches connected defensive positions.

Barbed wire and obstacles covered likely landing areas.

Thousands of Japanese defenders waited for the Marines.

Their commander, Rear Admiral Keiji Shibasaki, reportedly boasted that it would take a million men a hundred years to conquer Tarawa.

The Marines would do it in a little more than three days.

The price would be enormous.

The Bombardment

Before the landing on November 20, 1943, American warships opened fire.

Battleships, cruisers and destroyers hammered Betio.

Aircraft attacked from above.

Explosions covered the island.

From offshore, the bombardment looked overwhelming.

Some Marines watching believed there could be little left alive.

One officer reportedly remarked that the Marines would simply walk ashore.

But many Japanese defenses were extremely well constructed.

Bunkers survived.

Machine-gun positions survived.

Japanese troops waited underground while shells exploded above them.

When the bombardment stopped and the Marines approached the beaches, many of those positions came back to life.

The Reef

Tarawa's first major lesson came before many Marines even reached shore.

Military planners knew Betio was surrounded by a coral reef.

What they did not know with certainty was whether there would be enough water over that reef for conventional landing craft to cross it.

There wasn't.

An unusually low tide left many landing boats stranded on the seaward side.

The tracked LVT amphibious tractors, commonly called amtracs, could crawl across the reef and continue toward shore.

But there were not enough of them to carry everyone.

Marines in conventional landing craft faced a terrible choice.

They could remain offshore.

Or they could get out.

They got out.

The Long Walk to the Beach

Marines climbed over the sides of their landing craft carrying rifles, ammunition, packs and equipment.

Then they started walking.

The distance to shore could be several hundred yards.

The water varied from shallow enough to walk through to deep enough that shorter Marines struggled to keep their heads above the surface.

And the Japanese were shooting at them.

Machine-gun rounds struck the water.

Mortars and artillery landed among the approaching Marines.

Men were wounded and drowned.

Others disappeared beneath the water under the weight of their equipment.

There was almost no cover.

The Marines could only continue toward the beach.

For many, the amphibious assault became a battle for survival before they ever stepped onto dry land.

Chaos on the Beach

The Marines who reached Betio encountered chaos.

Units became mixed together.

Officers and NCOs were killed.

Radios were damaged or lost.

Communications with ships offshore became unreliable.

Some Marines found themselves pinned behind a seawall only yards from Japanese positions.

The beach filled with wounded and dead.

Destroyed landing craft burned in the water.

Amtracs attempted to bring additional Marines ashore while evacuating casualties.

Japanese fire swept across exposed areas.

The carefully prepared assault plan began breaking apart.

Small groups of Marines started fighting their own battles.

Getting Off the Beach

The seawall provided some protection, but remaining there meant eventually being destroyed.

The Marines had to move inland.

Small groups began attacking Japanese positions.

Grenades were thrown into bunkers.

Riflemen covered demolition teams.

Flamethrowers were brought forward.

Explosive charges were placed against firing ports.

Marines crawled close enough to enemy positions to destroy them one at a time.

There was rarely a single dramatic breakthrough.

Instead, the battle became a collection of violent small-unit actions.

A bunker was destroyed.

A trench was cleared.

A few more yards were gained.

Then another bunker had to be taken.

Fighting Through the Night

As darkness arrived on the first day, the Marine position remained precarious.

The beachhead was narrow.

Units were disorganized.

Casualties were severe.

Japanese troops still controlled much of Betio.

Everyone expected a major nighttime counterattack.

Marines prepared defensive positions using whatever cover they could find.

Some Japanese troops attempted infiltration and local attacks, but the massive coordinated assault many Marines feared never came.

That proved critical.

The Americans used the night to reorganize.

More men and equipment came ashore.

Commanders began restoring control.

The Marines had survived the first day.

Now they had to destroy the island's defenses.

Bunkers Had to Be Killed Up Close

Naval gunfire could devastate exposed troops.

It was far less reliable against deeply constructed bunkers.

Many Japanese positions had to be eliminated at close range.

Marines developed combinations of weapons and tactics that would become increasingly familiar throughout the Pacific War.

Riflemen and machine gunners suppressed a bunker.

Flamethrower operators moved closer.

Demolition teams followed.

Explosive charges were placed against openings.

Grenades went inside.

The Marines then moved to the next position.

It was slow, exhausting and extraordinarily dangerous.

But it worked.

The Tide Begins to Turn

By the second and third days, American strength on Betio increased.

More Marines came ashore.

Artillery support improved.

Tanks reached the battlefield and provided direct fire against fortified positions.

Naval gunfire became better coordinated with troops on the island.

The Japanese perimeter began shrinking.

Marines pushed across Betio, isolating and destroying strongpoints.

Some Japanese soldiers fought until their positions were completely overwhelmed.

Others launched desperate attacks.

There was almost nowhere for them to retreat.

Betio was simply too small.

The Final Attack

During the early hours of November 23, the remaining Japanese defenders launched a major counterattack.

Marines met them with rifles, machine guns and artillery.

The attack was shattered.

Later that day, organized resistance effectively ended.

Betio belonged to the Americans.

The battle had lasted approximately 76 hours.

The Japanese garrison had been virtually annihilated.

Out of thousands of defenders on the island, only a tiny number survived to become prisoners.

The Marines had won.

Then everyone began counting the cost.

The Price of 76 Hours

More than 1,000 U.S. Marines and sailors were killed during the fighting for Tarawa.

Thousands more were wounded.

For an island measuring only a few square miles, the casualty figures stunned the American public.

Photographs showed bodies floating near the beaches and Marines lying dead along the shoreline.

Americans had already experienced major battles during World War II.

But Tarawa provided one of the first graphic looks at what the island war across the Pacific might require.

Some questioned whether such a tiny piece of land had been worth the cost.

Military planners focused on another question.

What had gone wrong?

The Marines Studied Their Own Disaster

Tarawa became a classroom.

Every major problem was examined.

The tides had been misunderstood.

There had not been enough tracked amphibious vehicles.

The preliminary bombardment had not destroyed many fortified positions.

Communications between troops, aircraft and ships had been inadequate.

Landing waves became disorganized.

Heavy weapons had difficulty reaching the beach.

Casualty evacuation was chaotic.

Instead of hiding those failures, the military studied them.

The lessons were incorporated into future operations.

More Amtracs

One lesson was obvious.

Future assaults needed more amphibious tractors.

The LVTs had demonstrated that they could cross reefs and obstacles that stopped conventional landing craft.

Later versions received additional armor and heavier weapons.

Armored amphibious vehicles equipped with cannons could provide direct fire while approaching the beach.

The amtrac became an essential part of Pacific amphibious warfare.

Tarawa had proven why.

Better Naval Gunfire

Tarawa also demonstrated that simply firing enormous numbers of shells at an island was not enough.

Bombardment needed to be accurate, sustained and coordinated with the landing force.

At later battles, naval gunfire became increasingly sophisticated.

Ships fired longer bombardments.

Spotters worked with troops ashore.

Fire could be directed against individual bunkers and defensive positions.

The relationship between naval gunfire, aircraft and Marine infantry became increasingly integrated.

By the time Marines assaulted places such as Iwo Jima and Okinawa, the supporting firepower available to landing forces was far more sophisticated than it had been at Tarawa.

Understanding the Beach Before Landing

Intelligence about beaches, reefs, tides and obstacles became increasingly important.

Underwater demolition teams—the predecessors of today's Navy SEALs—would conduct reconnaissance and destroy obstacles before future landings.

Hydrographic information became critical to amphibious planning.

Commanders needed to know not only what enemy forces waited ashore but exactly what Marines would encounter between the ships and the beach.

Tarawa had shown what happened when that information was wrong.

The Birth of Modern Amphibious Warfare

Tarawa did not invent amphibious warfare.

The Marine Corps had studied amphibious operations for decades before World War II.

But Tarawa demonstrated with brutal clarity how difficult a contested landing against modern defenses could be.

The lessons learned there influenced subsequent operations across the Pacific.

Kwajalein.

Saipan.

Tinian.

Guam.

Peleliu.

Iwo Jima.

Okinawa.

Each operation presented different challenges, and not every mistake disappeared.

But the amphibious force that continued across the Pacific was increasingly experienced, better equipped and better coordinated.

Much of that knowledge had been purchased on the beaches of Betio.

A Battlefield That Never Completely Gave Up Its Dead

For decades after the war, Marines killed at Tarawa remained missing.

The chaotic conditions of the battle resulted in temporary graves being created throughout Betio. Later attempts to recover and identify the dead were incomplete.

In the decades since, archaeological teams and recovery organizations have continued locating remains.

Marines lost in 1943 have been identified generations later and returned to their famil