Battle of Tarawa

He fought at Guadalcanal.

He was wounded at the Battle of Tarawa, one of the bloodiest engagements in Marine Corps history.

He was honorably discharged in 1945.

Like Medgar Evers, Byron De La Beckwith was a veteran who had fought for his country.

Veterans welcome the vine.

The helmet is from my grandfather, but his twin brother was fallen in the Battle of Tarawa in World War II.

The atmosphere, the health, everything is just great.

The food is great.

Meanwhile, to the east, Admiral Chester Nimitz and the US fleet are preparing to attack Japan's empire on a second front.

Operation Galvanic aims to drive the Japanese off the Gilbert and Marshall Islands.

These outposts provide vital military support to Japan's supply routes in the Central Pacific.

The campaign's first target? The island of Tarawa.

So as you can imagine, the proximity to people, um, provides a very complex and unique situation to work with.

Lieutenant Colonel Wright says the origins of these munitions are the Battle of Tarawa between US and Imperial Japanese forces as part of the Pacific campaign.

He says the approximately 300 munitions they disposed of vary from grenades to large naval bombs in different states of condition.

Some of these present, like, a 10-kilogram, um, explosive charge in them, and that can cause a lot of damage.

The Army's 165th Regimental Combat Team of the 27th Infantry Division would tackle Macon.

By coincidence, each of the three landing force commanders in Operation Galvanic was a major general named Smith.

The senior of these was a Marine, Holland M. Holland Mad Smith, commanding 5 Amphibious Corps.

Julian C. Smith commanded the 2nd Marine Division.

Shoup took Holland's warning seriously and made sure the troops knew in advance that there was a 50-50 chance of having to wade ashore.

In the face of the daunting Japanese defenses and the physical constraints of the island, Shoup proposed a landing plan which included a sustained preliminary bombardment, advanced seizure of neighboring Bairiki Island as an artillery fire base, and a decoy landing.

General Smith took this proposal to the planning conference in Pearl Harbor with the principal officers involved in Operation Galvanic, Admirals Nimitz, Spruance, Turner, and Hill, and Major General Holland Smith.

The Marines were stunned to hear the restrictions imposed on their assault by Sink Pack.

By the beginning of 1944, United States Marine Forces had already made a dramatic start on the conquest of areas overrun by the Japanese early in World War II.

Successful American assaults in the southwest Pacific, beginning with Guadalcanal and the Solomon Islands in August 1942, and the Central Pacific at Tarwa and the Gilbert Islands in November 1943, were crucial campaigns to mark the turn of the Japanese flood tide of conquest.

the time had now come to take one more decisive step assault of the islands held by japan before nineteen forty one these strategic islands mandated to the japanese by the league of nations after world war i were a source of mystery and speculation outsiders were barred illegal fortifications were presumed yet any central pacific drive toward japan's inner defense ring had to confront these unknowns The obvious target to begin with was the Marshall Islands.

As early as 1921, a Marine planning officer had pinpointed their geographic significance.

Besides the vast armada of naval planes, ships, and landing craft, there were Navy chaplains and corpsmen, two specialties which are always Navy.

in addition to the marine air artillery and engineer units there were the tanks heavy weapons mortar transport quartermaster signals and headquarters supporting units an amphibious operation to be successful must be a finely tuned highly trained juggernaut that depends on all its parts working smoothly together and this was clearly demonstrated in the marshals The conquest of Roynamur had been a relatively easy operation when compared to some of the other Marine campaigns in the Pacific.

At Tarwa, for example, more than 3,300 men had been killed or wounded in 76 hours.

The 4th Division's victory came at a cost of 313 Marines and corpsmen killed and 502 wounded.

It's, uh, an island called Tarawa.

It's part of a chain called Kiribati, which, uh, is most well-known, I think, for the Battle of Tarawa, a World War II battle where the Japanese were encamped on this island and the Americans pounded them, uh, a marine force for over a week this battle went on.

And the population was decimated, but it had sat around a couple of thousand people for most of the time, the people that lived on this coral atoll.

It's forty kilometers long, and it's about two hundred meters wide.