The battle of Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands was fought on Nov. 20–23 1943.

18,000 Marines landed against 4836 Japanese.

1009 Marines were killed, 2101 wounded and 4690 Japanese were killed. The Japanese nearly fought to the last man.

Betio, an Island of Tarawa Atoll where the Marines landed was only two miles long and 800 yards wide.

The Japanese were well dug in and the neap tide which made the ocean shallow on the reefs stopped a lot of the landing craft from getting closer to shore causing Marines to wade quite a ways in deep water.

General Holland M Smith, commander of the V Amphibious Force who had toured the beaches after the battle, likened the losses to Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg. Nimitz himself was inundated with angry letters from families of men killed.

The losses by the United States at Tarawa resulted from several contributing factors, among which were the miscalculation of the tide and the height of the obstructing coral reefs, the operational shortcomings of the landing craft available, the inability of the naval bombardment to weaken the defenses of a well entrenched enemy, and the difficulties of coordinating and communicating between the different forces involved.

After the battle, correspondent Robert Sherrod, who wrote a book on Tarawa, was walking near Red Beach 1 where 250 Marines were killed. He came across amtrack #15 with the name Worried Mind, inside were six dead Marines and outside of it three more. Also near were two more bodies.


Hello everyone, I hope you find something useful welcome to the channel,your way to Success the channel is a project to help people learn about education Motivational Quotes To Inspire other's Documentary Content created channel ( Sajjad Ahmed ) in the aim to develop the way we think about ourselves, other people and the world around us.

We have other social media and , but the purpose of this YouTube channel, alongside our growing community, Our goal is to share high quality as clearly as possible, and help people learn some video education Motivational Quotes
help with of mind, happiness, constructive outlook on life
The content we provide is for educational Motivational Quotes and inspirational purposes.

свернуть