by Daniel Wrinn
The fundamental choice by Marines on Betio was whether to stay put on the beach or try and crawl over the seawall to fight inland. Much of the day, the fire came across the coconut logs so intensely that a man could lift his hand and get it shot off. Late on D-Day, many Marines were too demoralized to advance. Major Ravoth Tompkins brought messages from General Hermle to Colonel Shoup. Tompkins arrived on Red Beach Two at the foot of the pier at dusk on D-Day. He was appalled at the sight of so many Marine stragglers. Tompkins wondered why the Japanese didn’t just use mortars on the first night. He later reported that Marines lying on the beach were so thick you couldn’t walk through them.
The conditions on Red Beach One were congested as well, but there was a difference. Major Crowe was everywhere, “as cool as icebox lettuce.” There weren’t any stragglers. Crowe fed small groups of Marines into the lines, reinforcing his precarious hold on the left flank. Captain Hoffman of the 3/8 Marines welcomed the integration of Crowe’s 2/8 Marines. Hoffman needed help as darkness fell. He recalled: “There we were, toes in the water, casualties everywhere, dead and wounded all around us. But finally, a few Marines started to inch forward, a yard here, a yard there.”
It was enough, Hoffman could see well enough to call in naval gunfire support. His men dug in for the night. To the west of Major Crowe’s lines, and inland from Colonel Shoup’s command post, was Company B of the 1/2. They had settled in for the expected counterattack. Scattered in the bloody landing at midday, Company B had men from 12 to 14 different units, including sailors, who swam ashore from sinking boats. These men were all well-armed and no longer stragglers.
Of the 5,000 Marines that stormed the beaches of Betio on D-Day, 1,500 of them were missing, dead, or wounded by nightfall. The survivors held only a quarter of a square mile of coral and sand. Colonel Shoup later described the location of his beachhead lines the night of D-Day as “a stock market graph.” The Marines went to ground in the best fighting positions they could secure, whether in inland shell holes or along the splintered seawall. Despite the defensive positions and scrambled units, the fire discipline of the Marines was superb. The troops shared a grim confidence. They’d already faced the worst in getting ashore. They were ready for any banzai charges in the dark.
General Smith on the Maryland was concerned. He recalled: “This was the crisis of the battle. Three-fourths of the island was in enemy hands. A concerted Japanese counterattack would’ve driven us into the sea.”
Smith reported up his chain of command to Admirals Spruance, Turner, and Nimitz that the issue still remained in doubt. Admiral Spruance’s staff began drafting plans for an emergency evacuation of the landing force.
Throughout the night of D-Day, the main struggle was Shoup and Hermle’s attempt to try and advise General Smith of the best place to land the reserves the following morning. General Smith was astonished to learn at 0200, that Colonel Hall was not ashore but still at the line of departure awaiting orders. Smith again ordered combat team eight to land on the eastern tip of the island at 0900 on D +1.
General Hermle finally caught a boat back to one of the destroyers. He relayed Shoup’s request to land reinforcements on Red Beach Two. General Smith modified Colonel Hall’s orders. Smith ordered Hermle back to the flagship, irked at his assistant for not getting ashore and taking command. In the end, General Hermle had done Smith a useful service by relaying the advice from Colonel Shoup. As much as the 8th Marines would bleed in the next morning’s assault, a landing on the island’s eastern end would have been a disaster. Reconnaissance after the battle discovered those beaches to be the most intensely mined on the entire island.
D +1 at Betio
The tactical situation on Betio was perilous for most of the second day. During the morning, the Marines paid in blood for every attempt to land reserves or advance the ragged beachheads. Tarawa’s beaches were gruesome and filled with the dead and dying. Colonel Shoup surveyed the beach at first light and was horrified. In his own words: “It was a dreadful sight, bodies drifted slowly in the water just off the beach. The stench of dead bodies covered the island like a cloud.”
The smell wafted out a bad omen to the line of departure for the 1/8 Marines getting ready to start their run into the beach. With an imperfect knowledge of the scattered forces and his faulty communications, Colonel Shoup ordered each landing team commander to attack. Colonel Jordan would take the south coast. Rudd and Crowe were to reduce the Japanese strongholds to their left and front. Major Ryan was to take all of Green Beach.
Colonel Shoup’s predawn request to General Smith relayed a specific landing of the 1/8 on Red Beach Two close to the pier. Unfortunately, this critical component of Shoup’s request did not survive the communications route to Smith. The commanding general ordered Major Lawrence C. Hays Jr. and Colonel Hall to land on Red Beach Two at 0615. Hays and Hall were oblivious of the situation ashore and assumed that the 1/8 would make a covered landing.
The Marines of the 1/8 had spent eighteen hours in the embarked Higgins boats, making endless circles through the night. The troops cheered when the boats finally made their turn toward the beach.
Things went wrong quickly. The tides failed to provide enough water for the boats to cross the reef. Hays’ men debarked over the obstacle and started the 500-yard trek to shore. Dangerously far to the right flank and within the zone of Japanese guns firing from the strong re-entrant point. They were in the worst place they could be. Japanese gunners began an unrelenting fire. Japanese snipers raked the Marines from the disabled LVTs they had infiltrated during the night. Multiple machine guns opened up on the waiting troops from every beached interisland schooner at the reef’s edge. Hays’ men fell at every turn.
The Marines tried to stop the slaughter. Colonel Shoup called for naval gunfire support. Two 75mm howitzers protected by a sand berm, erected from a Seabee bulldozer, fired at the blockhouses at the Red Beach One/Two border using delayed fuses in high explosive shells. A squadron of F4F Wildcats attacked the Japanese defenders with machine guns and bombs. While these measures helped, the Japanese had caught the Marines in a withering crossfire.
Correspondent Sherrod watched this bloodbath in horror. In an hour, Sherrod counted at least two hundred bodies that did not move on the dry flats. He recalled: “One boat blows up, then another. The survivors start to swim for shore, but machine-gun bullets dot the water all around them. Far worse today than yesterday.”
First Lieutenant Dean Ladd jumped into the water from his boat and was shot in the stomach. He recalled the troops’ strict orders to not stop for the wounded and expected to die on the spot. One of his riflemen, PFC Sullivan, ignored the orders and saved his lieutenant’s life. Ladd’s rifle platoon suffered twenty-four casualties during the ship to shore assault.
First Lieutenant Frank Plant, the air liaison officer, was with Major Hays in the command Higgins boat. After the call, the craft slammed into the reef, Major Hays shouted for the men to debark. As he jumped in the water, the troops that followed him were cut down by the murderous fire. Lieutenant Plant helped to pull the wounded back into the boat. He later wrote that the water all around him was colored purple with blood. As he hurriedly caught up with Hays, he was terrified at the sudden appearance of what he thought were Japanese fighters roaring toward him. But they were the Navy Wildcats screaming in to attack the Japanese. The pilots were excited but inconsistent. While one bomb hit the Japanese defenders, others missed by over 200 yards and contributed to the dying Marines’ chaos. An angry Colonel Shoup came on the radio: “Stop strafing. Bombs hitting our own troops.”
It was only sheer courage of the survivors that got them ashore under such a hellish crossfire. Major Hays reported to Shoup at 0800 with only half of his landing team. He had taken over three hundred casualties while other men were missing and scattered along the beach and pier. His unit had lost all of its heavy weapons, demolitions, and flamethrowers. Colonel Shoup directed Hays to attack west. Both men knew that small arms and cour
age would not overtake the Japanese in their fortified positions.
The combined forces of Majors Rudd in Crowe on Red Beach Three were full of fight and had sufficient weapons. Their left flank was flush against three large Japanese bunkers, each mutually supporting each other and unassailable. The stubby pier slightly to the east of the main pier turned into a bloody no-man’s-land as the two sides fought for possession. Learning from the mistakes of D-Day, Major Crowe ensured his one surviving Sherman was always accompanied by infantry.
Rudd and Crowe benefited from the intense air support and naval gunfire on their left flank. Crowe was later to write that he was unimpressed with the aviators’ effectiveness and accuracy, and that the aircraft never did that much good. But he was enthusiastic about the naval guns: “I had the three destroyers supporting me: the Ringgold, the Daschle, and the Anderson. Anything I asked for, I got. I authorized a direct fire from one of the destroyers in the lagoon at a command bunker only 50 yards ahead of us during the fight. They slammed the fire in there, and you could see arms and legs and everything just go up like that.”
Colonel Jordan managed to get some of his troops across the fire-swept airstrip inland from Red Beach Two all the way to the southern coast—making a significant penetration. Their toehold was precarious, and his Marines suffered heavy casualties. He recalled that he could not see the Japanese. Still, the fire came from every direction when Jordan lost contact with his lead elements. Colonel Shoup ordered him across the island to reestablish command. Jordan did so at a significant hazard to himself. By the time his reinforcements arrived, Jordan had only fifty men, who could be accounted for, from his landing team’s 2/2 rifle companies. The colonel organized and supplied these men to the best of his abilities. Then, at Shoup’s orders, he merged them with the reinforcements and stepped back into his original role as an observer.
Scout Sniper Platoon
The heroics of the 2nd Marines Scout Sniper Platoon had been spectacular from the start, when they led the assault on the pier, just before H-Hour. 1stLt. Hawkins was an example of having a cool disregard for danger in every tactical situation.
While he displayed superhuman bravery, it would not protect him in the turmoil. A Japanese shell had wounded him on D-Day, and he shook off any attempts to treat his injuries. At dawn on D +1, he led his men in a series of attacks on Japanese strong points. Hawkins crawled up to a pillbox, fired his weapon point-blank through the gun ports, and threw grenades inside to finish the job. He was shot in the chest but continued to attack and took out three more pillboxes personally. Just after that, a Japanese shell tore him apart.
The division mourned his death, and he was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously. Colonel Shoup recalled: “It’s not often that you can credit a first lieutenant with winning a battle, but Lieutenant Hawkins came as near to it as any man possibly could have.”
It was now up to Major Ryan and his makeshift battalion on the western side of Betio to make the most considerable contribution to winning the battle. Ryan’s fortunes were enhanced by three developments during the night.
The Japanese did not counterattack his thin lines.
Seabees repaired his medium tank, Cecilia.
The arrival of a naval gunfire spotter, Lieutenant Thomas Green, with a fully functional radio.
Ryan organized a coordinated attack against the Japanese pillboxes, gun emplacements, and rifle pits concentrated on the island’s southwestern corner. Slowed by communication failures, Ryan could talk to the fire support ships but not Shoup. It took hours for his runners to negotiate the fire gauntlet and return with answers from Shoup’s CP.
Ryan’s first message to Shoup revealed his attack plans but was delayed because Shoup called in an airstrike. After two more runners, the airstrike was canceled, and Ryan called in a naval gunfire strike on the southwest targets. Two of the destroyers in the lagoon responded accurately and promptly. Major Ryan launched a coordinated tank/infantry assault at 1120. In less than an hour, his makeshift force had seized all of Green Beach and was ready to move eastward toward the airfield and attack.
The communications were still awful. Major Ryan twice reported that the southern end of Green Beach was intensely mined. That message reached no higher headquarters. General Smith on the Maryland did not receive any direct word of Major Ryan’s successes. Smith was delighted when he learned he could land reinforcements on the covered beach and keep the unit integrity intact.
General Smith conferred with Colonel Holmes, commander of the 6th Marines, as to the best way of getting the fresh combat teams into the fight. Due to the heavy casualties taken by Hays’ battalion on Red Beach Two, Smith reassessed his landing on an unknown eastern end of the island. Major Ryan’s good news quickly solved this problem. Smith ordered Holmes to land one of his battalions by rubber raft on Green Beach and have the second landing team boated in and prepared to wade ashore in support.
General Smith received reports that the Japanese troops were retreating from the eastern end of Betio by wading across to the next islet: Bairiki. The Marines did not want to fight the same deadly enemy twice. Holmes ordered the 2/6 to land on Bairiki and “seal the back door.” The 1/6 was ordered to land on Green Beach by rubber boat. The 3/6 was held in reserve and prepared to land at any assigned spot, probably Green Beach. Smith ordered the light tanks of Company B to land on Green Beach, supporting the 6th Marines.
These tactical plans took much longer to execute than envisioned. The 1/6 was waiting and ready to debark when their ship Feland was ordered underway because of a submarine threat. It would be hours before the Feland could return close enough to Betio and launch the rubber boats and the Higgins tow craft. These light tanks were now among the few critical items not loaded into the transports because they were in the very bottom of the cargo holds. During the first thirty-five hours of the landing, poor loading practices had further scrambled all supplies and equipment into intervening decks. It would take hours to clear the tanks and get them loaded on board.
Frustrated by the long delays, Shoup sent a message at 1345, asking for flamethrowers. He desperately wanted the 1/6 ashore to begin their attack. Colonel Shoup, and his small staff were continually frustrated by logistical support problems. His team organized men to strip the dead of first-aid pouches, canteens, and ammunition. He also organized a shore party to create a false beachhead at the end of the pier.
The primary control officer onboard the minesweeper, Pursuit, Captain McGovern, eventually brought order by taking strict control of all unloading supplies. He used the surviving LVTs to keep the shuttle of casualties moving seaward and bring all critical items from the pier head to the beach.
This task was completed by men who hadn’t slept in days and worked under constant enemy fire.
Tide of Battle
The handling of casualties was the most pressing logistical problem on D +1. The 2nd Marine Division was served heroically by its Navy corpsmen and doctors. Over ninety of these medical specialists were casualties in the onshore fighting.
Lieutenant Herman Brukhardt established an emergency room in a captured Japanese bunker. Some of the former occupants came to life, firing their rifles more than once. But, in over thirty-six hours and under brutal conditions, Lieutenant Brukhardt treated 126 wounded men, only losing four.
The casualties were at first evacuated to the far off troopships. Because a long journey was so dangerous and wasteful of the few available LVTs or Higgins boats, the Marines began to deliver casualties to the destroyer Ringgold in the lagoon. Even though her sickbay had been destroyed by a 5-inch Japanese shell on D-Day, the destroyer still actively fired in support missions and accepted dozens of casualties.
Admiral Hill dispatched the troopship, Doyen, into the lagoon early on D +1 to be used as a primary critical receiving ship. Lieutenant Commander Oliver led a surgical team of five men with recent combat experience from the Aleutian Islands. In three days, Oliver’s team treated over 550 wounded Marines. In his own wo
rds: “We’d run out of sodium pentathol and had to use ether. If a bomb would’ve hit us, Doyen would have blown off the face of the planet.”
The Navy chaplains were also hard at work wherever the Marines were fighting onshore. They had heartbreaking work: administering last rites to the dying, consoling the wounded, and praying for the souls of the dead before the bulldozer came to cover the bodies from the unforgiving tropical sun.
The tide of battle now shifted toward the Americans by the middle of the afternoon on D +1. While the fighting was still intense, and Japanese fire deadly, the surviving Marines were now moving. No longer gridlocked in dangerous toeholds, Colonel Rixey’s howitzers made a new definition of close-in fire support. Supplies of fresh water and ammunition were improved. Morale was rising. The troops knew the 6th Marines would come in soon. Colonel Rixey later wrote: “I thought up until 1300 today it was touch and go, after that I knew we would win.”
Despair spread among the Japanese defenders. While they had shot down Marines at every turn they could—another would appear in his place: rifle blazing, well supported by naval and artillery guns. The great Japanese Yogaki Plan was a failure. Only a few enemy aircraft would attack the island every night. American transports were never seriously threatened, and the Japanese fleet never joined the battle. Japanese troops began to commit suicide rather than risk being captured.