by Ian W. Toll
In preparation for GALVANIC, Japanese bases throughout the region had come under a regular schedule of heavy aerial bombardment. American carrier bombers had visited Tarawa and Makin since mid-September, as well as the secondary airfields at Apamama and Nauru. In preparation for the invasion, American forces had developed new airfields at several islands south of the Gilberts—in the Ellice group (Funafuti, Nanomea, Nukufetau) and at Baker Island. All were within air-striking range of the Gilberts. B-24 Liberators of the Seventh Air Force flew a daily “milk run” between fields at Canton Island and Funafuti and enemy airfields throughout the central Pacific. Pownall’s carriers would eventually fly more than 2,200 sorties, including bombing raids, fighter sweeps, photographic reconnaissance flights, and close support of the amphibious landings.
GIVEN THE GREAT SIZE OF THE FLEET advancing on the Gilberts, it seemed likely that Japanese air patrols or submarines would discover it and raise an alarm. But on the night of November 19, as the American fleet crept over the eastern horizon and lookouts first glimpsed Tarawa’s moonlit palm groves, they detected no sign of life. Could the enemy be entirely ignorant of their presence? At 10:45 p.m., a searchlight cut across the sky, apparently attempting to signal friendly aircraft. The beam did not sweep across the sea horizon. If it had, it probably would have revealed the invasion fleet. To their surprise and gratification, the Americans had evidently achieved tactical surprise.
All remained serene as the warships and transports maneuvered into their assigned stations south and west of the atoll. The marines awakened shortly after 3:00 a.m. and bolted down their traditional Dog-Day breakfast of steak and eggs. (On one of the troop transports, a corpsman callously remarked that the hearty meal would make a ghastly mess of the abdominal wounds he expected to treat later in the day.) The men gathered up their gear and prepared to descend into landing boats. Having been assured that the big guns of the battleships and cruisers would lay waste to Betio prior to the invasion, they awaited the spectacle with keen interest.
The island remained quiet until 4:41 a.m., when a star shell burst above the airfield, backlighting palm trees in searing red light. Several minutes later, an 8-inch battery on the southwest point of the island opened fire on the battleship Maryland. The Maryland’s 16-inch guns replied immediately, and with five salvos silenced the opposing gun. But the Japanese had three more 8-inch Vickers guns emplaced on different parts of Betio, and towers of whitewater soon erupted near and around the transport group. The crowded troopships lost no time in getting underway and heading west, out of range.
The artillery duel continued for an hour. The Maryland and Colorado, about two miles offshore, raked the entire length of the island with their massive 16-inch high-fragmentation shells. Admiral Hill took the Maryland close inshore in hopes of drawing fire that would unmask the location of the larger batteries. The Indianapolis, Spruance’s flagship, ran down the eastern and southern coasts of the atoll, firing on lookout towers, gun emplacements, and barges moored in the lagoon. The big shore guns repeatedly fell silent for short periods, only to begin firing anew some minutes later.14 Julian Smith speculated that these pauses occurred when gun crews were killed or wounded in the naval barrage and were subsequently replaced by new personnel. It was relatively easy to disable the big guns, he said, because the 16-inch shells could be aimed right into the open emplacements.15 Keeping them out of action proved more difficult, and some were still firing on the American fleet on the morning of D-Day plus one.
Two minesweepers led the way into Tarawa lagoon. They swept the entrance channel of mines (finding none) and laid down markers for the destroyers and transports. Two destroyers, Ringgold and Dashiell, followed close behind and engaged the smaller shore batteries. Ringgold was struck, probably by a 5-inch shell. The damage was contained.
From the decks of the American ships, the bombardment of Betio presented a dazzling spectacle. Orange-red muzzle flashes lit up the sea in a quarter circle to the south and west of the island. The shells whistled like freight trains and drew incandescent arcs across the night sky. The entire length of Betio blazed like a funeral pyre. Sheets of flame ascended hundreds of feet into the air. Robert Sherrod, a Time magazine correspondent, watched from the deck of one of the transports. “The sky at times was brighter than noontime on the equator,” he wrote. “The arching, glowing cinders that were high-explosive shells sailed through the air as though buckshot were being fired out of many shotguns from all sides of the island.”16 The marines cheered wildly at each successive blast. Even William Rogal, a hard-boiled Guadalcanal veteran who knew from personal experience that sheltered troops could withstand such punishment, regarded the display as “awesome.”17
A few minutes after six, with dawn breaking in the east, the naval barrage lifted abruptly and the first wave of carrier planes droned in from the south. For the next twenty minutes, more than a hundred TBFs, SBDs, and SB2C bombers pounded the island with high-explosive and incendiary bombs. The Japanese antiaircraft batteries remained largely silent, suggesting that their crews had been killed or driven into bomb shelters. A long procession of Hellcats flew low over the lagoon side of the island and strafed the beach defenses. Tremendous columns of smoke coiled up from the fires and carried away to the east. The rising light revealed that the bombing and bombardment had torn the tops off most of the island’s coconut palms, leaving a landscape of naked, blackened, blasted stumps. Sherrod was encouraged. “Surely, we all thought, no mortal men could live through such destroying power. Surely, I thought, if there were actually any Japs left on the island (which I doubted strongly), they would all be dead by now.”18 Watching the island through field glasses from the bridge of the Indianapolis, Carl Moore thought that “it seemed that no living soul could be on the island. . . . [I]t looked like the whole affair would be a walkover.”19
Appearances were deceiving. The island’s redoubtable defenses were manned by 2,600 highly trained veterans of the Imperial Navy’s Special Naval Landing Force (Kaigun Tokubetsu Rikusentai), sometimes called “Japanese marines.” These elite troops had been drawn from two units ranked among the navy’s best—the Third Special Base Defense Force (formerly the Sixth Yokosuka Special Naval Landing Force) and the Seventh Sasebo Special Naval Landing Force. Man for man, they were among the finest in the Japanese armed forces. They were picked men, physically larger than the average Japanese; many were taller than six feet. There were, in addition, another 2,200 labor troops, mostly Koreans. The commanding officer, Rear Admiral Keiji Shibasaki, had overseen construction of fortifications on an unprecedented scale. He had reportedly told his troops that “a million men cannot take Tarawa in a hundred years.”20
During the worst of the morning’s naval and air bombardment, the defenders remained concealed in subterranean bunkers and bomb shelters. Constructed of coconut logs and reinforced concrete, buried under tons of sand, these structures were impervious even to direct hits overhead by large naval shells, and provided sufficient capacity to protect nearly the entire garrison at once. These large underground shelters were linked by an elaborate network of trenches and tunnels, allowing the Japanese to move rapidly and under cover into firing positions. When Japanese lookouts spotted the minesweepers and destroyers entering Tarawa lagoon, Shibasaki began transferring men from the southern (ocean-facing) shore to the northern (lagoon-facing) positions. He had resolved to meet any attack on the beaches, whether north or south. He had little choice in the matter, as the airfield occupied almost all of the territory in the middle of the island. Strong redoubts stood at fixed intervals along the beach, with enfilading fields of fire on either side. Between them were infantry trenches, machine-gun nests, barbed wire, minefields, and gun emplacements. Some forty artillery pieces of varying calibers defended the island. Should the Americans gain a foothold, they would be limited initially to a narrow strip of beach between the surf and the log seawall. In that case, Shibasaki would rally his forces to a punishing counterattack. He had fourteen light tanks in reser
ve for that purpose.
The Imperial General Headquarters had earlier promulgated a “Plan Z” that envisioned sending most of the Combined Fleet east to intercept any Allied attack on the Gilbert-Marshalls area. Relentless pressure in the Solomons and New Guinea had forced Admiral Koga to abandon those preparations. There would be no pitched naval battle in the central Pacific. The Japanese response to GALVANIC would be limited to submarine patrols and airstrikes launched from bases in the Marshalls. Betio had been strongly armed and generously supplied with ammunition and other necessities, but there would be no rescue. Shibasaki and his garrison were cut off and alone, and they knew it.
“H-HOUR,” THE LANDING OF THE FIRST WAVE, had been scheduled for 8:00 a.m. But a combination of relatively minor problems prompted Admiral Hill to order a one-hour postponement. The transports, forced to retreat from the enemy’s artillery fire, required time to maneuver back into their designated positions off the lagoon’s entrance channel. Once there, they labored to maintain their stations against a stronger-than-expected southerly current. To aggravate matters, Hill’s radio communications were in a sorry state. The blast force of the Maryland’s big guns had played havoc with his communication center, which was located on an exposed wing of the flag bridge. With the flagship’s first predawn salvo, the electrical circuits had shorted out and radio communications were lost. Throughout most of the ensuing morning, Hill’s signalmen were forced to send orders by blinker light. Delays and disorder inevitably followed.
Most of the marines scheduled to land in the first wave had been “boated” (transferred into the Higgins boats and LVTs) before dawn, and had passed several tense and uncomfortable hours in the small, cramped, sea-tossed craft. Sea spray leapt over the bows and soaked the men and their weapons. Miserably seasick men vomited into buckets. Japanese 8-inch shells occasionally landed nearby and sent cascades of seawater down on their heads. The boats were first ordered to pull back, then summoned to return. Hours passed; uncertainty reigned. “We floated all night going up and down those darn waves,” Lieutenant Plant recalled. “I tried to snatch a little sleep using the Chaplain’s shoulder for a pillow.”21
When the first wave of boats left the line of departure at 9:00 a.m., they were promptly taken under fire by well-hidden guns emplaced on Betio’s lagoon shore. At about half a mile from the beach, the boats began running hard aground on shallow coral heads. Most of the amtracs, having been designed to cope with exactly this contingency, managed to cross the reefs without trouble. Their treads dug into the coral, their engines raced, their bows tilted up toward the sky, and they trundled stolidly over the obstruction. The marines were bounced from their benches and had to seize the handholds and one another to avoid sprawling to the deck. Where there was enough depth on the inshore side of the reef, the amtracs slid back into the sea and began behaving like boats again.
The volume and intensity of fire grew as the boats motored in toward the landing beaches. Shibasaki’s defenses included 75mm field artillery pieces and 37mm antitank guns, both positioned to fire on the most likely lanes of approach. Neither the amtracs nor the Higgins boats carried enough armor to stop the shells. A man in William Rogal’s boat peered over the bow to look ahead, but his timing was very bad. A 37mm shell struck the bow, Rogal recalled, and “the force of the explosion threw his body to the rear of the amtrac, showering everyone on the port side with blood and brains.”22 Lieutenant Lillibridge’s boat came under heavy fire, and shells pierced the starboard and port sides simultaneously. The men threw themselves down flat on the bottom.23 Light mortars burst around and over the craft, including one that exploded directly overhead and inflicted shrapnel wounds on several marines.
Most of the first-wave boats headed toward Beach Red 1, in a cove tucked between the pier and the northwestern point of the island. Because of the indented shoreline, the approach lanes to Beach Red 1 came under a concentrated crossfire by weapons of many different types and calibers. Within about 150 yards’ range of the beach, machine gunners and riflemen in pits and pillboxes opened up and peppered the sides of the amtracs. The captains of the leading boats instinctively veered away from the lethal hailstorm—either right, toward Beach Green on the western end of the island, or left, toward Beach Red 2 and the long pier. Many boats put ashore near the point separating Beach Red 1 from Beach Green, which had been designated only as a contingency landing zone but would prove important on the second day of the battle.
As Rogal’s amtrac headed toward Beach Red 2, mortars burst overhead and showered his platoon with shrapnel. When the boat grounded on the sand, Rogal shouted, “Let’s go!” and went over the side, the surviving men close behind him. Above the seawall to the left, he saw a machine-gun emplacement—one of the major “strong points” on the lagoon beach that would kill about 300 marines that day.
The amtracs drove directly onto the beaches and lowered their ramps. Most first-wave units made it to the seawall, which shielded them against a direct line of fire, but found that they could go no farther without attracting heavy fire from enemy positions immediately inland. In those early stages, the few brave souls who went over the top were either shot dead or wounded and forced back to the beach. Small, isolated units crouched against the wall, kept their heads down, and waited for tanks, air support, and reinforcements.
The volume of Japanese mortar, artillery, and automatic-weapons fire seemed to swell as the morning progressed. The first assault wave had come in amtracs, but a greater proportion of the following waves came in Higgins boats, which could not traverse the reefs. A boat carrying Frank Plant grounded hard on the reef and flung the men forward against the bow. The platoon leader shouted, “Men, debark!” The ramp went down with a clatter and the marines lined up to step into the sea. Several men were shot immediately, and the crew pulled them back into the boat to be evacuated. Plant had been near the stern, and was one of the last in his boat to reach the ramp: “By the time we reached the front of the boat, the water all around was colored purple with blood.”24 Their boots could touch bottom, but the water came up to their shoulders. Machine-gun and rifle fire mottled the sea around them. Mortars sent up towers of spray. Hellcats flew strafing runs less than 100 feet overhead, and for a terrible moment Plant thought there must have been some mistake, because the planes seemed to be aiming directly at him. Then he realized that they were strafing Japanese positions just inland of the beach.
The first combat correspondents had been scheduled to go in with the fifth wave, but by ten that morning it was no longer accurate to describe the action as a sequence of organized “waves.” There was one continuous wave, constant movements of Higgins boats headed in both directions between the line of departure and Beaches Red 1 and 2. As grounded boats piled up on the reefs, a diminishing number of functional amtracs attempted to ferry troops to the beaches. Most marines in those later waves were forced to wade into the face of concentrated enemy fire. Bob Sherrod, accompanying a platoon, was dropped into neck-deep water about 700 yards from the beach. Heavy fire continued while the men in his group approached the shore. As they waded into the shallows, they were forced to expose more of their bodies to the murderous fire. In the space of five minutes he saw six marines cut down. “The remarkable thing,” observed Sherrod, “was that no man turned back, though each became a larger target as he trudged slowly through the shallow water. It was a ghastly, yet splendid picture, and no man who ever saw it will ever forget.” The journalist was surprised to reach the base of the pier without being hit—rounds had seemed to strike immediately to his left and right, and “I could have sworn that I could have reached out and touched a hundred bullets.”25 Gradually, enough marines managed to get ashore to consolidate a fragile toehold between the seawall and the surf.
At 11:00 a.m., Colonel David M. Shoup staggered ashore at the same spot. He had been hit by shrapnel in both legs, and a bullet had grazed his neck, but the wounds seemed manageable and he resolved to carry on. Shoup, a former 2nd Division operations
and training officer who had taken an important part in planning GALVANIC, had no prior experience with combat. He had been given command of the 2nd Marines after the transports had sailed from Wellington, when the regiment’s previous commander had succumbed to nervous exhaustion.
As the senior American officer on Betio, Shoup now took command of all troops ashore. He set up his first command post directly under the pier, with the sea awash around his knees. A radio strapped to a sergeant’s back provided a tenuous communications link to other units on the beach. The news was not good. Nowhere had the marines penetrated beyond the seawall. Shoup rallied his men to clean out the pier, and then moved his command post up the beach to a protected spot snug up against the seaward side of a Japanese blockhouse. Enemy soldiers were directly on the other side of a double-tiered coconut log wall. “There were still Japanese inside,” the colonel later said, “but to get them out my men would have to blow me up along with them. So we posted sentries at all the openings to keep them inside.”26 One of Shoup’s leg wounds was bleeding freely, and was bandaged by a corpsman.