Tarawa

by Robert Sherrod

  Within five minutes one of our destroyers was racing to the wreckage, where it put a boat over. The destroyer stayed at the scene forty minutes. A diver went under the plane, cutting his arm severely on a piece of jagged aluminum. But nothing was ever seen again of Chapman. The crash into the gunwales had evidently knocked him unconscious and he undoubtedly was drowned.

  The other accident was even more unusual. A young sailor named Kenneth Munson unaccountably had chosen to sleep under the loading platform of a main turret gun. When, in the darkness of early morning, the big gun was elevated, the platform crushed the seaman under the weight of its eighty tons. It was a wonder that any spark of life remained in him, but he lived and was conscious much of the fifteen hours remaining to him. I saw him in the sick bay an hour before he died, when medical corpsmen were feeding him oxygen to keep him alive. He cracked a joke, and there was a flicker of a sad smile on the faces of the three men about him.

  Above all other things, Seaman Munson told the chaplain, he wanted to live. But he never had a chance. The doctor’s report read: crushed pelvis, urethra ruptured, one lung punctured, belly wall punctured and intestines and liver forced up through the hole into the lung, skull fractured, brain probably full of hemorrhages. He was not in pain; the great physical shock of his mangling had mercifully put young Munson beyond pain.

  Before he died the seaman, who had allowed himself to be listed on the ship’s roll as a Protestant, revealed that he had been baptized and reared a Catholic. Through the Catholic chaplain, who told him that his time to die had come, the seaman made his peace with his God. He died at eight o’clock that night.

  Quite a few days would elapse before the Blisterbutt reached port, so it was not feasible to hold the body for burial on land. Neither was there any reason for night burial—sometimes when casualties are heavy burial-at-sea ceremonies are held quietly and with brief prayers at night, lest the morale of the crew be disrupted by the sight of many shipmates going over the side for the last time. Preparations were made to bury the sailor at sea next morning at ten o’clock.

  The body was clothed in the uniform of the day: blue dungarees. It was weighted by two five-inch shells (approximately one hundred pounds). It was sewed in canvas by the sail-maker, but the ancient custom of taking the last stitch through the nose of the deceased was omitted. Nor were coins placed in his mouth, as custom once dictated when sailors believed it was necessary to pay the boatman Charon for the body’s passage across the river Styx.

  The ceremony was brief, since we were sailing through submarine-infested waters, but it was impressive. Some time before ten o’clock on the day of the funeral two wooden carpenter’s horses were placed on the starboard side of the quarterdeck. A detachment of armed Marines, distinguished from the sailors in blue by their khaki uniforms, stood at attention next to the horses. The ship’s band stood aft of the Marines, their backs to the sea. Still further aft, about seventy-five officers faced forward. The most spectacular sight was the thousand or more dungaree-clad sailors who swarmed over the turret armor and out to the very ends of the big guns of the battleship, over the air-defense stations, the anti-aircraft turrets and guns, and the superstructure. It is doubtful if a dozen men on board had ever before seen a burial at sea. Everyone was there except those whose duty at that moment was to keep the ship running and the guns manned.

  At 0940 the chaplain went below to the sick bay to bless the body, in the presence of the pallbearers, who were selected from the gunnery division of young Munson, who would never fire his big gun at Tarawa. The blessing was the 129th Psalm, which begins:

  Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord; Lord, hear my voice.

  and ends:

  Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord.

  And let perpetual light shine upon him.

  The pallbearers carried the body aft, the stocky young chaplain, Lieutenant Charles Covert, walking beside it, praying, “Come to his assistance, ye Saints of God! Meet him, ye Angels of the Lord. Receive his soul, and present it to the Most High. May Christ who called thee, receive thee; and may the Angels lead thee into the bosom of Abraham. Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord!, and let perpetual light shine upon him.”

  When the pallbearers reached portside aft they had considerable difficulty lifting the body up the narrow ladder through the hatch, up to the quarterdeck. The band was softly playing Nearer, My God, to Thee. The body, covered by a large flag of the United States, was carried by the pallbearers across the quarterdeck and placed on the two wooden horses.

  Now the service proper began. The hundreds of grave-faced men uncovered as Chaplain Covert, wearing a black cassock and white-lace surplice and black stole over his khaki officer’s uniform, stood beside the body and prayed, almost inaudibly, for perhaps ten minutes, “Enter not into judgment with Thy servant, O Lord; for in Thy sight shall no man be justified, unless through Thee he find pardon for all his sins... Lord, have mercy on us. … Christ, have mercy on us. … Lord, have mercy on us.”

  The chaplain included in his prayers Lieutenant Chapman, an Episcopalian. Thus, instead of saying “deliver him,” Father Covert prayed, “From the gates of Hell, deliver them, O Lord. May they rest in peace.” And: “O God! To Whom it belongeth to show mercy and to spare, we humbly beseech Thee for the souls of Thy servants, whom Thou hast called out of this world, that Thou deliver them not into the hands of the enemy, not forget them forever; but command that they be received by Thy holy Angels. … ”

  Though the prayers in themselves followed the Catholic ritual almost as closely as if the funeral were being held on land, the chaplain interpolated some reference to the vast ocean whose bosom would receive the young sailor’s body. “O God, through whose mercy the souls of the faithful find rest, be pleased to bless this watery grave. Send Thy Holy Angel to keep it; and loose from the bonds of sin the souls of all whose bodies lie beneath the waters of this sea, that they may ever rejoice in Thee with Thy saints....”

  At the end of the prayers the pallbearers lifted the flag, holding it a few inches above the canvas shroud which enveloped the sailor’s body. The outboard carpenter’s horse was removed and, tenderly, the pallbearers lowered the sailor’s feet.

  The Marine Guard, which had already about-faced toward the sea, snapped smartly to “Present Arms!” More than a thousand officers and men brought their right hands to their foreheads in a farewell salute as the American sailor moved off the stretcher from underneath the flag and silently disappeared into the sparkling waters of the blue Pacific. Father Covert made the sign of the Cross, and said, “May the blessing of Almighty God, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost descend upon you and remain forever. Amen.” The Marines brought their rifles to “Order Arms!”

  The Marine captain barked, “Ready! Aim! Fire!” The first volley from the Marines’ Garand rifles cracked over the waters. Then a second and a third. The bugler sweetly sounded Taps, which is as stirring a piece of music as ever was written.

  The band played Onward, Christian Soldiers. The officers and men stepped from the deck into the bowels of the ship, back to the business of war. That afternoon the padre said a mass for young Munson. The following Sunday there was a memorial service for Lieutenant Chapman.

  Aboard the Blisterbutt there were, as passengers, four “foreigners”—what a strange word for such men!—who were to play an important part in the Tarawa invasion. All were British subjects, shipmasters who had for many years sailed the waters around the Gilbert Islands. Now their duty would be to navigate those waters for the invasion, to board the leading ships and take our force into the virtually uncharted waters. Having only halfway dependable, hundred-year-old guidebooks, we had to place the largest force the Pacific had seen in the hands of mariners who relied upon their memories. Fortunately, those mariners and memories were good.

  Two of the “foreigners,” Lieutenants Page and Webster, were transferred—via breeches buoy—to destroyers early in the voyage, and I never got to know them well. But I list
ened long and fascinated to grizzled, old Karl Tschaun and bright-eyed, ruddy James Forbes.

  Karl Tschaun was born in Latvia, then a part of Russia. At nineteen he went to England and two years later, at twenty-one, to Australia. From 1910 until the mid-1930’s he had one job: a sailor in the service of the great South Seas trading firm, Burns Philp & Co. His last command had been a twin-engined, three masted barkentine.

  James Forbes was a Scotsman who became a New Zealander, For several years before the war he had commanded the British Government vessel, the Nimanoa, which cruised regularly among the Gilbert Islands, bringing government supplies and mail, carrying officials from one island to another.

  Of the Gilbert Islands I knew only that they lay across the equator, extending some four hundred miles from southeast to northwest, and that we were about to attack Tarawa and Makin, where the Japs had their only sizable concentrations. Messrs. Tschaun and Forbes set out to teach me something about the Gilberts:

  There are sixteen islands in the Gilbert group, from Arorae in the southeast to Little Makin—not to be confused with its more important neighbor, Makin or Butaritari—in the north west. The British colonial administration for the Gilbert and Ellice Islands was, before the Japanese invasion early in 1942, on Ocean Island, which is not a part of either group but sits off to the west by itself Most important of the Gilbert Islands was Tarawa—accented on the first syllable, Tar—which was the islands’ port of entry and the residence of the senior administrative officer and the senior medical officer. About one-fourth of the Gilberts’ one hundred whites and forty Asiatics had lived on Tarawa, about 3,000 of the 27,000 Micronesian natives.

  The Tarawa atoll is made up of twenty-five small islands and the coral reef passageway between them is dry at low tide, so that it is possible to walk from one to another. These twenty-five islands form a reversed L, eighteen miles north to south and twelve miles across the base east to west. An underwater coral reef, characteristic of all atolls, completes the triangle and encloses a large lagoon which is navigable by vessels of any size.

  Most important of the twenty-five islands of Tarawa was Betio—called Bititu on some maps—at the southwest corner of the atoll. There the British officials maintained their headquarters. Burns Philp & Co, had a warehouse there and maintained a commercial radio station. On the maps Betio has the shape of a bird lying on its back, tail tapering off to the east. This appearance is heightened by the pier which juts out like a leg five hundred yards from the bird’s belly. Betio is only two and one-quarter miles long, and at its widest point is only half a mile wide. The total area of the island is something less than one square mile. Betio was our target. Plainly, we were unlikely to find much of our target undefended.

  I asked Karl Tschaun about the natives.

  “They are fine people,” he said, “very intelligent, husky—you wouldn’t think coconuts and fish would produce such healthy specimens—and very kindly. They are—or were—a happy people, who sang a lot. Had very good voices. They are brown-skinned people, Micronesians. Not as light as Polynesians, not as dark as Melanesians.

  “You know,” the old ship’s captain continued, “these people got along very well. They liked the British rule. Each village had its own kaubure [pronounced cow-berry] or council. And a native magistrate administered justice, except in capital crimes, where the British courts took over. The natives had only one crop, copra from the coconuts, and I guess they produced maybe four thousand tons a year. It brought only four or five pounds for the ton, so it’s obvious that nobody was getting rich off the Gilberts.

  “I’m afraid we are going to kill a lot of the natives when we bomb and shell the place. Maybe we already have killed some in the bombing raids, I’m just hoping the Japs moved the natives off the islands where they had military installations. And I’m afraid of what the Japs might have done to the natives. Take the Marshall Islands—what a crying shame it was to hand those people over to the Japs after the last war! The Marshall natives—and I knew them well until the Japs took over the islands and shut the rest of the world off from them—were like pups that used to be happy until they were beaten into frightened, trembling dogs. The Japs made them bow down every time they met a Jap.

  “The Marshallese could not stand humiliation. When the Japs flogged a native he died of shame. The doctors actually could not determine the cause of death—there was no apparent physical reason for it. And every time a native died off the Japs imported a Jap to take his place. I understand the population of the Marshalls has decreased steadily since the Japs moved in on them. The Marshalls have always been so many poor, small islands compared to the Gilberts, anyway.”

  Said Captain Forbes, “The Gilbertese were proud too. Their dignity always had to be respected. The worst thing you could do to a Gilbertese was to ridicule him before other natives. You could clout him if he was wrong about something, and he’d laugh. But to treat him unjustly insulted his dignity and he was never the same again.

  “I’ll tell you something else about the Gilbertese that might give you an idea,” said Forbes. “They placed a high price on virtue. The penalty for adultery used to be death. The two principals were placed in a canoe without oars, food, or water, and set adrift on the eastward side of the island, with no hope of ever reaching land. The British discouraged such severity after they came.

  “The world doesn’t know much about these Gilbert Islands, but there is a lot of romance connected with their history. I used to like these islands very much—I got to know the South Seas from Auckland to Butaritari like the back of my hand, and there is none of it more fascinating than the Gilberts. Nothing but little spits of coral and sand studded with coconut palms. You can throw a rock across most of the islands. But the weather is fine—not too hot, in spite of being on the equator. Nearly always a cool breeze.

  “There was an old man named Isaac Handley who lived on Tarawa. In fact, I hope he is still alive. He was seventy-eight years old and he refused to leave when the others left. He was a Liverpool boy who went to sea at the age of twelve, became well-to-do, and finally built himself a fine home in Sydney. But he preferred the Gilberts to his fine home in Sydney. When the Japs came and the others left, he just said he thought he would stay—he had been there so long.

  “You may be interested in how the whites who got out of the Gilberts got away,” the little Scotsman went on. “The Japs landed at three o’clock one morning on Tarawa. They were very nervous and appeared anxious to leave as soon as possible. They looted the stores, but left some food for the eight or ten whites remaining, including the Burns Philp manager, the medical officer, and shipmaster Edward Harness, who had succeeded me as master of the Nimanoa. Then the Japs turned the natives into the stores and left about eight o’clock. Before they left they took Harness aboard the Nimanoa and cautioned him against any monkey business, but allowed him to pack his bag.

  “He managed to smuggle his sextant and log tables among his clothes, when the Japs weren’t looking. He ran the Nimanoa on a reef and the Japs blew her up. Two oil tanks exploded but her hull and some ribs were left intact. All the Japs wanted to do was make certain that the whites didn’t get away.

  “But Harness and the others managed to find an engine and hide it from the Japs. And to cover a twenty-foot boat with palm leaves. Three days after the first Japs had left a Jap Navy party came ashore. The first Japs had been tough and insolent —they had killed two natives who had been loosed from the insane asylum; one of them had been bayoneted in the medical officer’s house and had dragged himself over the dining-room floor, bleeding profusely from the stomach—but this naval party was very polite. The Jap lieutenant even told Harness he was sorry he lost his boat.

  “Then the Navy inspection party left Tarawa, too. Harness and the others, excepting old man Handley and Jim Smith, who also elected to stay, saw their last chance to get away. They set out in the small boat they had hidden under the palm fronds, installed the engine they had put away and set out for Suva,
thirteen hundred miles to the south. But first they stopped at Nonouti—it’s pronounced No-nooch—which is the fifth Gilbert island to the south of Tarawa. There they found six American sailors who had been on the Donerail, which was sunk off Pearl Harbor during the first few days of the war. They took on the sailors, who were in pretty bad shape, and kept going until they reached Suva. When the Japs came back again there were still some whites in the Gilberts—a few New Zealand soldiers who manned lookout posts, and the priests of the Catholic missions—I think all the London Missionary Society people got out all right.

  “By the way, those old Catholic missionaries were remarkable people. Mostly French. I used to see a lot of them in the Gilberts. When they came out to the Gilberts they expected to stay there until they died. They lived the same life the natives did, ate the same food, and devoted their lives to the natives. I remember one of them particularly. He had had leprosy and had spent seven years at the colony in the Fijis getting cured. Once I had to collect lepers from the Gilberts and take them to the colony. It was a horrible job. Some of the lepers were old people. But some were children who had to be taken from their parents by force. I put these lepers in a sort of cage that I had built on the stern of my ship. I fixed it up the best I could. Then I tried to get somebody to take care of the lepers during the trip to Suva. I had a hard time.

  “This old priest—he lived on Kuria—said he would go. During the trip to Suva he passed the food to the lepers in the cage. He read to them in their native tongue and did everything he could to help them. He even slept on the deck next to the cage. Later I saw him often on Kuria—that’s another one of the Gilbert Islands. We always had a drink together.

  “Another old priest had a flowing white mane. Another was called ‘Mossy Teeth’—he never bathed or shaved and he certainly never used a toothbrush. You couldn’t stand within ten feet of him, he was so dirty. But the natives loved him.”