War Stories II: Heroism in the Pacific

by Oliver North

  As we got into our LCVPs, each holding a platoon—roughly thirty men—we didn’t have any communication. Because of the disruption, we didn’t get the final word of where we were to land until our battalion commander came by in his LCVP and said, “We’re landing on Red Beach Two,” which turns out was the worst one—it was right in the crossfire.

  I was the first one out when we got to the reef, yelling, “Come on, let’s go, follow me.” And I start wading as fast as I could. I looked back and the men were kind of slow getting out, a little reluctant. I said, “Come on, let’s go,” a couple more times and then the next thing I know, I’m hit. The Japanese got me with a machine gun, firing at us from the right flank. I was around 600 yards out in the water when I was hit very seriously in the abdomen. And course nobody’s supposed to stop for the wounded. Everybody’s got to keep going. But one of my men, Private Sullivan, started to drag me over to one of these landing craft where the ramp was down. Eddie Albert, the famous movie actor, had brought one of the LCVPs to pick up the wounded. There were about twenty or more of us already hit. Guys still in the water shoved us up over the ramp, and we rolled down inside, and I was in agony by that time. And someone says, “You’re gonna make it.”

  I was the first one on the operating table on the Sheridan. There were two surgeons, and the one who operated on me had been an abdominal specialist at the Mayo Clinic. What a fortunate chain of events: One of my men disobeyed orders and dragged me to safety, Eddie Albert was there to take me to the ship, and a surgeon who was an abdominal specialist at the Mayo Clinic was there to treat me. Amazing!

  2ND MARINE DIVISION

  BETIO ISLAND, TARAWA ATOLL

  21 NOVEMBER 1943

  0900 HOURS LOCAL

  By dawn on D+1, the full magnitude of the D-Day carnage was evident. More than 1,500 U.S. Marines were either dead, wounded, or MIA.

  On the morning of D+1, the Corps reserve, which had been circling in the lagoon for most of the night, landed to reinforce the beachhead. The troops were fatigued, seasick, and most hadn’t eaten. Nevertheless, they waded on to the beach while taking tremendous casualties. The new battalions used the 500-yard-long pier between Red Beaches Two and Three as cover to ward off at least some of the enemy rifle and machine gun fire.

  Among those reinforcements was Marine Reservist Harry Niehoff from Portland, Oregon, who had trained on the use of a flame-thrower. He would put that training to the test on Tarawa. Lieutenant Michael Ryan had grown up in St. Vincent’s Orphanage in Kansas, joined the Marine Corps Reserves, gone to Guadalcanal, and at age twenty-seven was known as “the old man” by his buddies. By the time he reached New Zealand to prepare for the Tarawa invasion, he was the commander of L Company.

  CORPORAL HARRY NIEHOFF, USMC

  Betio Island, Tarawa Atoll

  22 November 1943

  1120 Hours Local

  When I was at Tarawa I was considered a combat engineer, attached to a line company with the 8th Marines. I had a flame-throwing demolition team of five members. We were to do whatever the 8th Marines wanted us to take care of.

  My primary job was demolition but I also trained on the flame-thrower. We used diesel fuel as the main fuel instead of gasoline. Then you had the igniter, just like a cigarette lighter. When you pressed that igniter, the air pressure in the middle tank forced the diesel fuel through and you had ignition. A huge flame bellowed out.

  Later in the war, when they developed napalm, they took that and mixed fuel with the napalm gelatin, and that’s where you got the straight shots coming out rather than the billowing flame. But at Tarawa, we used strictly the diesel.

  I had never heard of Tarawa before. It was something brand-new to me. It was just another atoll in the Pacific Islands.

  When we arose on D-Day, we heard the bombardment already taking place. As time went on and daylight came, it was quite clear, and then the big battleships started to let go. We could really hear them—they made a noise all their own. It was quite impressive.

  When we approached, we all looked at what we could see of the island. All you could see was just a little dark streak on the horizon. And you’d see all the smoke coming up and the bombs and shells hitting it. Someone said, “Boy, they’re really getting it! There won’t be anybody left. They’ll sink the island.”

  Then all of a sudden we started to hear the whine of the shells coming toward us.

  We had a job on our hands. I think everybody must have thought, “I don’t know about this trip. This is going to be a tough one.” And when we got there almost all of the Marines who had landed earlier were killed, and we were killing Japanese in hand-to-hand combat.

  I was originally assigned to F Company. But the Amtrac landed at the wrong place and I ended up with E Company. I tried to find F Company, but they had all been shot. There was no unit there!

  All the officers had already been killed. I was told, “When you come ashore, you’ll be assigned to this platoon. Your job is to take care of that bunker.”

  We found out later that “that bunker” provided the electricity for the island. So I thought that was going to be my team’s job, so we went right to it and tried to figure out what to do. Well you couldn’t go around the right side or the left side.

  There was only one way and that was to go straight up. The bunker was twenty-five or thirty feet high. And it was covered with sand, so if you tried to climb up the side of the bunker, which we were trying, the sand would just cascade out from under you and you’d start sliding down.

  Lieutenant Alex Bonnyman, who led the Pioneer Platoon, had been there since the day before. He rallied us and tried to help us. He knew what we were trying to do. He said that they needed to get that bunker taken. But it was still a barrier. No one could get over or around it.

  Behind the bunker was a Japanese command post. So there was a lot of manpower and a lot of rifles. So any move you made around there, somebody was sure to pick you off. And then Lieutenant Bonnyman yelled out for everybody to go over to the top. He was next to me and turned around to yell to get more demolitions. At that moment he was hit, and he fell dead. I expected to be hit next because we were side by side.

  I was out of ammunition and demolitions. So I came back down, went over to the supply point, picked up some TNT, and came back to the bunker. I was prepared to charge and a major said, “I want you to be careful, that Jap’s already killed five men.”

  My hair stood straight up on the back of my neck. I got down alongside the pillbox and we made our charges with four blocks of TNT. Each block was just about two and a half inches square by five inches long, so I had a five-inch square package of TNT taped together.

  I lit the fuse. When I reached around to push it through the rifle slot, I found out the rifle slot was only about three inches wide. But I had a package that was five inches square and I didn’t know what to do with it except drop it and take cover. The charge didn’t kill the man in the bunker, but it opened up the slot. And before I knew it, one of my men came up beside me and put another charge in. That took care of it.

  The devastation on Tarawa was quite horrific. Crossfire went in every direction. Troops who went in got shot at from the front and from the side. The men were just dying by the hundreds. We had dead and wounded Marines in the water. We had the wounded on the beaches that we couldn’t get to. There was no way to get them. If you went out to try to help them, which many of the Marines did, you might wind up being shot yourself. But the guys did it anyway. They would try to get anybody they could.

  Tarawa was really the worst.

  MAJOR MICHAEL RYAN, USMC

  Betio Island, Tarawa Atoll

  22 November 1943

  1650 Hours Local

  I came on active duty as a Marine second lieutenant, a platoon leader, and we were sent out to join the 1st Marine Division.

  We didn’t land on Guadalcanal. We landed to the north on two small islands—Gavutu-Tanambogo—that formed the Japanese seaplane base. That was my introd
uction to operations and to combat.

  The Japanese had made a counter-attack and overran the Marines there. When I got there you could see Japanese bodies all over the ground. None of our guys had seen combat but they did well.

  I was promoted to first lieutenant. Within a couple of months I was promoted to captain and made a company commander. After a while we were ordered to Guadalcanal itself, and participated in a number of operations there. We moved from Guadalcanal and were on our way to Fiji when we heard that we were going to a place called Tarawa.

  I was hoping that Tarawa would be a short operation. We thought that it would be relatively easy, because we were told the tonnage of bombs that were going to be used and how much the ships were going to fire. We heard that the bombardment would go on for four or five hours. We were to land in boats, form in the center of the beach, and await orders. Our orders were to go as far as we could in the boats, and if we couldn’t get over the reef, to wait for the tractors to come back and then go in.

  Well, from where we were sitting it didn’t look like any tractors would get back out again. Implied in the order was, “Get in the best way you can.” And that’s what we planned to do.

  The tractor right in front of my boat was on fire. But all the Marines were out—I thought—until two Marines climbed up on the side with their clothing on fire. I could see when they fell that they’d probably died before they hit the water.

  We got out and started to walk in, and it’s about 1,300 yards to the beach. By the time we got there, K Company was ashore. And so was what was left of I Company. When we got out and started in, other casualties were in the water. You didn’t know whether they were dead or wounded.

  When I and K Companies landed, they moved behind the seawall. When I got over the parapet, Captain Crane came over and said, “Captain Tatem was killed. Lieutenant Turner has taken over I Company. That was the one that got so shot up over there.”

  If the Japanese didn’t kick us off the island, they were going to lose it. We fully expected the battalion headquarters to come in with more troops, but they didn’t show up, and so I became the battalion commander.

  Regimental headquarters now consisted of a major—me—and a runner. Everyone else was dead or wounded and there were no radios. We could see that the 2nd Battalion was advancing on Red Beach Two. But we had no way of knowing how far they got in or how many of them were there. Nor did we know where regimental headquarters or battalion headquarters were. We couldn’t get in touch with them. It was late in the afternoon that it suddenly dawned on us that the battalion commander wasn’t going to get in. We thought he must’ve been killed. We called “fire!” only once, when we were certain that we had a place that they could fire without hitting friendlies.

  The tanks came in late afternoon. As I recall, there were two tanks. But one tank had a disabled main gun. Gradually people turned to me for orders, simply because I was the senior person there. I formed a defensive position inward from the point, and we waited out the night. Our only radio had gotten wet and no longer worked. Out on board our ships they probably wondered what was happening over on the island. But they didn’t know how they could get anything to me.

  Troops came in from the One and Six. They had cover for their landing and spent the night on the beach with us, then moved out the next day. They took their tanks with them and started reducing the rest of Green Beach.

  Many NCOs were okay. Some had been killed, of course. Now each platoon was checking its own rosters.

  A wounded sergeant came up and saluted. You’re not supposed to salute in combat. But that was one salute I was going to return, no matter what.

  I told him where the aid station was; he didn’t leave. He kept getting his people into position. He wasn’t from our unit. I think he might have come from another battalion on our left.

  Whether he lived through the operation, I don’t know. I never saw him again.

  Watching the men trying to get in, under that heavy fire, that was the worst. It’s difficult to sit there and watch people being cut up

  Did we learn anything in the Battle of Tarawa? Yeah, I think we did, because at the next operation, they had a greater, longer bombardment. And they did it methodically. They checked to see if there was a position, and then they would fire their big guns. And they did it for a couple of days.

  And they had more tractors so that the landing was easier, unlike ours. I think that those changes came from what we saw at Tarawa.

  2ND MARINE DIVISION COMMAND POST

  BETIO ISLAND, TARAWA ATOLL

  23 NOVEMBER 1943

  1730 HOURS LOCAL

  Mike Ryan assembled the remnants of two battalions and organized a charge that effectively eliminated Japanese resistance on the western end of the island. General Julian Smith came ashore and established his command post in what had been one of Admiral Shibasaki’s command bunkers. Unbeknownst to the Marines, the Japanese commander was already dead. When he and his staff had moved to a secondary command post on the south side of the island, a sharp-eyed Marine had spotted them. With a radio finally dried out and working, the Marine had alerted a destroyer just outside the reef. The Navy responded instantly, firing salvo after salvo over the heads of Marines in the open. They scored a direct hit, killing Shibasaki, his chief of staff, his gunnery officers, and his operations officer. It probably changed the course of the battle.

  On the night of 22–23 November, the now leaderless Japanese launched three futile and uncoordinated counter-attacks. The Marines, now better supplied, mowed them down. As the battle entered its third day of fighting, additional troops were landed across Green Beach and came ashore without opposition.

  With most of the airfield now in Marine hands, General Smith ordered his weary troops to clear the Japanese pocket that still held between Red Beaches Two and Three and to conduct a sweep east down the narrow length of the island. As they were preparing to do so, a message to Tokyo from the remaining Japanese defenders was intercepted by Navy code-breakers: OUR WEAPONS ARE DESTROYED. FROM NOW ON EVERYONE WILL ATTEMPT A FINAL CHARGE. MAY JAPAN EXIST FOR TEN THOUSAND YEARS.

  Only thirteen Japanese were captured, most of them wounded or unconscious, and about a hundred Korean slave laborers gave themselves up. That afternoon, shortly after 1300 on 23 November 1943, General Smith declared that organized resistance had ended on Tarawa atoll.

  But the Battle for the Gilbert Islands wasn’t quite over. On Makin atoll, a hundred miles north of Tarawa, the poorly prepared soldiers of the 27th Division had taken two days longer than expected to secure tiny Butaritari Island. Though there were fewer than 400 enemy combatants on the little spit of sand, the 6,000 American soldiers had suffered sixty-four killed and 152 wounded. Another forty-three U.S. sailors had been killed and nineteen wounded in the pre–H-Hour bombardment when a turret exploded on the battleship Mississippi. By the afternoon of 23 November all but one of the Japanese defenders were dead and 104 construction workers and Korean laborers were captives. Unfortunately, things were about to get worse for the Americans.

  Early on 24 November, while the Navy waited impatiently for the Army to backload onto their waiting transports, a Japanese submarine slipped through the destroyer screen around Makin atoll and sent a torpedo into the side of the carrier escort Liscome Bay. She blew up immediately, taking 650 of her 900 men to the bottom.

  The following day, American and British flags were raised and flown over Tarawa. However, there was still the grim task of burying the dead. Some 6,000 men—5,000 of them Japanese defenders—lay dead on this tiny island atoll on the equator, their corpses strewn across an area smaller than the Pentagon and its parking lots. More than 1,000 Marines had been killed and about 1,500 wounded.

  Later, when Admiral Nimitz toured the island he remarked that it was the first time that he had actually smelled death. He was likewise astounded that most of the Japanese bunkers, pillboxes, and gun emplacements seemed to be only lightly damaged despite the initial furious naval an
d aerial bombardments.

  Nimitz directed that detailed architectural drawings of all the fortifications be made and had exact replicas of the Japanese defenses constructed on the naval gunnery range at Kailavi. He then insisted that every destroyer, cruiser, and battleship heading into the western Pacific pass a test of destroying these fortifications.

  Marine Corps combat cameraman Sergeant Norman Hatch had a ringside seat for the battle and documented it through the lens of his motion picture camera.

  SERGEANT NORMAN HATCH, USMC

  Betio Island, Tarawa Atoll

  24 November 1943

  1745 Hours Local

  My position on Tarawa was that of a combat motion picture cameraman. My responsibility was to document what went on in the course of the battle as best I could. And that’s said with some reservation, because at that time, what we were doing was brand spanking new. No one had ever photographed an amphibious landing against a well-fortified enemy. Realizing that, I knew that I had a great deal of responsibility.

  The only thing that I didn’t know was that I was going to be the only motion picture cameraman on the beach for the first day and a half. All the rest of them were stuck in the boats and couldn’t get ashore.

  There was so much going on that I didn’t have any difficulty finding subjects to shoot. The way that the Japanese had zeroed in on the reef was the big obstacle for the boats. It was devastating. It seemed like every time a boat would come in that morning and drop its ramp on the reef, a shell would land right in the middle of the boat, which would hit just about everybody and sink the boat.

  The commanding officer of the battalion that I was accompanying, Major Jim Crowe, wasn’t due to go in until the fourth, fifth, and sixth waves of troops were in. But there was a machine gunner shooting at the amphibious tractors as they were coming in, forcing them to go to the right. They could only go so far because there was a pier there.