Leon Cooper, former Navy Ensign and amphibian boat commander, not only remembers the battle in November 1943, but is now fighting to clean-up the battlefield to make it a fit memorial for thousands who died there.
(Somerdale, N.J.) - Garbage now litters the beaches on Betio Island in the Tarawa atoll, one of the bloodiest battles fought by Marines in WW II.
The first amphibious assault against fortified positions in the Pacific War, it would serve as a model and lessons learned for future assaults. The 2nd Marine Division paid the price for the lessons.
Located in the central Pacific, thirteen hundred miles northeast of the Guadalcanal, Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands was one of the bloodiest battles fought by the Marine Corps in WW II.
The Japanese had established a defensive outpost on Betio Island three days after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Using 4,000 Korean laborers, the Japanese built what looked like an impenetrable fortress on Betio, along with 4,000 foot airstrip for bombers.
In 1943, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff divided the Pacific Theater into two areas of operation. One area fell under the command of General Douglas MacArthur whose task was to attack the Japanese in New Guinea and the Philippines and eventually Japan; the other under Admiral Nimitz was designed to attack the Japanese through the Gilberts, Marshalls, and the Marianas in a leap frog fashion.
Betio’s Defenses
According to March 1944 Intelligence Bulletin: “The Japanese beach defenses consisted of well-emplaced and well-sited weapons, various types of obstacles, and mines. The weapons included grenades, mortars, rifles, light and heavy machine guns, 13-mm dual-purpose machine guns, 37-mm guns, 70-mm infantry guns, 75-mm mountain guns (Model 41), 75-mm dual-purpose guns (Model 88), 80-mm antiboat guns, 127-mm twin-mount, dual-purpose guns, 140-mm coast-defense guns, and 8-inch coast-defense guns.”
“The obstacles included pyramid-shaped, reinforced concrete obstacles, which were placed about halfway around the island on the coral reef; an antiboat barricade, made of coconut-palm logs: double-apron barbed wire; a perimeter barricade, constructed chiefly of coconut-palm logs; and antitank ditches, dug a short distance back of the perimeter barricade.
Antipersonnel and antiboat mines were laid on the fringing reef—frequently between the concrete obstacles—and on the beaches.” (See: lonesentry.com/articles/jp-betio-island/index.html)
The 2nd Marine Division, with the 2nd, 6th and 8th Marine regiments, would have to take Betio from the Japanese in November 1943. It was by all accounts a terrible ordeal, leaving over 1,150 dead and 2,300 wounded Marines in three days and almost the entire Japanese garrison of nearly 5,000 men, including several thousand Japanese Imperial Marines.
Betio is two miles long and a half of wide. New York’s Central Park is bigger.
Coral Reef and Low Tide
Betio would prove to be three days of hell.
Remembering Bloody TarawaSalem-News.com