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013 - The Significance of Tarawa and Sidebar Tarawa Today · Across the Reef- The Marine Assault of Tarawa

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  Speaker 1: Chapter eight of Across the Reef The Marine Assault of
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  Speaker 1: Tarawa by Joseph H. Alexander. This LibriVox recording is in
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  Speaker 1: the public domain. The significance of Tarawa and sidebar Tarawa
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  Speaker 1: today the significance of Tarwa. The costs of the forcible
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  Speaker 1: seizure of Tarawa were twofold, the loss of marines in
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  Speaker 1: the assault itself, followed by the shock and despair of
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  Speaker 1: the nation upon hearing the reports of the battle. The
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  Speaker 1: gains at first seemed small in return the stinking little
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  Speaker 1: island of Batio, eight thousand miles from Tokyo. In time,
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  Speaker 1: the practical lessons learned in the complex art of amphibious
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  Speaker 1: assault began to outweigh the initial adverse publicity. The final
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  Speaker 1: casualty figures for the second Marine Division in Operation Galvanic
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  Speaker 1: were nine hundred ninety seven marines and thirty sailors organic
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  Speaker 1: medical personnel dead, eighty eight marines missing and presumed dead,
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  Speaker 1: and two two two hundred and thirty three marines and
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  Speaker 1: fifty nine sailors wounded. Total casualties three thy four hundred seven.
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  Speaker 1: The Guadalcanal campaign had cost a comparable amount of marine
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  Speaker 1: casualties over six months. Tarawa's losses occurred in a period
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  Speaker 1: of seventy six hours. Moreover, the ratio of killed to
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  Speaker 1: wounded at Tarawa was significantly high, reflecting the savagery of
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  Speaker 1: the fighting. The overall proportion of casualties among those Marines
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  Speaker 1: engaged in the assault was about nineteen percent, a steep
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  Speaker 1: but acceptable price. But some battalions suffered much higher losses.
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  Speaker 1: The second Amphibian Tractor Battalion lost over half the command.
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  Speaker 1: The battalion also lost all but thirty five of the
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  Speaker 1: one hundred twenty five LVTs employed at Ba show lurid
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  Speaker 1: headlines the bloody beaches of Tarawa alarmed American newspaper readers.
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  Speaker 1: Part of this was the Marine's own doing. Many of
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  Speaker 1: the combat correspondents and invited along for Operation Galvanic had
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  Speaker 1: shared the very worst of the hell of Batio the
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  Speaker 1: first thirty six hours, and they simply reported what they observed.
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  Speaker 1: Such was the case of Marine Corps Master Technical Sergeant
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  Speaker 1: James C. Lucas, whose accounts of the fighting received front
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  Speaker 1: page coverage in both The Washington Post and the New
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  Speaker 1: York Times on four December nineteen forty three. Colonel's Schup
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  Speaker 1: was furious with Lucas for years thereafter, but it was
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  Speaker 1: the headline writers for both papers who did.
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  Speaker 2: The most damage.
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  Speaker 1: The Times grim Tarawa Defense. A surprise eyewitness of battle
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  Speaker 1: reveals marines went in chuckling to find swift death instead
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  Speaker 1: of easy conquest. Nor did extemporaneous remarks to the media
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  Speaker 1: by some of the senior marines involved in Operation Galvanic
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  Speaker 1: help soothe public concerns. Holland Smith likened the D Day
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  Speaker 1: assault to Pickett's charge at Gettysburg. Red Mike Edson said
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  Speaker 1: the assault force paid the stiffest price in human life
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  Speaker 1: per square yard at Tarawa than any other engagement in
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  Speaker 1: Marine Corps history. Evans Carlson taught graphically of seeing one
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  Speaker 1: hundred of Hayes's men gunned down in the water in
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  Speaker 1: five minutes on Deep plus one, a considerable exaggeration. It
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  Speaker 1: did not help matters when Headquarters Marine Corps waited until
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  Speaker 1: ten days after the battle to release casualty lists. The
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  Speaker 1: atmosphere in both Washington and Pearl Harbor was particularly tense
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  Speaker 1: during this period. General MacArthur, still bitter that the second
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  Speaker 1: Marine Division had been taken from his Southwest Pacific command,
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  Speaker 1: wrote the Secretary of War, complaining that these frontal attacks
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  Speaker 1: by the Navy as at Tarawa are a tragic and
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  Speaker 1: unnecessary massacre of American lives. A woman wrote Admiral Nimitz,
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  Speaker 1: accusing him of murdering my son. Secretary of the Navy
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  Speaker 1: Frank Knox, called a press conference in which he blamed
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  Speaker 1: a sudden shift in the wind for exposing the reef
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  Speaker 1: and preventing reinforcements from landing. Congress proposed a special investigation.
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  Speaker 1: The Marines were fortunate to have General Alexander A. Vandergriff
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  Speaker 1: in Washington as the newly appointed eighteenth Commandant. Vandergriff, the
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  Speaker 1: widely respected and highly decorated veteran of Guadalcanal, quietly reassured Congress,
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  Speaker 1: pointing out that tarrow was an assault from beginning to end.
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  Speaker 1: The casualty reports proved to be less dramatic than expected.
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  Speaker 1: A thoughtful editorial in the twenty seven December nineteen forty
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  Speaker 1: three issue of The New York Times complimented the Marines
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  Speaker 1: for overcoming Tarrowa's sophisticated defenses and fanatical garrison, warning that
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  Speaker 1: future assaults in the Marshals might result in heavier losses.
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  Speaker 1: We must steal ourselves now to pay that price. The
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  Speaker 1: controversy was stirred again after the war when General Holland
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  Speaker 1: Smith claimed publicly that Tarrowo was a mistake significantly. Nimitz,
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  Speaker 1: Spruance Turner, Hill, Julian Smith, and Shupe disagreed with that assessment.
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  Speaker 1: Admiral Nimitz did not waiver. The capture of Tarawa, he stated,
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  Speaker 1: knocked down the front door to the Japanese defenses in
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  Speaker 1: the Central Pacific. Nimits launched the Marshals Campaign only ten
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  Speaker 1: weeks after the seizure of Tarawa. Photo reconnaissance and attack
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  Speaker 1: aircraft from the captured airfields at Batio and Apamama provided
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  Speaker 1: invaluable support of greater significance to success in the Marshals
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  Speaker 1: where the lessons learned and the confidence gleaned from the
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  Speaker 1: Tarawa experience.
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  Speaker 2: Henry I.
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  Speaker 1: Shaw, Junior, for many years the chief historian of the
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  Speaker 1: Marine Corps, observed that Taro was the primer the textbook
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  Speaker 1: on amphibious assault that guided and influenced all subsequent landings
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  Speaker 1: in the Central Pacific. Shaw believed that the prompt and
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  Speaker 1: selfless analysis which immediately followed Tarawa were of great value.
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  Speaker 1: From analytical reports of the commanders, and from their critical
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  Speaker 1: evaluations of what went wrong, of what needed improvement, and
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  Speaker 1: of what to techniques and equipment proved out in combat
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  Speaker 1: came a tremendous outpouring of lessons learned. All participants agreed
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  Speaker 1: that the conversion of logistical LVTs to assault craft made
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  Speaker 1: the difference between victory and defeat.
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  Speaker 2: At Bay Show. There was further consensus that.
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  Speaker 1: The LVT ones and LVT twos employed in the operation
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  Speaker 1: were marginal against heavy defensive fires. The Alligators needed more armour,
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  Speaker 1: heavier armament, more powerful engines, auxiliary bilge pumps, self sealing
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  Speaker 1: gas tanks, and wooden plugs, the size of thirteen millimeters
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  Speaker 1: bullets to keep from being sunk by the Japanese M ninety.
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  Speaker 2: Three heavy machine guns.
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  Speaker 1: Most of all, there needed to be many more LVTs,
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  Speaker 1: at least three hundred per division. Shup wanted to keep
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  Speaker 1: the use of LVTs as reef crossing assault vehicles a secret,
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  Speaker 1: but there had been too many reporters on the scene.
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  Speaker 2: Hanson W.
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  Speaker 1: Baldwin broke the story in the New York Times as
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  Speaker 1: early as three December. Naval gunfire support got mixed reviews,
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  Speaker 1: while the Marines were enthusiastic about the response from destroyers
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  Speaker 1: in the lagoon, They were critical of the extent and
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  Speaker 1: accuracy of the preliminary bombardment, especially when it was terminated
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  Speaker 1: so prematurely.
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  Speaker 2: On D Day.
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  Speaker 1: In Major Rhine's evaluation, the significant shortcoming and Operation Galvanic
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  Speaker 1: lay in overestimating the damage that could be inflicted on
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  Speaker 1: a heavily defended position by an intense but limited naval bombardment,
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  Speaker 1: and by not sending in the assault forces soon enough
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  Speaker 1: after the shelling. Major Shuttle, recalling the pounding his battalion
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  Speaker 1: had received from emplacements within the sea wall, recommended direct
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  Speaker 1: fire against the face of the beach by forty millimeters
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  Speaker 1: guns from close in destroyers. The hasty saturation fires, deemed
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  Speaker 1: sufficient by planners in view of the requirement for strategic surprise,
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  Speaker 1: proved essentially useless. Amphibious assaults against fortified atolls would most
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  Speaker 1: of all, needs sustained de liber aimed fire.
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  Speaker 2: While no one.
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  Speaker 1: Questioned the bravery of the aviators who supported the basio assault,
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  Speaker 1: many questioned whether they were armed and trained adequately for
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  Speaker 1: such a difficult target. The need for closer integration of
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  Speaker 1: all supporting arms was evident. Communications throughout the basio assault
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  Speaker 1: were awful. Only the ingenuity of a few radio operators
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  Speaker 1: and the bravery of individual runners kept the assault reasonably coherent.
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  Speaker 1: The Marines needed waterproof radios. The Navy needed a dedicated
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  Speaker 1: amphibious command ship, not a major combatant whose big guns
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  Speaker 1: would knock out the radio nets with each salvo. Such
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  Speaker 1: command ships, the AGCs, began to appear during the Marshall's campaign.
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  Speaker 1: Other revisions to amphibious doctrine were immediately indicated. The nature
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  Speaker 1: and priority of unloading supply should henceforth become the call
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  Speaker 1: of the tactical commander Ashore, not the amphibious task force.
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  Speaker 1: Commander Batio showed the critical need for underwater swimmers who
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  Speaker 1: could stealthily assess and report reef, beach and surf conditions
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  Speaker 1: to the task force before the landing. This concept, first
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  Speaker 1: envisioned by Amphibious Warfare profit Major Earl Pete Ellis in
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  Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties, came quickly to frurish. Admiral Turner had
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  Speaker 1: a fledgling underwater demolition team on hand for the Marshals.
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  Speaker 1: The Marines believed that with proper combined arms training, the
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  Speaker 1: new medium tanks would be valuable assets. Future tank training
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  Speaker 1: would emphasize integrated tank infantry, engineer and artillery operations. Tank
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  Speaker 1: infantry communications needed immediate improvement. Most casualties among tank commanders
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  Speaker 1: at Bay Show resulted from individuals having to dismount from
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  Speaker 1: their vehicles to talk with the infantry in the open.
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  Speaker 1: The backpack flamethrower won universal acclaim from the.
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  Speaker 2: Marines on Bay Show.
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  Speaker 1: Each battalion commander recommended increases in quantity, range, and mobility
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  Speaker 1: of these assault weapons. Some suggested that larger versions be
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  Speaker 1: mounted on tanks and LVTs, presaging the appearance of Zippo
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  Speaker 1: tanks in later campaigns in the Pacific. Julian Smith rather
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  Speaker 1: humbly summed up the lessons learned at Tarawa by commenting
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  Speaker 1: we made fewer mistakes than.
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  Speaker 2: The Japs did.
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  Speaker 1: Military historians Jeter A. Eisley and Philip A. Crowell used
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  Speaker 1: different words of assessment. The capture of Tarawa, in spite
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  Speaker 1: of defects in execution, conclusively demonstrated that American amphibious doctrine
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  Speaker 1: was valid, that even the strongest island fortress.
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  Speaker 2: Could be seized.
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  Speaker 1: The subsequent landings in the Marshals employed this doctrine as
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  Speaker 1: modified by the Tarawa experience to achieve objectives against similar
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  Speaker 1: targets with fewer casualties and in less time. The benefits
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  Speaker 1: of Operation Galvanic quickly began to outweigh the steep initial costs.
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  Speaker 1: In time, Tarawa became a symbol of raw courage and
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  Speaker 1: sacrifice on the part of attackers and defenders alike. Ten
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  Speaker 1: years after the battle, General Julian Smith paid homage to
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  Speaker 1: both sides in an essay in Naval Institute proceedings. He
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  Speaker 1: saluted the heroism of the Japanese who chose to die
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  Speaker 1: almost to the last man. Then he turned to his
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  Speaker 1: beloved Second Marine Division and their shipmates in Task Force
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  Speaker 1: fifty three at Bay Show. For the officers and men,
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  Speaker 1: marines and sailors who crossed that reef, either as assault
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  Speaker 1: troops or carrying supplies or evacuating wounded, I can only
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  Speaker 1: say that I shall forever think of them with a
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  Speaker 1: feeling of reverence and the greatest respect sidebar Tarawa. Today,
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  Speaker 1: Tarawa is one of the few Pacific battlefields that remained
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  Speaker 1: essentially unchanged for the half century that followed World War II.
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  Speaker 1: Visitors to Beatio Island can readily see wrecked American tanks
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  Speaker 1: and LVTs along the beaches, as well as the ruins
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  Speaker 1: of Japanese gun emplacements and pillboxes. Admiral Shibasaki's imposing concrete
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  Speaker 1: bunker still stands seemingly as impervious to time as it
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  Speaker 1: was to the battleship guns of Task Force fifty three.
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  Speaker 1: The Singapore guns still rest in their turrets overlooking the
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  Speaker 1: approaches to the island. A few years ago, natives unearthed
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  Speaker 1: a buried LVT containing the skeletons of its Marine Corps crew, one,
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  Speaker 1: still wearing dog tags. General David M. Shupe was recalled
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  Speaker 1: from retirement to active duty for nine days in nineteen
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  Speaker 1: sixty eight to represent the United States at the dedication
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  Speaker 1: of a large monument on Ba Sho commemorating the twenty
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  Speaker 1: fifth anniversary of the battle. As Shupe later told The
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  Speaker 1: National Observer, my first reaction was that Beachho had shrunk
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  Speaker 1: a great deal. It seemed smaller in peace than in war.
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  Speaker 1: As he toured the ruined fortifications, Shupe recalled the savage
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  Speaker 1: desk sprit fighting and wondered why two nations would spend
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  Speaker 1: so much for so little. Nearly six thousand Japanese and
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  Speaker 1: Americans died on the tiny island in seventy six hours
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  Speaker 1: of fighting. Twenty years after Shop's dedication ceremony, the American
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  Speaker 1: Memorial had fallen into disrepair. Indeed, it was in danger
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  Speaker 1: of being torn down to make room for a cold
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  Speaker 1: storage plant for Japanese fishermen. A lengthy campaign by the
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  Speaker 1: Second Marine Division Association and Long Beach journalist Tom Hennessy
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  Speaker 1: raised enough funds to obtain a new, more durable monument,
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  Speaker 1: a nine ton block of Georgia granite, inscribed to our
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  Speaker 1: fellow Marines who gave their all. The memorial was dedicated
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  Speaker 1: on twenty November nineteen eighty eight. Batio is now part
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  Speaker 1: of the new Republic of Kiribadi. Tourist facilities are being
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  Speaker 1: developed to accommodate the large number of veterans who wished
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  Speaker 1: to return. For now, the small island probably resembles the
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  Speaker 1: way it appeared on d Day fifty years ago. American
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  Speaker 1: author James Ramsay Olman visited Tarawa earlier and wrote a
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  Speaker 1: fitting eulogy. It is a familiar irony that old battlefields
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  Speaker 1: are often the quietest and gentlest of places. It is
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  Speaker 1: true of Gettysburg, it is true of Canny Chalin's Austerlitz
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  Speaker 1: Verdun And it is true of Tarawa. End of chapter eight,
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  Speaker 1: end of Across the Reef The Marina Saul of Tarawa
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  Speaker 1: by Joseph H. Alexander, read by Aaron Bennett,