The 1943 invasion of Tarawa atoll in the Gilbert Islands was the first large amphibious operation of the war in the Pacific. At a cost of 1,027 dead and 2,200 wounded, the Second Marine Division took tiny Betio Island and its airfield, which is the only clearing on the island today. Red Beach is on the lagoon side at the top of the photo above. During the 50th anniversary in 1993, Republic of Kiribati officials hosted Fleet Marine Force Pacific Commander Lieutenant General Henry Stackpole.
No one could be alive on Tarawa after the U.S. Navy bombardment that preceded the invasion, or so Eddie Owen and his buddies thought. Near this scene, one Marine assured Owen that mortar shells splashing in the water were “just porpoises."
Ralph Feck remembers being wounded severely by a bomb dropped from a U.S. Navy Wildcat less than 100 yards from the location of this photo. In the background, an LVT amphibious vehicle sits abandoned at low tide in the lagoon.
For Bob Schultz, this was his only trip back to Tarawa since the war. The first thing he saw after crawling up the beach and over coconut tree logs 50 years ago was the face of a dead Japanese. The water was red with the blood of U.S. Marines.
Standing on Red Beach One 50 years later, Monroe Morgan, a Marine 2d lieutenant at Tarawa, recalled in vivid detail that upon coming ashore he wanted to “crawl into my helmet somehow" as small arms and mortar fire rippled through the water.
The Marshall Islands had been under Japanese control since World War I. Because U.S. Navy planners determined a need for air bases and logistics centers in the vicinity, they started scheming an invasion for 31 January 1944. The principal islands chosen were Kwajalein (here, as it looks today, the anchor of the one of the largest coral atolls in the world), Majuro, Roi-Namur, and Enewetok. The 4th Marine Division and the Army’s 7th Infantry Division took the first three islands at a cost of more than 2,800 casualties, with Japanese losses totaling at least 8,000. The heaviest fighting was on Roi-Namur, but naval aircraft and ships dropped more than 6,000 tons of explosives on the little islands prior to the invasion with much greater effect than the bombardment of Tarawa. Combat was over in the Marshalls by 21 February 1944. On 5 February 1994, 50th anniversary ceremonies were held just off Kwajalein’s invasion beach.
At the Majuro Marshall Islands commemoration ceremonies, Richard Sorenson, a World War II Marine private who received the Medal of Honor for the valor he displayed on Roi-Namur, posed with native Marshall Island Provisional Marine Scouts who were indispensible in assisting and fighting alongside U.S. forces during the campaign. Sorenson was wounded on Namur when he dived on a grenade and covered it with his side to protect fellow Marines in February 1944. Earlier in the day, Sorenson talked about the battle and its aftermath within 50 yards of where his lines were the day he was wounded.
For the June 1994 50th anniversary comment- oration of the invasion of Saipan, Kozo Sato, a former member of the Japanese 43d Army, led the way along a treacherous rocky coast to a small cave entrance near invasion “blue beach.’’ Inside, Sato demonstrated how he knelt over a Type 99 machine gun. The remains of the original Japanese Aslito Airfield still stand. Bomb shelters shown below were built by the Japanese Navy and survived the invasion. Bottom: With his wife Katherine, William Sanders, a 2d Lt. in the 2d Marine Divsion at Saipan, unfurls a Japanese naval unit flag he recovered on Tarawa, a bloody 1943 battle of which he is also a veteran.
Opposite : Just more than a month after Saipan, the 4th Marines landed on Tinian. This runway carried early high-level B-29 attacks and the flight of the Enola Gay, which dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1944- With the Tinian runway as a backdrop, an LVT-7 stands where it was uncovered in June 1994, 100 yards from invasion beach. On Father’s Day 1994, Richard DeLuca placed a memorial to his father John, a Seabee, killed on this rocky shore 50 years ago.