NARRATOR: On the 20th
of November 1943, one of the bloodiest battles
in American history began. The target was a tiny
island called Tarawa. Tarawa was the most strongly
defended island in the Pacific, with awesome fortifications
and crack Japanese troops. NORMAN HATCH: The
Japanese [inaudible] army were pretty determined by
the Bushido code, which says, stand and die. There's no ifs, ands,
or buts about that. NARRATOR: The Japanese boasted
that a million Americans couldn't take the island
in a hundred years. You put that
combination of lethal fire with determined men in
concealed positions, and it's going to be
a ghastly carnage. NARRATOR: On Tarawa, the Marines
faced their sternest test yet. WILLIAM ROGAL: Individual
Marines took the island bit by bit, gun by gun. ROBERT KOEHLER: It never
let up until the very end. And for at least two days, the
outcome was very much in doubt. NARRATOR: High above the island,
reconnaissance aircraft charted the course of the battle. Many of these
priceless photographs were later lost or forgotten. Newly rediscovered, they
shed unprecedented light on the battle for Tarawa, a
ferocious 76-hour conflict that shaped the course
of the Pacific War. [gunfire] 4:00 AM, November
the 20, 1943, America was about to strike the
first major offensive blow in the battle for
the Central Pacific. The target was a tiny island,
less than three miles long and 800 yards wide,
called Tarawa. Tarawa was in the
middle of nowhere. But with its vital airfield,
it was the first step in the island hopping strategy
that would lead to Japan. The Second Marine Division,
back from their bloody victory on Guadalcanal,
had to take Tarawa. Also heading to the island was
combat cameraman Norm Hatch. Tarawa was the first Pacific
battle that was comprehensively and successfully filmed. Being on Tarawa with a camera
was like being in a candy store, because there
was something happening in every direction you looked. You couldn't avoid
having a story to tell. NARRATOR: The film made of
the invasion with the Marines at Tarawa went on
to win an Oscar. FILM NARRATOR: These are the men
of the Second Marine Division. We're now embarking on a full
scale amphibious operation after many months of
intensive training. NARRATOR: Pitted
against the Marines were 5,000 men, including
an elite Japanese outfit, the Rikusentai or
Imperial Marines. [yelling] We knew, without
a doubt, that these were very tenacious, competent
troops, that they would fight to the last man, and that
they would probably-- most of them would
never surrender. NARRATOR: On the island was a
Japanese officer called Kiyoshi Ota. He wrote down his
recollections of the battle. They were the only Japanese
record of the Tarawa campaign to survive. KIYOSHI OTA (FROM DIARY):
Before daylight, all hands were informed that the
enemy fleet was gathered near the entrance to the lagoon. The commanding officer
then said to us the rise and fall
of our motherland may well rest on our
last decisive battle. Let us exhibit our samurai
spirit and try our best. NARRATOR: These extraordinary
aerial photographs show how Kiyoshi Ota and his
fellow Japanese soldiers had turned Tarawa into
an island fortress. With 500 pill boxes and
machine gun nests, trenches, and foxholes, it was the
most heavily defended island the Marines had
attacked in the Pacific. At the center of this ring
of steel was the airfield. The entire island
bristled with gunnery, bristled with defenders. NARRATOR: Tarawa's
first line of defense was the reef that
ringed the island. Experts were unable to tell
from the aerial photographs how deep the water
was above the reef. Gauging the correct depth
was crucial to the outcome of the attack. The reef was a big problem. It was a big problem because
it was unknown how bad or how high the reef was,
particularly at low tide. JOHN WUKOVITS: The debate before
the battle was would there be enough water on
this particular day to get not only the Amtracs
over, but the Higgins boats, which required at least
about four feet of water. NARRATOR: Amtracs,
amphibious tractors, had never been used
in combat before. The Marines hope this innovation
would help them scale the reef. It was capable of
going in the water and capable of also
moving on land. It had wheels
somewhat like a tank. And that's what my company
and other companies landed in. But they didn't
have many of those. NARRATOR: In fact,
the Marines only had enough Amtracs for the
first three waves of attacks. After that, the troops would be
in Higgins boats that required four feet of water in
order to get over the reef. If there were insufficient water
over the reef at invasion hour, the Higgins boats would
be stranded high and dry. And the Marines would have
to wade ashore into the teeth of the enemy guns. Despite concerns over the
reef, the high command gave the go ahead for the
assault. The battle for Tarawa began. Phase one opened with a
massive bombardment designed to annihilate the Japanese
before the Marines landed. It was the biggest seen
so far in the Pacific. FILM NARRATOR: For three
days before we moved in, over 4 million
pounds of explosives had been dropped on the island. It didn't seem possible
that anyone could live through that bombardment. [bombs exploding] It was just a
tremendous amounts of noise and bright lights. But there was so much smoke
hanging over the island that you couldn't tell where the
smoke ended in the land began. NORMAN HATCH: You would have
thought everybody would have been annihilated. We thought, honestly,
that man, all we gotta do is dig a bunch of graves
and this battle is over. NARRATOR: But the
Naval bombardment was a dismal failure. WENDELL CRAIN: Trouble
with the Navy bombarding is the trajectory of battleships
15-inch guns is quite flat. So those were of no value. They just kind of bounced off. [bombs exploding] NARRATOR: Inside their
bunkers, the Japanese were battered and bruised,
but they had survived. When the bombardment
ended, they raced to the North of the island to
face the American invasion. Aerial reconnaissance images
show the plan of attack. The Marines aimed to land
on three invasion beaches on the North of the
island, codenamed Red One, Red Two, and Red Three. FILM NARRATOR: As we
approach the island, we have the feeling that
the show is just about over. There doesn't seem to be
any organized resistance. However, we're
taking no chances. NARRATOR: The first three waves
of Amtracs scaled the reef and headed to the shore. But the Japanese who had
survived the Naval bombardment were about to unleash a
firestorm onto the landing craft. KIYOSHI OTA (FROM DIARY): We
could see the American landing craft coming towards us, like
dozens of spiders scattering over the surface of the water. One of my men exclaimed,
heavens, the god of death has come. The first sign
that we were not going to have an
easy road of it was that when the amphibious
tractors were headed into the beach, they
encountered heavy fire. [gunfire] WILLIAM ROGAL: The
machine gun fire penetrated to the port side
when we started moving off. And I don't know how many
casualties it caused. All I know is I had a
squad and a 1/2 in there, and only four of us
got out of that thing. NARRATOR: The killing
intensified with the next waves of Higgins boats. As the skeptics
feared, the low tide left them stranded on the reef. The Marines were sitting ducks. NORMAN HATCH: Now, we
fetched up on the reef, as we expected to do, and then
the ramp wouldn't go down. So everybody had to
go up over the side. ROBERT KOEHLER: As
we went off the boat, we started receiving very
heavy small arms fire. You could hear the
bullets singing by. And you could see the splashing
occurring all through the water all around you. NARRATOR: The first Amtrac
finally made it onto Red Beach One on Tarawa. But it had been
a costly landing. WENDELL CRAIN: I landed
with the chief corpsman, a fine young man. He was early 20s, well-trained,
very likeable, very dedicated, wanted to become a doctor. We jumped out of
the landing craft. I happened to jump out on
this side and he jumped out, I think, on the other side. And as we got out, he let
out a shriek and a yell. He'd been shot in the leg. I gave him some of
my medicinal Brandy that I had in my canteen. I had two canteens. I wish I'd had both
medicinal brandy. So I told him I'd come
back in a half an hour. I wanted to get him
out of here if I could. He was dead when I got back. [bombs exploding] [gunfire] NARRATOR: As the sun beat
down on the exhausted Marines, the trauma of Tarawa
had only just begun. 1,500 men of the 2nd
Division of the US Marines had landed on the
tiny island of Tarawa. WENDELL CRAIN: When we landed
on the island the first morning, I said to myself, I'm going
to survive this operation. NARRATOR: Tarawa was the
most heavily fortified island in the Pacific. What had begun as
a smooth operation, was beginning to go awry. WENDELL CRAIN: I knew,
as we were landing, we started getting
fire from the beach, and it didn't take long to
realize that things were really tough. WILLIAM ROGAL: One
of my young men, he stood up trying to
see what was ahead, and the first round hit him. And of course, that round
almost decapitated him. The impact threw him
to the back of the LVT. And I said, welcome to Tarawa. NARRATOR: These extraordinary
aerial photographs helped chart the
progress of the battle. Units had come ashore
onto Red Beach One. They had suffered
appalling casualties. WENDELL CRAIN: I would guess
half of the casualties occurred in the first few hours that
Marines were on the beach. We were undefended. We had no protection. We knew the Japanese were there. They were firing
everything they had, but they were behind embankments
that we couldn't reach. That took probably half
of our total casualties. NARRATOR: On Red Beach
Two, it was just as bad. Some companies had
lost 50% of their men. It was pandemonium because
there was so many officers that got killed, there was
troops that didn't really have their own leader. They were following
another person. There was no place else
to go, only forward. And that's what
we kept on doing. NARRATOR: As Naval
gunfire from destroyers in the lagoon
blitzed the island, more troops tried to make
it ashore onto Red Beach Three to the North. A pier offered the Marines
some limited protection from deadly Japanese fire. There were people who would
just kind of drop from sight. And I'm assuming that
they were hit somewhere. Or in some cases, maybe they
couldn't swim and hit a hole and just went down. Well, I was wet,
and I was angry. And then as I arrived there,
there were a couple of Marines under the pier. And they gave me a hand up on
to the pilings that were holding the pier up. NARRATOR: These recently
rediscovered aerial photographs help us pinpoint the
action on the ground. The beach was still
hundreds of yards away. Japanese gunfire raked the area. Suddenly, someone came
running from behind me and grabbed my rifle. And I said, hey, where are
you going with my rifle? And this kid turned
around and ran back. And he said, oh, pardon me. I thought you were dead. NARRATOR: By
mid-morning of D-Day, the survivors were pinned
down behind a sea wall on the northern beaches. And there were a lot
of Marines holed up behind that wall. I asked them if there
was any officers around. Someone gave me sort
of a catatonic stare. NARRATOR: Climbing
over the seawall meant almost certain death. But staying put
was not an option. My combat sense was
offended by all those men in a bunch on that beach. And I said, well, we got to
get these people off the beach before mortars start coming in. And we took off, got over the
beach into a huge shell hole. It was big enough
for the four of us. And we were the front line. NARRATOR: To make matters worse,
a new problem had emerged. Seawater had drenched
and destroyed the TBY portable radios that
the Marines relied on to communicate with each
other and coordinate attacks. ROBERT KOEHLER: When I
went off into the water, immediately that TBY went
about 2/3 under the water. It was so saturated
with salt water that there was virtually
no point in keeping it. It just wasn't going to work. NARRATOR: The Marines were
scattered and isolated on the most formidable Japanese
stronghold in the Pacific. These revealing
aerial images give us an extraordinary insight
into the complex interlocking defenses that Japanese
engineers had constructed right across the island. JOHN WUKOVITS: You had these
pillboxes so craftily concealed that some of the
Marines at the seawall were being fired upon
by Japanese 6 feet away. And they couldn't see them. WILLIAM ROGAL: They
had bunkers that take a direct hit from a 14-inch
shell to get rid of them. And if you killed
one or two of them, some others would
take over the gun. NARRATOR: With the Marines
pinned down on the beach, Japanese officer Kiyoshi Ota
launched a one-man attack. KIYOSHI OTA (FROM DIARY): I
jumped over the barricade. My men did not follow
me as I had ordered. I waved my sword at the
Marines as if to cut them down. Then I came to my senses,
jumped quickly back over the barricade, and
returned to my position. NARRATOR: The Japanese
hurled massive firepower onto the Marines who lay
scattered on the beach. [gunfire] The Marine commander,
David Shoup, finally made it
onto Red Beach Two. He took control of
the chaotic situation. He pulled together
the scattered units and tried to direct the attack. He made decisions-- key
decisions under fire on Tarawa that I think probably were
instrumental in alleviating some of our stress. He was a very fine man. NARRATOR: Disaster
piled upon disaster. Reinforcements were sent ashore. More Marines were
stranded on the reef. The Japanese now had
the range to perfection. The slaughter intensified. WENDELL CRAIN: Those
poor devils had to try to wade
through that water. And machine guns were
just chopping the water into foam around them. MAN: From our vantage point,
you could see them just being just cut to ribbons out there
with the small arms fire as they get off these
boats in the chest deep or neck deep water. And they just had to face just a
barrage of fire all the way in. That was the worst sight
I saw in World War II. NARRATOR: It had been the
bloodiest American landing of the Pacific War to date. 1,500 men out of the
5,000-strong attack force were dead, wounded, or missing. By the evening of the
first day, disaster was staring the
Marines in the face. By the time that dusk set
in, we saw that sun go down beyond the Pacific waters,
everything got very quiet. WILLIAM ROGAL: That
first evening, I was certain there were going
to be a massive counterattack, absolutely sure. [yelling and gunfire] NARRATOR: The
evening of the 20th of November, 1943 promised
to turn into the longest and bleakest nights many
of them had ever known. Dawn broke over Tarawa. [gunshots] The paradise island had
become a bloody battleground. Dead bodies littered the shore. But the Marines had at
least survived the night. ROBERT KOEHLER: I was very,
very happy to be alive and well and somewhat
refreshed on day two. We were expecting a big attack. We thought it would
come any time. We were just as sure as we
could be that it was coming, because actually, I
think had they done it, they might have been able
to drive us off the island. NARRATOR: The
nighttime counterattack that could have driven the
Marines back into the sea never materialized. Unbeknownst to the
Americans, the previous day, the Japanese commander Admiral
Shibazaki and his officers had been caught in the open. During the first day,
a group of officers, including Admiral Shibazaki
left the bomb-proof to move from the lagoon site closer to the
ocean site where he had another command post set up. Well, someone spotted
that group of officers and called in a destroyer salvo. And so a destroyer
laying out there put out a heavy charge
on them and kill them all, nobody knowing that that
was the commanding general of the Japanese forces. [bombs exploding] NARRATOR: The
Marines had no idea that with a single
broadside, they had taken out Admiral Shibazaki,
the key Japanese commander. In his trench, Kiyoshi Ota
was isolated and leaderless. He was one of the few
Japanese officers left alive on the island. KIYOSHI OTA (FROM DIARY): We
did not know what to believe or what to do, because we had
practically no communication with our command centers. They didn't attack because
they were as fouled up as we were. Their communications
have been shot up. And a lot of them
have been killed. And I think that
they couldn't attack. NARRATOR: Fresh
Marine reinforcements, which had been out at sea
for almost 24 hours, finally hit Tarawa. But Japanese machine gun fire
made it a slow and bloody landing. ELDON 'MIKE' MEYER: It
took me about four hours to get to the beach. But I could see
what was happening. And I saw four or five
people who got hit, you know, who were hurt. When I got in, I saw a
Sergeant for our battalion. I told him, I left my radio
at the end of the pier. So it would stay dry. And he looked at me,
he says, go get it. We need it. I had to go back. NARRATOR: With
reinforcements ashore, the Marines regrouped and
prepared to push inland. From this vantage point, it's
possible to follow the action. The Marines had a tiny
toehold on the island. They held pockets of
ground on the north coast on Red Beaches One,
Two, and Three. The objective on day two was
to link up the scattered Marine units, take the airfield in
the center of the island, and try to push across Tarawa. NORMAN HATCH: Everything was
dicey, because the Japanese were so well-hidden that we
might think that we had secured an area, and somebody
would pop out over here and be at our back
and do some damage. NARRATOR: In the
Tarawa killing zone, a combat cameraman
made a perfect target. I don't know what the Japanese
must have thought of me when they saw me, because I'm the
only guy standing up, walking around. I can't shoot laying
down on the ground. You have to walk
around and do it. NARRATOR: These revealing aerial
photographs show just what the Marines were up against. The Japanese had built a
series of seemingly impregnable defenses. The Japanese opposition was
too strong for the Marines to move inland on
the northern beaches, so they had to suddenly
change their plan. In mid-battle, they
improvised and decided to attack Green Beach on the
West of the island instead. WENDELL CRAIN: We
had to do something. We had very little
to do it with. We got some Naval
gunfire from destroyers to fire for effect for
about 20 or 30 minutes before we're
supposed to jump off. We had a couple of Sherman
tanks that had still survived and we had some
machine gun support. NARRATOR: Precision Naval
gunfire from nearby destroyers silence the Japanese defenders. The Marines, supported
by the first two Shermans to see action in the Pacific,
drove down the West Coast. There was a nice combination
of infantry tank and destroyer support. Once the attack started,
around 11:00 in the morning, it only took about
an hour for them to secure all of Green Beach. WENDELL CRAIN: It was an
organized, by-the-book attack. WE used a lot of flamethrowers. We use a lot of hand grenades. We found that smoke grenades
were very effective. You throw a smoke grenade
in a covered place where there are six
persons with a machine gun, it don't last very long. NARRATOR: By 12:30
on the second day, the Marines had scored that
first victory on Tarawa. JOHN WUKOVITS: And what's so
crucial about that is that you had pretty much a secure
beach to bring in-- not just throw in units of
Marines, but you could throw in the entire
unit, the entire battalion. WENDELL CRAIN: When
they came ashore, they were a reinforced
battalion of about 1,200 men. They had all their
equipment, there were fresh, they knew what
lay ahead of them. NARRATOR: With fresh troops
and equipment ashore, the Marines were poised to
drive east across the island. By 4:00 PM, they had made
it to the central runway. And a tiny unit raced to
the south coast and dug in. By early evening
of the second day, the Marines were
finally on the move. Racing to keep up with
the advancing Marines was combat cameraman,
Norm Hatch. I sat down to do a reload. And I thought the
sand was awfully hard. Sort of pushed the sand aside. It was filled with Kirin beer. The Kirin beer tasted so sweet
and so clean and so nice. We take two bottles out, and
each would tie it to his belt. When we were up front shooting
someplace a little low, we'd say, anybody like a beer? And of course, we get that
look on everybody's face. What the hell is this guy doing? That was one of the lighter
moments of the battle. NARRATOR: Lighter
moments came few and far between on Tarawa
at the battle for the island reached fevered pitch. We knew that they
couldn't go anywhere. And they didn't
want to go anywhere. So we knew that they were going
to fight till the last person, which they did. NARRATOR: As night
fell on day two, Japanese troops regrouped for a
counterattack the next morning. They were determined to
make the Marines pay dearly for every inch of Tarawa's soil. [yelling] 6:00 AM, November the 22, 1943. By the third day of
the battle for Tarawa, a grim determination had
gripped the Japanese Garrison. Kiyoshi Ota was one of the
last officers left alive. KIYOSHI OTA (FROM DIARY):
Our men could not speak. Their faces were pale. We were surrounded by an
overwhelming force of the enemy with no hope for outside
support or assistance. We knew that we would
die, one after another, as cherry blossoms fall or
autumn leaves are scattered. NARRATOR: The Marines
had an awesome task. They had to advance
east across the island. But to do so, they had to take
out each pillbox and foxhole. It was dirty and dangerous work. Everywhere you looked, there
was an emplacement or a machine gun or something
like that to attack. There wasn't any cover. JOHN WUKOVITS: There was
this small plot of sand. You couldn't go anywhere. And so you had two
crack outfits just going at each other incessantly. FILM NARRATOR: It isn't
easy knocking those Japs out of their positions. They're hidden in trees,
behind revetments, buried in pillboxes,
bombproofs, bunkers. JOHN WUKOVITS:
Anywhere on Tarawa, you were subject to
death at any moment. [gunfire] NARRATOR: The Marines
pushed to the east. There was a stronghold
of Japanese resistance at the pocket and concentrations
of Japanese troops on the Eastern
end of the island. New ways of waging
war evolved on Tarawa to cope with this deadly enemy. These methods came to
dominate the Pacific campaign. NORMAN HATCH: It was just
piece by piece operation. As you come up and
find a foxhole area, you'd have to approach it
carefully and eventually, hopefully get a grenade
in it or a flamethrower. And it was that type of action. WILLIAM ROGAL: This was a
battle of little groups led by the strongest man in
the group who may have been a Lieutenant or a Captain,
but in all probability was a Corporal or a Sergeant. And they take the initiative
because it was obvious what had to be done. NARRATOR: The battles were
ferocious and intense. The Marines used every
weapon at their disposal to root out the enemy. FILM NARRATOR: We
use all the firepower we have to blast them out. Our rifle fire is deadly,
so are the flame throwers and the mortars. If you put the flame thrower
and aim on this foxhole over here 75 yards
away, you don't have to leave it there very long. ROBERT KOEHLER: Even if they
don't get hit with the fire, they can't breathe
for a few seconds. And it usually scares the
daylights out of them. WENDELL CRAIN: If you can get a
flame thrower to do that three or four times on
foxholes, you're beginning to get less fire. NARRATOR: By the
afternoon of day three, the Marines who
were pushing east had made it halfway
across the island. But in no-man's land, a
new danger confronted them. This was a war
without front lines. Snipers infested the island. FILM NARRATOR: [inaudible]
suicide snipers tie themselves up in the trees and
take potshots at us. We hit them, and they don't
fall, just die and hang there. [bombs exploding] I noticed as I ran out,
one of the machine gunners have been hit in the back. And I heard some shots that
sounded like they were coming from behind me. And I looked around and there
was only one palm tree there that still had a
lot of fronds on it. So I figured if they were
shooting from behind us, it had to be from up there. So I just emptied my
rifle into the palm tree. And the next time I ran out,
I didn't hear any shots coming from behind. NARRATOR: The air
crackled with sniper fire. Slaughter also
lurked underground. NORMAN HATCH: We
discovered that there was another submerged tank turret. And I saw a rifle being drawn
back in just as I did that. I said, there's the
SOB right there. Well, when the flamethrower
hit it, the door burst open, he broke out, and
he started running. And all the ammunition belts
on him started going off, because he was all on fire. And bullets were flying
in every direction. And we hit the ground. I didn't want to get hit by
a bullet that nobody fired, you know. That was the one time
in the Pacific War I didn't get the
shot I should have. NARRATOR: By day three, Tarawa
had been pockmarked by bombs and incinerated by explosives. In the searing Pacific
heat, the island had become a stinking graveyard
where the dead lay side by side with the living. WILBUR WILSON: I
just remember it as one hot hell hole once
the bodies started decaying. And they do early
in a case like this. Then the smell did
become pretty tough. NARRATOR: Miraculously though,
some life had survived. I heard some sound as
we went by a very damaged Japanese tank. And it sounded like
a person crying. But I wasn't quite sure. And I saw two eyes,
and I knew that they were too close to be human. So it had to be an animal. So Kelly found the top
of an old coffee pot. And I took that and I poured
some of my canteen water in it and held it there
under the tread. And she came forth very
slowly but carefully, and then began to drink the water. NARRATOR: It had been
a costly advance. But by the end of
D-Day plus 2, Marines controlled 2/3 of the island. Suicidal defiance gripped
the Japanese defenders. Kiyoshi Ota, one of the
last Japanese officers alive, joined one of
the suicide squads as they launched their
most terrifying attack yet. [men yelling] KIYOSHI OTA (FROM DIARY):
There were the sounds of grenade explosions. We saw [inaudible] rifles,
the shrieks, yells, and roars. It was just like hell. [gunfire] We repelled a lot
of bonsai attacks. But when they did come, they
come head first right at you. And they'd wait until
the middle of the night. It was an attack off
to our right flank. There may have been
40 or 50 that charged. But they were charging right
straight into very heavy machine gun fire. They got in, some of them. They got through. But you tried to shoot
them with your rifle before they could get
their bayonet to you. NARRATOR: As dawn broke on
day four, one thing was clear. There would be no surrender. Taking Tarawa was now
a war of extermination. The fourth day of
the battle for Tarawa began with a massive Naval
and aerial bombardment. The Marines controlled most
of the tiny Pacific island. But key Japanese
strongholds still remained. Aerial photographs give us
an overview of the action. To the east, the Japanese
were still dug in. And on the boundary of
Red Beaches One and Two, a pocket of strong Japanese
resistance remained. [gunfire] To take the island,
the Marines had to overcome the most desperate
resistance of the campaign so far. They had to storm each
Japanese stronghold to root out the enemy. And they were determined. And they were told that they
were not going to lose it. And they believed it. And they're ready to
die for their cause. FILM NARRATOR: They're
savage fighters. And their lives mean
nothing to them. NARRATOR: Inside their
defenses, the Japanese were all but invincible. But out in the open,
they were easy targets. All of a sudden,
somebody to my left yelled, here come the Japs. And I never did move. All I did was turn my
body in the camera. And I had, in the frame-- and this was the unusual
part of it in a sense. I had in the frame one
of our machine gunners. And then in the
background, there are two squads of
Japanese Marines who have come out
of the command post. And they didn't have
a chance in the world. They were annihilated. But it was the first time,
I know in the Pacific War, that American troops were
shown in the same frame with the enemy fighting. NARRATOR: While some Marines
tackled the pocket of pillboxes on the northern
shore, other units battled the Japanese strongholds
on the east of Tarawa. The Japanese were now
outnumbered and outgunned. They fought ferociously to stem
the tide of advancing Marines. [gunshot] There was a large pillbox. And they got some
grenades into that. And it suddenly seemed like 20
or 30 Japanese came running out of a small opening and
running down a trench. And we had one tank in the area. And he happened to be in
just the right position. And he devastated this group
that were exiting the one pillbox. NARRATOR: Desperation set in
for the beleaguered Japanese. NORMAN HATCH: You would find the
dead Japanese who had committed suicide because capture
was beyond their belief. And it was a dishonor. It would dishonor the family. So you had all that kind of
pressure going against them to make them stand and die. NARRATOR: By
mid-morning, the Marines had gained the upper hand. ROBERT KOEHLER: The
resistance was getting lighter that when we would find an
active machine gun nest, we would kind of surround
it and bypass it. So we were wiping them out
from behind as we proceeded on down the island. NARRATOR: The Japanese
were attacked pillbox by pillbox, man by man. FILM NARRATOR: It's
tough getting them out of places like this. We take it slow, easy. NARRATOR: The Marines
ground down the opposition. By lunchtime on day four, the
final Japanese strongholds fell. JOHN WUKOVITS: Around
noon of the final day, the US Marines reached the end
of the eastern tip of Tarawa. At just about the same time, the
Marines battle in the pocket, the place that put up
a stiff opposition, they finally overwhelmed it. NARRATOR: For the Marines
of the 2nd Division, the battle for Tarawa was over. It had been a short but
uniquely savage operation. NORMAN HATCH: On an island,
which is not quite one third the size of Central
Park in New York, 6,000 people were killed, 2,000
people were wounded all in the space of 76 hours. NARRATOR: The 5,000-strong
Japanese Garrison had been all but wiped out. Kiyoshi Ota was the
only enemy officer left. KIYOSHI OTA (FROM
DIARY): The Americans found me still alive in the
dugout and took me prisoner. They dressed my wounds
and gave me a full meal. The US Marines treated each
other with consideration, but treated me, an enemy,
as if I was their friend. This was just the
opposite of the treatment we had been taught to expect. FILM NARRATOR: These
are Marine dead. This is the price we have to
pay for a war we didn't want. And before it's
over, they'll be more dead on other battlefields. We knew we had lost a
tremendous number of people. We had no idea that this was
going to go down as some kind of an epic, amphibious landing. NARRATOR: A thousand Marines had
died in 76 hours of fighting. The cost of the battle
appalled many Americans. The film made of the operation
brought home to the public the reality of war. NORMAN HATCH: The director
of public information for the Marine Corps, when
asked about it later, said that recruiting fell off
dramatically for a while after that film hit the
public and was displayed in all the movie houses
across the country. NARRATOR: Despite the
deaths and disasters, Tarawa had lessons
for the attack plan of the entire Pacific campaign. JOHN WUKOVITS: Can a group of
soldiers, in this case Marines, can they land against
a defended beachhead and successfully dislodge it? Well, Tarawa showed that in
spite of all the horrors, of course, that it
brought with it, it did show that
it could succeed. So this unknown speck of sand
had quite drastic repercussions for the rest of the war. NARRATOR: With the
airfield they'd captured and their new Central
Pacific base of Tarawa, the Marines began to
push towards Japan. When we start going
through the Central Pacific, you're going on a much shorter
route towards Tokyo and Japan. And the Japanese knew that. And they fought very
hard to defend it. FILM NARRATOR: I guess all
of us knew from the first, no matter how tough the going
was, that we'd take the island. Just the same,
the day the colors were run up on this palm tree
and flew for the first time over Tarawa, we got a
lump in our throats. We were mighty proud. JOHN WUKOVITS: To
me, the marking point of the Battle of Tarawa is this
just amazing display of guts and courage to walk ashore and
be willing to die If you have to, because that'll help
save the guy behind you. [marines yelling] WENDELL CRAIN: We were
delighted to get out of there. I think my main concern
and the concern of most that we lost a lot of friends. You survived. You say, by golly, I
survived another one. I just wonder, how come you
can get out of it, you know? ROBERT KOEHLER: We were Marines,
and we were going to win. We didn't expect to lose. NARRATOR: Contemporaries saluted
a battle that garnered four congressional medals of honor. "Time" magazine wrote, "Last
week, some 2,000 or 3,000 United States Marines, most
of them now dead or wounded, gave the nation a name to
stand beside the Alamo. The name was Tarawa." iclaying]
