On the morning of 20 November 1943 the 2nd Marine Division landed on Betio, the main island of Tarawa Atoll in the Gilbert Islands. Boats ran aground on the coral reef and many Marines had to wade hundreds of yards to the beach under fire. Betio was declared secure on 23 November. About a thousand Americans had been killed, and almost the entire Japanese garrison died.
Across the reef
Betio was a small island of Tarawa Atoll with an airfield and a strong Japanese garrison. The National WWII Museum calls the invasion the first major American action in the Central Pacific. After a naval and air bombardment, H-hour was put back twice, finally to 9:00. The first amphibian tractors of the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines, crawled onto Red Beach 1 at 9:10, and most were hit by machine-gun and antiboat fire as they came in.1
The waves that followed in ordinary landing boats fared worse. The Marine Corps' own history of the battle relates that one company's boats ran aground on the reef about 500 yards out, and the men waded toward the beach under fire, losing more than a third of their strength before they reached it. For the rest of the day the Marines clung to a narrow strip of sand behind a log sea wall.2
Four days
Reinforcements fought their way inland over the next two days, and after the Marines threw back three counterattacks in the night of 22 to 23 November, Betio was declared secure on the 23rd. The Marine Corps' figures, compiled in 1947, give 990 Marines killed or died of wounds and 2,296 wounded. The National WWII Museum gives about 1,000 Marines and sailors killed and more than 2,000 wounded. On the Japanese side, the Marine history counts a garrison of 4,836, of whom 17 Japanese and 129 Korean laborers were taken prisoner and the rest died; the museum puts the Japanese combatants who died at more than 2,500, nearly the whole defense force. The full story is in our article on the Battle of Tarawa.3
Also on this day
- 1759: Battle of Maxen. Austrian forces under Field Marshal Daun trapped an isolated Prussian corps of 14,000 men under Friedrich August von Finck at Maxen in Saxony in the Seven Years' War.
- 1845: Battle of Vuelta de Obligado. Buenos Aires forces, with defenses led by General Lucio Mansilla, tried to block an Anglo-French squadron forcing its way up the Paraná River.
