The bloody, 76-hour battle on a tiny atoll that helped end World War II

During three days of fierce fighting, thousands of soldiers died on beaches and in the ocean for a prize – a strategic patch of coral sand and the crucial air strip, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean – that would help decide the outcome of World War II. .

Eighty years ago, the US military attacked the island of Betio, part of the Tarawa Atoll in what is now the archipelagic state of Kiribati, to wrest it from Japanese control.

With a length of only 4 km, Betio had little significance. But its location would allow the United States to move northwest: first to the Marshall Islands, then to the Mariana Islands, and finally to Japan itself. These were the “leapfrog” tactics used by the Allies in the Pacific to weaken Japanese control of the region and establish bases for further attacks.

At Betio, the U.S. military had expected an easy conquest by air and sea, a so-called amphibious assault involving about 18,000 Marines and another 35,000 troops. But waiting for them were heavy Japanese fortifications, including concrete bunkers and cannons along the sandy edges of the atoll and some 5,000 troops, nearly a quarter of them enslaved Korean laborers, on the front lines.

In 1943, Sgt. James G. Lucas described the grim early indications that the plan had failed: “’We have landed against heavy opposition,’ came the first word from the shore. ‘Victims serious.’”

The American forces were well armed, with thousands of pounds of explosives and a fleet of warships and amphibious vehicles. But, faced with an unexpected low tide, the Marines were forced to abandon their ships offshore and wade to the island – where they were shot down by waiting Japanese snipers, leaving a tangle of floating bodies for their compatriots to navigate through .

“There was no way to get out of the line of fire,” Leon Cooper, the commander of a U.S. Navy landing craft that was part of the attack, said decades later in the 2009 documentary. “Return to Tarawa.” “Every damn corner was covered. We were bouncing and stumbling over all this carnage.”

The turning point in the battle came on the second day, in the form of millions of American bullets and hundreds of tons of explosives.

“Strafing planes and dive bombers are raking the island,” Robert Sherrod, a war correspondent for Time Magazine, wrote in a message. “Light and medium tanks came ashore and rolled up to fire highly explosive charges directly into the sniper trenches of enemy fortresses.”

By the end of the three days of war, more than 1,000 Marines and approximately 4,500 soldiers on the Japanese side had been killed, and thousands more were injured.

“The swampy bodies on the coral plains were collected, the rude island graveyards were filled,” Mr. Sherrod wrote.

He was part of a contingent of photographers, cameramen and correspondents who accompanied US troops to Tarawa. Their work made the battle one of the most documented battles of the war and produced the Academy Award-winning documentary film “With the Marines in Tarawa.”

Those images were barely censored before being shown to the American public, and caused outrage at home. Instead of scenes of victory, the American public was confronted with terrifying images in which, as Mr. Sherrod described it, “riddled corpses formed a hideous ridge along the narrow white beaches, where men of the Second Marine Division died for every yard of sand.” .”

The Battle of Tarawa lasted 76 hours between November 20 and 23, 1943. What follows is a selection of photographs of the fighting, as captured by American photographers.

The first image shows US Marines on a landing ship approaching Tarawa in November 1943.

Two months earlier, American forces launched airstrikes on Japan’s Tarawa airport.

Marines wading through water under enemy fire as low tide and a coral reef initially prevented the landing boats from coming ashore.

A Marine looks at the half-buried body of a Japanese soldier.

Marines approach a Japanese bunker. Tarawa was one of the most fortified atolls America would invade during the Pacific War. Japanese forces had built dug-in concrete bunkers, pillboxes, sea walls and an extensive trench system.

Marines rest next to an amphibious landing vehicle on a beach.

Bodies of soldiers lying on the beach of Betio, where they had had to wade to shore under enemy fire in the first phase of the attack.

A Marine shoots at Japanese soldiers hidden in a bunker as American soldiers move inland.

Marines charge across open ground from the beach to the airstrip, while some soldiers carry shovels to build cover for themselves in the sand. The airstrip, which divided the island into north and south, was the main target of the attack on the atoll. It would prove to be a very valuable asset for the Allies, who launched the Marshalls campaigns about ten weeks after the United States captured Tarawa.

Marines wounded during the battle were returned to a ship in a landing craft.

A combat correspondent interviewing a Marine during the battle.

The bodies of a Marine and a Japanese soldier lie in a clearing.

Marines drinking Japanese beer and sake, taken from Japanese fortified positions at the end of the battle.

A combat photographer examines the remains of a Japanese Shinto shrine after the battle.

Japanese and Korean prisoners after the American victory. Only one Japanese officer and sixteen enlisted men surrendered; the rest of the garrison died in battle or by suicide. Most of the prisoners were Korean laborers brought to the atoll to build the Japanese defense line.

Graves of Marines marked with artillery shells and helmets.

A Marine patrolled Tarawa beach in December 1943, with two captured Japanese naval guns in the background.