World War II Pacific: Battles and Campaigns from Guadalcanal to Okinawa 1942-1945 (WW2 Pacific Military History Series)

by Daniel Wrinn

  Newly established Marine divisions, as well as the raider battalions, parachute battalions, the aircraft wings, seagoing Marines, fleet Marine force Pacific units, and others, were all now allowed to have their own distinctive patch, a total of thirty-three, following the lead of the 1st Marine Division. The Marines that returned to the United States for duty or leave were authorized to wear the insignia until assigned to another unit. Many 1st Division men joining another unit and having to relinquish the wearing of their 1st Division patch were annoyed. After the war, Captain Dixon went to General Vandegrift and told him he no longer believed Marines should wear anything on their uniforms to distinguish them from other Marines. Vandegrift agreed, and the patches came off for good.

  The George Medal

  The George metal was legendary among 1st Marine Division veterans of Guadalcanal. Only fifty were cast in Australia before the mold broke. This medal commemorated the difficult divisional switch during the early Guadalcanal days. Back when food, ammunition, and heavy equipment were in short supply, and the Japanese had plenty. When the issue was no longer in doubt, the Marines reflected on the D-Day plus three Navy withdrawals in the face of increasing Japanese air attacks and surface action, leaving the divisions in a tight spot.

  Captain Donald Dixon again resolved to commemorate the occasion. He designed an appropriate medal using a fifty-cent piece to draw a circle on the captured Japanese blank military postcard. Captain Dixon’s design was approved, and when the division got to Australia, the mold was made by a local craftsman. Only a small number were capped before the mold became unserviceable. The Marines that wanted a medal, paid one Australian pound and received a certificate. These medals are now an even greater rarity than at the time.

  The medal design shows a hand and sleeve dropping a hot potato shaped like Guadalcanal into the arms of a Marine. The original design for the sleeve stripes were from Admiral Gormley or Admiral Fletcher, but the final medal diplomatically omitted the style of identification.

  On the opposite side is a cactus, indigenous to Arizona, not Guadalcanal, but representing the codename for the island, “Cactus.” The inscription is Facia Georgius, “Let George do it.” This is how it became known as the George Medal. On the medal’s reverse shows a picture of a cow (the original design was a Japanese soldier with his breaches down) and electric fan, and is inscribed: “in fond remembrance of the happy days spent from August 7, 1942, to January 5, 1943, USMC.” The suspension ribbon was made from the pale green herringbone twill from a Marines utility uniform. The legend has it that for it to be authentic, the utilities from which the ribbons were made had to have been washed in the waters of Guadalcanal’s Lunga River.

  Operation Galvanic

  1943 Battle for Tarawa

  Introduction

  In August 1943, Admiral Spruance, the Central Pacific Naval Force Commander, met in secret with General Julian Smith and other 2nd Marine Division staff officers. Admiral Spruance told the Marines to prepare for an amphibious assault in the Gilbert Islands by November. The Marines were well aware of the Gilbert Islands. Under Colonel Evans Carlson, the 2nd Marine Raider Battalion had attacked Makin only a year before. Intelligence reported that the Japanese had fortified Betio Island in the Tarawa Atoll. Imperial Japanese Marines guarded an airstrip that Admiral Spruance designated the prime target for the 2nd Marines.

  Colonel Shoup was General Smith’s operation officer. He studied Betio’s primitive chart and saw the tiny island was surrounded by a barrier reef. Colonel Shoup asked if any of the Navy’s shallow draft experimental plastic boats would be provided. He was disappointed to hear that only the usual wooden landing craft would be available for this assault. The operation on Tarawa had become a tactical watershed. This would be the first large-scale test of American amphibious forces against a strongly fortified beachhead. The Marine assault on Tarawa Atoll’s islet, Betio, was one of World War II Pacific Theater’s bloodiest. After the assault, Time magazine published its post-battle analysis: Over three thousand United States Marines, mostly now dead or wounded, gave the nation a new name to stand behind those of Concord Bridge, the Bon Homme Richard, Little Big Horn, the Alamo, and Belleau Wood. This new name is Tarawa.

  The Yogaki Plan

  The Gilbert Islands comprise sixteen scattered atolls along the equator in the Central Pacific. Tarawa Atoll is over 2,000 miles southwest of Pearl Harbor and 540 miles southeast of the Marshall Islands. Betio is the principal islet in the Tarawa Atoll.

  Three days after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese seized Makin and Tarawa from the British. After a raid in August 1942, the Japanese realized their vulnerability in the Gilbert Island chain. After the attack, the 6th Yokosuka Special Naval Landing Force was dispatched to the islands, led by Admiral Saichiro, a well-known engineer. He directed the construction of advanced and sophisticated defensive positions on the Tarawa Atoll. Admiral Saichiro’s vision was to make Tarawa so formidable that any American amphibious assault would stall at the water’s edge, and allow the Japanese time to annihilate the landing force.

  The Japanese strategy was outlined in the Yogaki Plan. Its principal point was to defend Eastern Micronesia from an Allied invasion. Admiral Nimitz took the Japanese threat of counterattack with bombers, submarines, and their main battle fleet, seriously. Admiral Nimitz told Spruance, “Get the hell in and the hell out.” The overall theme of this island assault was to seize the Gilbert Island targets with lightning speed.

  Codename “Operation Galvanic” was assigned by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to capture Tarawa and Makin in the Gilbert Islands. The 2nd Marine Division was given the invasion of Tarawa while the Army’s 165th Regimental Combat Team would assault Makin. All three of the landing force commanders assigned to Operation Galvanic had the last name Smith. The senior general was Holland “Howling Mad” Smith, who commanded the V Amphibious Corps. General Julian Smith commanded the 2nd Marines. And General Ralph Smith was in charge of the 27th Infantry Division.

  Admiral Kelly Turner, a veteran of the bloody Guadalcanal Campaign, was assigned command of all amphibious assault forces for Operation Galvanic. Admiral Turner was accompanied by General Holland Smith and was given Task Force 52 for the assault on Makin.

  Admiral Harry Hill was assigned command of Task Force 53 for the assault on Tarawa. General Julian Smith and Admiral Harry Hill discussed the plans on board the battleship Maryland. These two officers couldn’t be more different. Admiral Hill was impetuous and outspoken, while General Smith was reflective and reserved. They worked together well and outlined a plan for the assault on the Gilbert Islands. Admiral Spruance set the D-Day for November 20, 1943.

  Colonel Shoup came up with an outline for tackling Betio’s barrier reefs. The Marines used LVT-1s (Landing Vehicle Tracked or “Alligators”), an amphibian tractor, during Guadalcanal. The Alligators were unarmored logistical vehicles. They were not assault craft, but true amphibians—capable of being launched at sea and moving through moderate surf to reach the shore. Colonel Shoup discussed the potential idea of using the LVT assault craft with the 2nd Amphibian Tractor Battalion commander, Major Henry Drews. The major liked the idea but warned Shoup that many tractors were in poor condition after the Guadalcanal Campaign. Major Drews could provide only seventy-five Alligators—nowhere near enough to transport all the assault waves. Worse, the thin hulled tractors were vulnerable to enemy fire and would need armor plating. Colonel Shoup ordered Major Drews to modify the tractors with whatever armor plating he could scrounge together.

  General Julian Smith knew that the armored LVT-2s, known as “Water Buffalo”, were stockpiled in San Diego. He submitted an urgent request for one hundred newer models to be dispatched immediately. General Holland Smith endorsed the request while Admiral Turner disagreed. The argument was intense. Admiral Turner did not dispute the need for Marines to have a reef crossing capability. He objected to the fact these newly ordered vehicles would need to be transported to Tarawa. They’d require LSTs (Tank Landing Ships). The L
STs slow speed (8 knots max) would require an additional convoy, independent escorts, and increased risk of losing the initiative and strategic surprise. General Smith reduced the debate to the essentials: “No LVTs, No operation.”

  Admiral Turner eventually agreed, but it would not be a complete victory for the 2nd Marines. Fifty of the new one hundred LVT-2s would support the Army’s landing at Makin against a lighter opposition. The Marine vehicles scheduled to arrive would not be there in time for any workup training or rehearsal landings. The first time the Marine Infantry would lay eyes on the LVT-2s would be in the predawn hours of Tarawa’s D-Day—if at all.

  Task Force 53

  Replacement troops poured into New Zealand. General Smith requested the reassignment of Colonel Edson to be his division chief of staff. The fiery Colonel Edson was now a Marine Corps legend for his heroic exploits on Guadalcanal. He worked tirelessly to forge the new recruits and veterans into an effective amphibious assault team. The intelligence reports from Betio were startling. The island was void of any natural fortifications to conceal enemy fire. And too narrow, inhibiting any maneuvering room, which favored the Japanese. Betio was 800 yards at its widest point and less than three miles long. It also contained no natural elevation higher than ten feet above sea level. Colonel Edson observed that every place on the island could be covered by machine gun and direct rifle fire.

  These elaborate defenses were prepared by Admiral Saichiro. He used minefields, long strings of barbed wire to protect beach approaches, and concrete and steel pillboxes and bunkers. The Japanese built a barrier of coral and logs around much of the islands. They use tank traps to protect fortified command bunkers and firing positions inland of the beach. Of the island’s five hundred pillboxes, most were covered by steel plates, logs, and sand.

  The Japanese defenders on the island had 8-inch turret-mounted naval rifles, “Singapore guns.” They also had many anti-aircraft, anti-boat, heavy caliber coastal defense and field artillery guns, and howitzers. They had an abundant amount of 50mm mortars, dual-purpose 13mm heavy machine guns, and light tanks with 37mm guns. During August, the Japanese high command replaced Saichiro with Admiral Shibasaki, an officer with a reputation for being more of a fighter than an engineer.

  Intelligence estimated the total strength of the enemy garrison on Betio was 4,800 men. Twenty-six hundred of them were Imperial Japanese Marines, first-rate naval troops, nicknamed “Tojo’s best.” Colonel Edson’s 1st Raider Battalion had taken nearly 100 casualties wrestling Tulagi from these elite Japanese naval troops in the previous August. Admiral Shibasaki boasted that a million Americans couldn’t take Tarawa in a hundred years. His optimism was understandable at the time, because Tarawa was the most heavily defended island ever invaded by Allied forces in the Pacific.

  Task Force 53 desperately needed detailed tide information. Colonel Shoup was confident that the LVTs could negotiate the reef during any tide. Still, the rest of the tanks, artillery, assault troops, and reserve forces would need to come ashore in Higgins boats (LCVPs). The water depth over the reef was four feet, it was enough to float a loaded Higgins boat. If less than four feet, the troops would need to wade several hundred yards ashore against an array of deadly Japanese weapons.

  A New Zealand reserve officer, with fifteen years’ experience sailing Tarawa’s waters, predicted: “there won’t even be 3 feet of water on that reef when the assault begins.”

  Colonel Shoup took his warning seriously and made sure that all troops knew in advance that there would be a 50-50 chance of having to wade ashore. Besides the island’s physical constraints and daunting Japanese defenses, Shoup proposed a landing plan that included a preliminary bombardment and advance seizure of neighboring Bairiki Islands, to be used as an artillery firebase and a decoy landing. General Smith took this proposal to Pearl Harbor and recommended it to the significant officers involved in Operation Galvanic: Admirals Spruance, Turner and Nimitz, and General Holland Smith.

  The restrictions imposed by CinCPac were sobering. Admiral Nimitz declared that the requirement for strategic surprise would limit any bombardment of Betio to only three hours on the morning of D-Day. He also ruled out Bairiki’s advance seizure and any decoy landings to defend against the Japanese fleet. To make things worse, General Holland Smith announced that the 6th Marines would be withheld and used as a reserve force. The 2nd Marine Division’s tactical options had been stripped away. Ordered into a frontal assault against the teeth of Japanese defenses on Betio with only a three-hour bombardment. Without the 6th Marines attacking the island fortress, that would mean only a 2:1 troop superiority—well below the doctrinal minimum.

  Colonel Shoup returned to New Zealand and prepared a modified operations order and selected the landing beaches. The southwestern tip of Tarawa near the lagoon entrance looked like the profile of a crested bird lying on its back. The Japanese concentrated their defenses on the southern and western coasts (the bird’s head and back). Northern beaches had calmer lagoon waters and only one deadly exception. Defenses in this sector were incomplete, but being improved daily. A thousand-yard pier that jutted north over the fringing reef into deeper lagoon waters (the bird’s legs, sticking upward) was an attractive logistics target. He selected the northern coast for landing beaches—but there was no safe avenue of approach.

  The northern shore of Betio from the departure line within the lagoon was designated for the three landing beaches, each 600 yards in length. Moving from west to east, Red Beach One, made up the bird’s beak and neck from the northwestern tip of Betio to a point just east, Red Beach Two made up the bird’s breast from the juncture to the pier, and Red Beach Three from the pier eastward. Green Beach on the western shore, along with other beaches, would be designated as contingencies.

  General Smith planned to land with two regiments abreast and one in reserve. Losing the 6th Marines forced him to make a significant change. Colonel Shoup’s modified plan now assigned the 2nd Marines, reinforced by 2/8 (2nd Battalion, 8th Marines) as the main assault force. The rest of the 8th Marines would make up the divisional reserve. An advanced seizure of the pier by First Lieutenant Hawkin’s Scout-Sniper Platoon would precede the main assault.

  General Smith scheduled a large-scale amphibious exercise in Hawkes Bay on November 1. He planned for New Zealand trucks to haul the men back to Wellington at the end for a large dance. The entire 2nd Marine Division boarded the sixteen amphibious ships for the routine exercise. It was all a ruse. The ships weighed anchor and headed north to begin Operation Galvanic.

  Task Force 53 assembled in New Hebrides on November 7. Admiral Hill arrived onboard the Maryland. Now that the Marines were keenly aware and operations were underway, they were more interested in the fourteen new Sherman tanks on board the Ashland. The 2nd Marine Division had never operated with medium tanks before. The rehearsal landings did little to prepare the Marines for the assault on Betio. Fleet carriers and air wings were assaulting other targets in the Solomons. Sherman tanks had nowhere to offload: the new LVT-2s were still somewhere to the north, underway for Tarawa. And naval gunships were bombarding Erradaka Island, away from the troops landing at Mele Bay.

  One positive aspect of the amphibious assault rehearsal was that the Marines could practice embarking on rubber rafts. In the prewar Fleet Marine Force, the first battalion in each regiment was designated the Rubber Boat Battalion. This common site of a mini-flotilla inspired catcalls from other Marines. The main contentious issue during the post-rehearsal critique was the naval gunfire plan. The target island would receive the greatest concentration of naval gunfire in the war to date. Admiral Turner was optimistic about the outcome; he made his plans clear that they did not intend to just neutralize or destroy the island—but obliterate it. General Smith reminded the senior naval officers that the Marines crossed the beach with bayonets. Their only armor would be khaki shirts.

  While on New Hebrides, Colonel Marshall, the commander of Combat Team Two became too ill to continue. General Smith p
romoted Colonel Shoup to relieve Colonel Marshall. Shoup knew the 2nd Marines, and he knew the plan. The architect was now the executor.

  Once underway, Admiral Hill ordered the various commanders of Task Force 53 to brief troops on the destination and mission. Tarawa was a surprise to most of the men. Many had believed they were heading for Wake Island. On the day before D-Day, General Smith sent a message to the 2nd Division officers and men. In his message, he reassured his men that the Navy would stay and provide support throughout the campaign—unlike in the Guadalcanal Campaign. The troops attentively listened to these words coming over the loudspeakers: “We are embarked on a great offensive to destroy the enemy in the Central Pacific. The Navy will screen our operation and support our attack tomorrow with the greatest concentration of naval gunfire and aerial bombardment in the history of war. The Navy will remain with us until our objective has been secured. Garrison troops are already en route to relieve us as soon as we have completed our work. Good luck and God bless you all.”

  As the sun set on Task Force 53 on the evening of D -1, it seemed strategic surprise had been attained. More good news came with the report that small convoys of LSTs transporting the LVT-2s arrived safely from Samoa and had joined the formation. All the pieces were coming together.

  D-Day at Betio

  Shortly after midnight on D-Day, the crowded transports of Task Force 53 arrived off Tarawa. The sailors cheered as the public address system played the Marine Hymn to the 2/2 Marines scrambling over the sides and down the cargo nets at 0320.