2nd Battalion, 25th Marine Regiment is a reserve infantry battalion in the United States Marine Corps , currently headquartered in Garden City, New York, with its subordinate units located throughout the Mid-Atlantic States. The battalion falls under the command of the 25th Marine Regiment and the 4th Marine Division.
The battalion was first activated on 01 May, 1943 at the new Marine Corps Base of Camp Lejeune, New River, North Carolina. In August and September, 1943, they were relocated to Camp Pendleton, Oceanside, California to complete their training. In January 1944, they were deployed to the Marshall Islands in the Central Pacific and participated in the first of their WWII combat actions on several islets of Kwajalein Atoll in support of the 4th Marine Division's primary mission of securing the largest connecting islets of Roi and Namur at the north end of Kwajalein Atoll.
There soon followed actions on Saipan (15 Jun-09 Jul, 1944) and Tinian (24 Jul-09 Aug, 1944) in the Northern Marianas Islands, for which the 4th Marine Division received the Navy Presidential Unit Citation. In February 1945, the battalion landed with other units of the 4th Marine Division on the island of Iwo Jima in the Bonin 'Volcano' Islands of Japan. The resulting battle was the bloodiest for the United States Marine Corps in WWII and resulted in a second Navy Presidential Unit Citation for the 4th Marine Division.
In October 1945, the 25th Marine Regiment and the entire 4th Marine Division were relocated to Camp Pendleton, Oceanside, California and were subsequently de-activated on 31 October, 1945.
On 01 July, 1962, 2/25 was re-activated and assigned to the 4th Marine Division, Marine Forces Reserve. The battalion has since participated, in whole or in part in the First Gulf War (1990-1991) and the Global War on Terror (2001-Present) as well as making some deployments to African nations like Senegal and Mozambique. In addition, 2/25 has been deployed to such diverse locations as Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Lithuania, Romania and Norway to participate in training activities.
Description
The Battle of Kwajalein was fought as part of the Pacific campaign of World War II. It took place from 31 January-3 February 1944, on Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Employing the hard-learned lessons of the battle of Tarawa, the United States launched a successful twin assault on the main islands of Kwajalein in the south and Roi-Namur in the north. The Japanese defenders put up stiff resistance, although outnumbered and under-prepared. The determined defense of Roi-Namur left only 51 survivors of an original garrison of 3,500.
For the US, the battle represented both the next step in its island-hopping march to Japan and a significant moral victory because it was the first time the Americans had penetrated the "outer ring" of the Japanese Pacific sphere. For the Japanese, the battle represented the failure of the beach-line defense. Japanese defenses became prepared in depth, and the battles of Peleliu, Guam, and the Marianas proved far more costly to the US.