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Tarawa, Gilbert Islands, Kiribati - November 20 to November 23, 1943 Of the 3,636 Japanese in the garrison, only one officer and sixteen enlisted men surrendered. Of the 1,200 Korean laborers brought to Tarawa to construct the defenses, only 129 survived. All told, 4,690 of the island's defenders were killed. The 2nd Marine Division suffered 894 killed in action, 48 officers and 846 enlisted men, while an additional 84 of the wounded survivors later succumbed to what proved to be fatal wounds. Of these, 8 were officers and 76 were enlisted men. A further 2,188 men were wounded in the battle, 102 officers and 2,086 men. Of the roughly 12,000 2nd Marine Division marines on Tarawa, 3,166 officers and men became casualties. Nearly all of these casualties were suffered in the 76 hours between the landing at 0910 20 November and the island being declared secure at 1330 23 November. The Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC), investigated the cases of American servicemen who remain unaccounted for from the Battle of Tarawa, including 103 who are buried as "Unknown" in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu. It is a tiny island; its main feature (and the reason for its capture) was a small airstrip that ran down its middle, almost from one beach to the other. Marines commented that, in most places on the island, a pitcher with a good arm could throw a baseball from one side to the other. Rather than one big cemetery, the Americans buried their dead in several smaller cemeteries where space and convenience permitted. They were marked as well as possible, understood to be temporary and left to the care of the garrison. When graves registration teams arrived after the war, they found an enormous mess and very few remains. The small cemeteries had been moved during the war to accommodate the expanding base and while the main cemetery had been spruced up (in advance of a visit from a LIFE magazine photographer) headstones often did not line up with graves or, indeed, follow the lines of burial at all. Many of the bodies had no identification, and identifying features were long gone. By the time the graves registration teams called it quits, they had repatriated a few score remains, returned a few dozen as "unknown" and left hundreds behind as simply unrecoverable.
HAPPE, Glenn, 278623, Co C, 1st Bn, 8th Mar, 2nd MarDiv, FMF, Gilbert Is, November 20, 1943, killed in action + HAPPE, Glenn, Gunnery Sergeant, 278623, USMC, from California, Honolulu Memorial + HAPPE, Glenn, Gunnery Sgt., USMC. Wife, Mrs. Glenn Happe, 1226 S. Sutter St., Stockton, Calif + HAPPE, Glenn, GYSGT, 278623, USMC, from California, location Gilbert Islands, date of loss November 20, 1943
Central Pacific Campaign (1941-43)/Battle of Tarawa
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November / 1943
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November / 1943
Description The Battle of Tarawa (US code name Operation Galvanic) was a battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II, fought from November 20 to November 23, 1943. It took place at the Tarawa Atoll in the Gilbert Islands, located in what is now the nation of Kiribati. Nearly 6,400 Japanese, Koreans, and Americans died in the fighting, mostly on and around the small island of Betio.
The Battle of Tarawa was the first American offensive in the critical central Pacific region. It was also the first time in the war that the United States faced serious Japanese opposition to an amphibious landing. Previous landings met little or no initial resistance, but this time the 4,500 Japanese defenders were well-supplied and well-prepared, and they fought almost to the last man, exacting a heavy toll on the United States Marine Corps. The US had suffered similar casualties in other campaigns, for example over the six months of the Guadalcanal Campaign, but in this case the losses were incurred within the space of 76 hours.
