ISLAND OF DEATH

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 November 1943, Page 3

ISLAND OF DEATH

HEAVY PRICE IN LIVES PAID BY AMERICAN MARINES FOR CONQUEST OF TARAWA. FEW JAPANESE SURVIVE. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) WASHINGTON, November 28. Only a few hundred out of between 2000 and 3000 United States Marines escaped death or injuryjn the first landing on Tarawa, in the Gilbert. Islands.

The Secretary of the Navy, Colonel Knox, warned that though the Gilberts were occupied after only four days’ fighting, the public should be prepared for heavy American losses. He estimated the Japanese casualties at GOOD. Few Japanese were taken alive. The landings were made on November 20 on Tarawa. Abemana and Makin Islands. One war correspondent says the stiffest price in human life a yard ever exacted in the history of the United States Marines was paid for Tarawa.

Lieutenant-Colonel Evans Carlson, the well-known commando leader, said the Japanese had been warned in advance of the impending American invasion. The position on Tarawa at the end of the first day was so critical that any Japanese counter-attack might have exterminated the Americans, who held only three narrow beach-heads 150 yards deep. The heaviest naval shellfire had failed to wipe out strong enemy defence installations. Pillboxes five feet thick could not be penetrated by 75 mm. guns.

The Marines had to storm ashore through treachiVous coral reefs and high surf which upset light invasion craft. Wave after wave of Americans had to struggle 500 yards through neckdeep water under murderous fire. They met Tojo’s Imperial Marines, the elite of the Japanese forces. “Nowhere can the smell of death lingering over shell-pocked beaches and shattered blockhouses be escaped,” writes a correspondent. “Dead Japanese lie in the ruins of burnt-out pillboxes, in the surf and scattered among palm fronds, where they had perched as snipers.”