1장
The Battle That Changed America's View of War
Pearl Harbor may have drawn America into World War II, but it was a tiny, obscure island called Tarawa that forced the nation to confront war's true horror. When Marines stormed Betio's beaches in November 1943, they faced what military historians would later call the most heavily defended shoreline of the entire war. The resulting seventy-six hours of combat produced casualties that shocked the American public and transformed how the media covered the conflict. Until Tarawa, censors had largely sanitized war coverage, but the graphic footage and unflinching reporting from this battle shattered these barriers. The documentary "With the Marines at Tarawa," featuring combat photographer Norman Hatch's stunning footage, won an Academy Award and changed how Americans perceived the Pacific War. Time correspondent Robert Sherrod, who waded ashore with the Marines, later called it "the most haunting memory of World War II" - a sentiment shared by the young men who survived the bloodbath and the families who lost loved ones on that "one square mile of hell."
2장
From High School Friends to Pacific Warriors
In 1938, Charlie Montague and Gene Seng lived carefree high school lives in San Antonio, Texas. The inseparable friends spent weekends working on "the Hoopie," their beloved 1932 Chevrolet coupe with bright red oilcloth seat covers. Charlie was an introspective ranch boy with remarkable shooting skills and calf-roping talent, devoted to his girlfriend Lucille "Billie" Miller. Gene was a smooth-talking ladies' man who maintained close bonds with his family. Both attended Central Catholic High School where Gene played football and boxed. Their weekends often involved adventures at the Montague Ranch, hunting and exploring the Texas countryside.
Neither closely followed world affairs beyond vague awareness of Hitler's actions in Europe and Japanese troubles in China. Like most Americans, they felt insulated from distant conflicts. This isolation would soon end dramatically when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The news transformed these young men's lives instantly. Within weeks, they joined thousands of other young Americans flooding recruiting stations nationwide.
After consulting with his girlfriend Billie's parents, Charlie arranged to enlist first, then return after boot camp to marry her. Gene visited all his relatives to say goodbye before the pair enlisted together on February 3, 1942, joining the Marines when only eighteen of thirty applicants were accepted. Their families and Billie met them at the San Antonio train station at 2:00 A.M. for emotional farewells. Charlie and Billie shared a brief private moment with promises to write, while Gene's family expressed pride in his service. As George Montague later wrote, they were leaving "because they loved" the land and people they were defending.
Boot camp proved a brutal awakening. When Dick Meadows and his fellow recruits arrived in San Diego singing the Marine Hymn, crusty sergeants quickly dispelled their enthusiasm. The drill instructors owned them "body and soul," issuing uniforms, rifles, and a punishing schedule from 0500 to 2200 daily. Training was relentless-endless drills, weapons training, and physical challenges designed to break them down and rebuild them as Marines. Seng described being "as sore as a football player the second day of the season."
Degradation was constant, with drill sergeants using sticks and harsh discipline to strip away individuality. Albert Gilman called it "a complete scary time. You became nothing when you went there." Throughout this ordeal, Seng and Montague maintained close ties with their families and leaned on their Catholic faith, attending confession and communion regularly.
3장
Forged in the Crucible of Combat
The 2nd Marine Division received its baptism of fire in the Solomon Islands campaign before earning a well-deserved rest in New Zealand. As the transports entered Wellington Harbor, the weary Marines admired the capital's San Francisco-like terrain. New Zealanders embraced their saviors with extraordinary hospitality. With most of New Zealand's men fighting in North Africa, citizens opened their homes to Marines, hospitals tended the wounded and malaria-stricken, and a profound bond formed between Marines and locals.
New Zealand offered paradise after combat's horrors. "It was a land of milk and honey-more explicitly, steak and eggs, friendly allies, and beautiful girls," wrote Marine correspondent Jim Lucas. The government allowed extra gasoline so residents could show Marines their beautiful country. Marines feasted on six meals daily while hunting, fishing, and sightseeing occupied their free time.
With New Zealand's men fighting overseas, young Marines found abundant female companionship. "On liberty, you'd get off the train and the whole platform would have fifteen to twenty girls," explained Dick Meadows. Before leaving for Tarawa, six hundred Marines married or became engaged to New Zealand women, including Gene Seng, who fell for June McDougall, "cute as a bug's ear and full of life as a barrel of monkeys." Charlie Montague remained faithful to Billie back home.
This idyll ended abruptly when training intensified under Colonel Edson, who transformed the 2nd Division into a crack outfit with eyes that "gleamed with the impersonal menace of pointed pistol muzzles." By October, fifty-one Marines had died from training accidents, but the men were combat-ready. Major Henry "Jim" Crowe, already legendary for his fearlessness, drove his 8th Battalion relentlessly, challenging anyone who thought themselves tougher to fight him in the woods. "His men would follow him to hell and back," said Private Muhlbach.
As departure preparations intensified in late October, war correspondents positioned themselves to document the upcoming battle. Unlike journalists seeking conspiracies, these reporters aimed to accurately convey war's horrors and educate Americans about the sacrifices required. The government granted them unprecedented battlefield access, allowing them to share the same risks as fighting men. Correspondents like Robert Sherrod traveled thousands of miles to secure assignments covering what promised to be the Pacific War's biggest landing to date.
4장
Paradise Transformed into Fortress
The Central Pacific's beauty has long captivated visitors-pristine atolls with swaying palm fronds and crystal blue lagoons nestled inside protective coral reefs. Robert Louis Stevenson once described the Gilbert Islands as a "treasure trove of South Sea Island beauty." This serene paradise seemed utterly incongruous with brutal warfare, yet it would soon host one of the Pacific War's most savage battles.
Betio, the most strategically important island in Tarawa Atoll, anchors the southwest corner. Just two miles long and seven hundred yards at its widest-smaller than New York's Central Park-the flat, parakeet-shaped island rises no higher than ten feet above sea level. Running along its spine lies the reason for its military significance: an airfield. Though named by an English captain in 1788, Betio remained under British control until December 10, 1941, when Japanese forces seized it.
Under Admiral Shibasaki's command, Betio transformed into an impregnable fortress. The Japanese constructed a massive triple-tiered bombproof command bunker housing 300 men, with concrete walls several feet thick reinforced with steel beams. To halt American assaults before reaching shore, they placed underwater obstacles including mine-laden concrete tetrahedrons, barbed wire, and log barricades. Formidable weapons systems included 8-inch naval cannons, 3-inch and 5-inch guns, machine guns, and mortars. A coconut log seawall 3-5 feet high would trap Marines on beaches while Japanese guns tore into them.
Tokyo deployed 5,000 elite troops to the island, including 1,559 men of the superbly trained 7th Sasebo Special Naval Landing Force commanded by Commander Takeo Sugai. These Japanese Marines dispelled the American notion that their enemy was small in stature with poor eyesight-some stood well over six feet tall. The garrison also included 1,100 men from the 6th Yokosuka SNLF, 1,250 combat engineers, and 970 construction personnel.
Admiral Shibasaki was so confident in his preparations that he boasted, "A million men cannot take Tarawa in a hundred years."
5장
The Assault Begins
In the early hours of November 20, 1943, Marines like Gene Seng and Charlie Montague rose after fitful sleep, their mouths dry with anticipation despite the sweat pouring down their faces. They rushed to breakfast where surgeons grimaced at the steak and eggs served-"Jesus, that will make a nice lot of guts to have to sew up." After breakfast, they gathered their equipment-ninety pounds per man including ammunition, water, rations, weapons, and personal items.
Around 4:30 A.M., under the faint glow of a quarter moon, the first stirrings of the invasion began. Above, thousands of stars filled the tropical night, giving momentary hope this might be a simple operation. At 5:05, action started when a scout plane from the USS Maryland catapulted into the air, drawing Japanese fire. The American fleet immediately opened a thundering bombardment, with battleships and cruisers forming an arc to rain shells directly at the enemy.
"Commence firing. The war is on," ordered the Maryland's gunnery officer. From the transports, Marines cheered the awesome spectacle. "Fires burned from one end of Betio to the other," stated Private Hanafin. "How could anybody live through that?" Meanwhile, Warrant Officer Ota, still alive on Betio, counted thirty-six warships "like floating castles" and felt every gun was targeting him. "This bombardment was violent beyond expression!" he wrote. Despite the ferocity, many Japanese survived in their reinforced bunkers.
At 8:24 the first wave of amtracs crossed the line of departure and churned toward Betio. The unpredictable tides had worked in Japan's favor, exposing the hard coral reef in spots. Warrant Officer Ota waited for American landing boats to grind to a halt on the reef, where they would become sitting ducks. To Ota's shock, instead of stalling at the reef, the American landing craft powered over it and continued toward the island "like dozens of spiders scattering over the surface of the water."
6장
Into the Maelstrom
The assault waves had the deadliest mission-to ignore shore defenses, hit the beaches and advance inland. Those who dared look at Betio saw thick black smoke, pillars of flame, and twisted palm trees reduced to charcoal splinters. Machine gun bullets clanked off the amtracs' sides while mortar shells agitated nearby waters. The men could only wait in wet misery, shivering despite the equatorial heat, unable to fight back until reaching land.
Captain J. Wendell Crain maintained his characteristic calm demeanor as his unit approached Red 1, where "all hell let loose." Machine gun tracers raced at them from shore while flanking fire tore into their ranks. To avoid fire from defensive positions called the Pocket, most amtracs veered toward the western end of Red 1, including Montague and Seng's craft, taking them directly into Petty Officer Matsuo Chuma's four 75mm antiboat guns.
Only yards from shore, a terrifying explosion disabled Montague and Seng's amtrac, forcing survivors into the water. They leapt over the side, sagging under the burden of their .30-caliber machine guns and ammunition, wading through water dyed red by floating bodies. They battled through barbed wire entanglements and stumbled onto the beach as bullets peppered the waters around them. "I could have stretched my arms out and lost them at the elbows, there were so many bullets splashing around me," said Corporal Henry Duke, who landed nearby.
The first message from shore stunned commanders: "HAVE LANDED. UNUSUALLY HEAVY OPPOSITION. CASUALTIES 70 PERCENT. CAN'T HOLD!" Admiral Shibasaki's strategy was working-preventing Marines from penetrating inland to delay following waves. At 9:59, Major Schoettel's devastating message to Colonel Shoup-"WE HAVE NOTHING LEFT TO LAND"-revealed the dire situation.
Montague and Seng's platoon, swerving to avoid fire, ran directly into deadly Japanese fortifications. Within minutes, thirty-one of forty men in their platoon perished, including the inseparable San Antonio schoolboys who died before the battle was thirty minutes old. As correspondent Jim Lucas wrote, "There were stark and heroic stories in those first three hours of attack, many of them never to be written because the principals and witnesses are dead."
7장
Fighting for Every Yard
Marines huddled at the seawall, reluctant to leave their relative safety despite Captain George Wentzel's attempts to rally them by standing exposed atop the wall. When Wentzel was killed by machine gun fire, it only reinforced the dangers that lay beyond. Yet forward was the only path to victory, through a hellish landscape of twisted trees, charred logs, and thick smoke that made breathing difficult. With Japanese hidden everywhere, no place on Betio was safe-the back lines were essentially front lines.
Major Ryan, assuming command at Red 1 after Schoettel's absence, gathered Marines and led them over the seawall to begin the deadly work of eliminating Japanese pillboxes. PFC Muhlbach described their tactics: first determining the enemy's field of fire by drawing fire, then approaching from blind spots with grenades, followed immediately by bayonet attacks. "I repeated it over and over for three days," he explained. The Japanese had positioned their emplacements with overlapping fields of fire, making each approach perilous.
At Red 3, Marines encountered fierce resistance from a complex of Japanese pillboxes and bunkers. Major Crowe provided essential leadership, organizing men at the seawall and directing them inland despite intense enemy fire. He seemed fearless, walking in plain view while chomping on a cigar, brandishing his shotgun and swagger stick. When Marines hesitated under sniper fire, Crowe challenged them: "Look, the sons of a bitches can't hit me, why do you think they can hit you? Get moving."
Among the combatants were men who braved battle not to kill but to save lives. Corpsman Stanley Bowen never dwelled on his own safety while treating wounded Marines: "You don't think in a situation like that. You just do it. I knew damn well they were shooting at me, but you don't think about the danger." His bravery extended beyond duty when he rescued four wounded Marines from a damaged amtrac 25 yards offshore, rushing through enemy fire twice to bring them to safety.
8장
The Tide Turns
By the second afternoon, momentum shifted to the Americans. Lieutenant Colonel Rixey noted, "I thought up until 1 o'clock today that it was touch and go. Then I knew we would win." Marines discovered Japanese defenders committing suicide rather than fighting-seventeen bodies in one bunker, all from self-inflicted wounds-a sign their spirit had broken.
The arrival of jeeps at the pier in late afternoon further signaled the turning tide. "If a sign of certain victory were needed, this is it," wrote Sherrod. "The Jeeps have arrived." Colonel Shoup, who had earlier transmitted "SITUATION ASHORE UNCERTAIN," now confidently radioed, "CASUALTIES MANY. PERCENTAGE DEAD UNKNOWN. COMBAT EFFICIENCY-WE ARE WINNING."
As the battle for Betio entered its third day, the tide had turned decisively in favor of the Marines, though the island had become a nightmarish landscape of death and destruction. Robert Sherrod walked Betio's beaches on the third morning, astonished anyone had survived the landing. Japanese pillboxes stood every five yards along the shore. Inside one, he found four dead Japanese with two dead Marines, understanding the sacrifice that allowed others to advance.
The battlefield had become a horrific scene of carnage. Bodies in grotesque forms littered the beaches and lagoon, impeding supply efforts. Lt. Lillibridge described "bodies everywhere: a hand here, an arm there, a leg, a shattered torso. A head, even." John Magruder called Tarawa "a stinking Golgotha," with barbed wire "literally draped with dead Marines."
The stench of death blanketed the island-an inescapable, nauseating odor that permeated everything. Bodies blackened in the equatorial sun, swarmed by flies. "By dawn of D plus 2 all freshness was gone and Betio was nothing but stink and death."
9장
Victory at Terrible Cost
By morning of November 23, only two Japanese strongholds remained-the Pocket in the west and remnants in the eastern tail. Major Schoettel's men attacked the Pocket from Red 1 while Major Hays closed in from the east. They trapped the Japanese in a rapidly shrinking area along the beach, and by 1:05 PM declared the western half secured.
By this stage, Marines were taking few prisoners. The battle's savagery had shattered their veneer of civilization. When Muhlbach and Farrell guarded a tall Japanese prisoner who lowered his hands and folded them across his chest, taunting the young Marines, Muhlbach snapped: "I was tired; I was mad as hell. I ran that bayonet in to the muzzle of my rifle and wiggled it around until he stopped moving."
At 1:00 PM, Marines waded into waters off Betio's eastern end, having killed 475 Japanese while losing only 9 killed and 25 wounded. Shortly after, the first Navy carrier-based fighter landed on the newly-named Hawkins Field. At 1:05 PM, General Julian Smith sent his message: "BETIO HAS FALLEN." After seventy-six hours of nearly continuous combat, the Marines had taken their objective.
Of more than 4,800 Japanese and Koreans on Betio before the battle, only 146 survived-just 17 of them Japanese soldiers. Admiral Shibasaki's body was never recovered.
The Marines had suffered terribly as well. Of approximately 5,000 men who went ashore, 1,009 were killed and 2,101 wounded-a casualty rate of over 60 percent. Many units suffered even higher losses. The 2nd Battalion, 8th Marines lost 70 percent of its men in the first day's fighting alone.
10장
Bringing the War Home
On November 24, Corporals Emory Ashurst, Joseph Sobol, and other engineers from the 18th Regiment searched Red 1 beach for their fallen comrades. They quickly found fifteen bodies where they had fallen on D-Day, including Charlie Montague and Gene Seng. The tropical sun had bloated the bodies beyond recognition, requiring identification through dog tags or name stencils on their packs.
"Here's Charlie Montague," Sobol muttered after removing the pack from the young man's back. Yards away lay Gene Seng, also facedown in the sand.
The survivors gently moved the bodies twenty yards inland to "a place we thought right for them" and dug shallow graves. They fashioned fifteen crosses from wooden splinters, each bearing a name and date of death. Corporal Ashurst read the Burial Service from the Marines Divine Services book, led the Lord's Prayer, and concluded with "Unto Almighty God we commend the souls of our brethren departed."
Back home, the Montagues and Sengs endured agonizing weeks of silence after the battle, having received no letters from their sons since early November. They clung to the hope that no news meant good news-that Charlie and Gene were simply unable to write during operations.
The Montagues' wait ended on New Year's Day, 1944, when Father Strobel, their pastor, called requesting to see Mr. Montague. After returning home, Mr. Montague broke down as he delivered the news: "Charlie was killed-killed in action." Mrs. Montague responded stoically, "Well, now we know," then tried to comfort her husband, who pulled away in grief.
Two days later, on January 3, the Western Union man delivered the dreaded telegram to the Sengs. "My dad took it real bad," Ralph remembered. His Uncle George Nelson, a World War I veteran, declared, "I want to kill me a Jap." Mrs. Seng remained stoic, crying only in private. "Mother was a rock," daughter Patsy Dealy recalled. "She held the family together."
11장
A Nation Confronts War's Reality
Tarawa altered America's view of the war. Before November 1943, censors heavily sanitized war news, shielding the public from graphic combat depictions. The war's distance from American soil created a sense of surrealism unlike in Allied nations where fighting occurred in cities and countryside.
Bloody Tarawa, with Robert Sherrod's potent prose and Staff Sergeant Hatch's stunning photographs of Marine dead littering Betio's shoreline, finally broke through the censorship barriers. The three-day battle's casualties nearly equaled the six-month Guadalcanal campaign, shocking Americans. Newspapers labeled it "BLOODY BETIO" or "TERRIBLE TARAWA." General Julian Smith concluded, "It brought home to the American people the grim reality that there is no cheap shortcut to win wars."
Marine footage shot by Hatch and Kelliher was rushed to San Francisco and unusually released without military censorship. When film director Frank Capra initially reviewed color footage from Betio, he dismissed it as lacking combat authenticity. Upon seeing Hatch's stark newsreel footage, however, he immediately recognized its documentary potential, declaring "This is it." Though President Roosevelt hesitated to release such graphic content, he relented after military officials and Robert Sherrod argued Americans needed education about the war's reality. The resulting 19-minute Warner Bros. documentary stunned audiences with its realism, won the 1944 Academy Award for Best Documentary, and boosted war bond sales-though ironically caused Marine enlistments to temporarily plunge 35 percent.
The Betio assault proved amphibious attacks against defended beaches could succeed while advancing U.S. forces seven hundred miles across the Pacific. The campaign revealed critical defects requiring remedy: waterproof communications systems, more amtracs, and extended pre-invasion bombardments. Admiral Nimitz, disturbed by intact Japanese fortifications, ordered replicas built on Kahoolawe for Navy gunnery practice, determining future operations needed days rather than hours of bombardment with armor-piercing shells.
12장
The Legacy of Sacrifice
The battle's physical and psychological wounds persist decades later. Stan Bowen still suffers nightmares, Robert Muhlbach's ears continue to ring from battle sounds, and Jim Meadows carries bayonet scars that remind him daily of Tarawa. Many veterans struggle with survivor's guilt, as Jack Preston Sr. expresses: "I thank God every day and ask Him why I survived and others died all around me." The psychological impact was often as severe as physical wounds. Robert Libby observed, "The mental side had a terrific effect which has lived with me since... As a result of Tarawa we all became older than our years."
Modern Tarawa bears few reminders of the bloody battle fought there. A handful of rusty guns remain, but Japanese-owned businesses now occupy key battle sites. When Robert Sherrod returned for the twenty-fifth anniversary, he learned that native islanders still occasionally uncover skeletal remains.
While the United States has largely forgotten this battle, New Zealand has erected more memorials to Tarawa, including naming a street in Paekakariki "in memory of the many hundreds of Leathernecks who trained and camped there and later died in the landing." As early as 1948, Lieutenant Hawkins's mother lamented that Tarawa was rarely mentioned alongside other Pacific battles.
A poignant poem discovered at the Marine Corps Research Center captures veterans' fears of being forgotten: "You say it's not on the map, my son? O God, it's engraved on my heart!... Lifeblood the price by which an atoll was won; Look again-it must be on the map, my son!"
The Montague and Seng families keep their fallen loved ones' memories alive more than sixty years later. Fellow Marines who buried the pair maintain contact with the families-Joseph Sobol even returned to Tarawa to place flowers at the exact burial spot at Red 1 before later visiting Charlie Montague's grave at the Punchbowl cemetery in Hawaii. Family bonds remain strong; George Montague wrote about his brother Charlie, while Fred Ellis sent carnations to Gene Seng's mother every Mother's Day until his death.
When asked what he would say to Charlie today, Fr. George Montague replied, "I would quote Scripture, 'Greater love than this no one has than to lay down his life for his family.'" Charlie's girlfriend Billie, who married nine years later, confessed in 2005, "I still am in love with him... I still pray for Charlie. I still miss Charlie."
