Battle of Tarawa

The assault on Betio, in the Tarawa atoll of the Gilbert Islands, began on November 20, 1943, almost two years after Pearl Harbor. The island is ringed by a reef reaching up to 1,200 yards out to sea, and warnings about the tide were ignored in favor of a fixed timetable, leaving many Marines to wade ashore under fire. The Marine Corps suffered more than 3,000 casualties, around 1,000 of them killed. The garrison of nearly 5,000 was wiped out almost to a man; only 17 Japanese and 129 Korean laborers were taken prisoner. The lessons, above all the need for many more amphibious tractors and the limits of bombardment against dug-in defenses, shaped every Central Pacific landing that followed.