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00:00How are we doing up here?
00:27I had no idea before that how really violent combat could be.
00:54Your enemy is within arm's length, you probably smell his breath, and you're there to kill
01:00each other.
01:03They could come on the beach that first night and run over us, kill every one of us.
01:09We could see the Amtraks getting decimated by itself, and I think a few other guys offered
02:16After two years of desperate fighting, Operation Galvanic is America's first and most critical
02:25test of a daring new Central Pacific campaign.
02:31The controversial offensive would be a high-stakes test of unproven new theories of fast carrier
02:36operations, mobile logistics, and amphibious warfare.
02:47It will send forces leapfrogging on a tight timeline across the enemy-held island chains
02:52of the Gilberts, Marshalls, Marianas, Palau, Bonin, and finally into Ryukyu, securing airfields
03:03along the way for U.S. heavy bombers that will ultimately soften Japan for an invasion.
03:10America's first salvo in this epic and treacherous new fight to annihilate their Japanese enemy
03:15will begin at Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands.
03:22They chose Tarawa because Tarawa had an airfield.
03:27They also wanted to test a theory of assaulting an island that was heavily defended.
03:33The Navy had never yet done that.
03:35They had had some assaults, but never against a solidly entrenched island such as Tarawa
03:41was.
03:43On board the transports are 35,000 troops, including 20,000 men of the 2nd Marine Division.
03:52While many are veterans of Guadalcanal, there are thousands of young recruits barely out
03:57of boot camp.
03:59And almost everything the Marines are about to do has never been done before.
04:05The tactics and techniques they will use to storm the heavily defended island of Tarawa
04:10has never been proven in battle.
04:14Their landing craft, tracked amphibious vehicles called Amtraks, capable of travel on both
04:20land and water, along with Higgins boats built to transport up to 30 Marines, have never
04:26been tested in landings on coral reef islands under heavy fire.
04:34The commanders and the young Marines feel confident, even as they sail into the unknown.
04:41They've not yet experienced the horrors of the hellish islands they will attempt to capture,
04:47nor the brutality of an enemy that awaits them.
04:58Only two miles long and a half mile wide, the tiny island of Baishio, located within
05:04the Tarawa Atoll, has for the past year been fortified, heavily gunned, and engineered
05:11into an invader's nightmare.
05:15The island's prized airfield is protected on all sides by dozens of anti-boat artillery
05:20pieces with machine guns buried deep into heavily reinforced bunkers and over 500 pillboxes.
05:29Beaches wait behind ferocious minefields, barbed wire, and anti-boat tetrahedrons.
05:42When you come into an operation such as Tarawa, you're not just facing the enemy defenses,
05:48you're also facing nature.
05:51There's a reef that surrounds Tarawa, a coral reef, jagged rock that can rip out the bottoms
05:58of boats.
06:00American military planners were counting on at least four to five feet of water over that
06:05reef.
06:06They had studied the tides as much as they could, but it was a very inexact science.
06:15Also awaiting the Americans are 4,500 elite Rikusentai Marines.
06:20Trained, disciplined, and well-supplied, they have but one plan, defend Tarawa to the death.
06:31Admiral Shibasaki, the brilliant Japanese garrison commander, encouraged his troops
06:36by saying it would take a million men 100 years to conquer Tarawa.
06:52We were told we were going to capture or land on an island called Tarawa, which we'd never
07:00heard of or probably nobody else had.
07:04On the way out, of course, we were given information about it and how we would go in, where we
07:11would go in, what we would do.
07:14I recall this admiral standing there and saying that naval gunfire had always destroyed,
07:20but in this case it was going to obliterate.
07:23Navy left us with the impression that we would land and we would just clean up the mess and
07:30we'd go across the island and make a turning movement, have lunch, go down to the tail
07:35end of the island and be back aboard ship before dark that night and be on the way to
07:40Hawaii.
07:41Well, it was a real adventure for me because I'd never been out of Tennessee.
07:48So when they went and told us all about that, we thought, well, this is a cakewalk, you
07:53know.
07:55Walking out, a veteran told us what to expect, and all these young guys never been in combat
08:05before.
08:06We was ready for combat, and the old walking out veteran said, you'll find out.
08:24Most of these guys were just 18, 19, 20 year old, some, you know, just out of high school.
08:51These men had never experienced this before, so they thought, wow, this is great, no one
08:55can live through this.
09:14At 0900, the three-hour naval bombardment comes to an end as the Marines prepare to
09:19assault the beaches.
09:23The assault will send three Marine battalions moving in five waves from the north onto three
09:29adjoining beaches, designated Red 1, 2, and 3.
09:34Green Beach on the western shoreline, along with the black beaches on the southern shore,
09:39are not figured into the plan.
09:46Now you have these Marines who had just seen the bombardment.
09:50Some of the Marines even started joking, I wonder if there's going to be anyone left
09:53alive on that island for us.
09:57So they start to get into the landing craft, the Amtraks, of the first three waves and
10:02had to head toward shore.
10:08And that's where reality clashed with dreams.
10:31Six thousand yards from shore, the Marines are shocked as the enemy's defense guns suddenly
10:37open up in a blistering fire.
10:41The Japanese are very much alive.
10:52We could see the Amtraks ahead of us.
10:54We could see right away they were having a problem.
10:58Up to then, we all thought, well, this is going to be a cakewalk and we're just going
11:02to take it.
11:03But we knew right away that something different was going to happen.
11:10These Marines who thought things were getting worse, now that they were taking fire, were
11:15about to find out that things were going to get much, much worse.
11:21As the Marines crawled through the deadly Japanese gauntlet, ahead laid the island's
11:26coral reef.
11:29With the battle in chaos, it is uncertain if the tide will be high enough to allow the
11:33landing craft to cross.
11:43Within moments, a naval observation plane reports the gut-wrenching news to the flagship.
11:53The reef is fully exposed.
11:57The Amtraks, forced to slow in order to traverse the reef, take on Japanese gunfire.
12:27The freakish low tide strikes again.
12:35A five-foot seawall has been exposed, making it impossible for most of the Amtraks to cross.
12:42Withering Japanese gunfire pins them down behind the seawall.
12:50Unable to know the horror just a few hundred yards ahead, the fourth assault wave traveling
12:56in Higgins boats closes in on the deadly reef.
13:03They have no way of knowing that the tide is too low for their flat-bottom Higgins boat
13:07to pass over the reef.
13:11They're heading into a death trap.
13:26The chaos of the staggering Japanese onslaught has left communications in shambles.
13:33Colonel David Shoup, commanding officer of the 2nd Marines, can do little as desperate,
13:38fractured messages ring out from his dying Marines at the seawall.
13:45Nor can he alert his Marines in the approaching Higgins boats that the reef is impassable.
13:57Within hours of America's most critical test of their Central Pacific campaign, the landing
14:02force at Tarawa is being decimated.
14:10But amidst the chaos, a small group of men, driven by the desperate battle and the will
14:16to save their fellow Marines, make an incredible decision that will transform them into the
14:22unlikeliest of heroes.
14:27Their incredible story bears witness to a small, ragtag group of men who, against overwhelming
14:34odds, forge an impossible mission that will not only shape the course of battle, but the
14:40course of American history.
15:04Within hours of America's first battle in the Pacific campaign meant to annihilate their
15:09Japanese enemy, it is the Americans who are being decimated.
15:15The bizarre low tides have left the first wave of Marines pinned down behind an exposed
15:20five-foot seawall by blistering Japanese gunfire.
15:27With communications in chaos, command is unable to warn the following waves of Marines in
15:32Higgins boats of the exposed coral reef that lay just ahead.
15:53As the flat bottoms of the Higgins boat hit the exposed reef, they are stopped dead in
15:59water.
16:00Stalled and exposed, the men come under horrific enemy fire.
16:11Unable to cross the reef, the Navy coxswains operating the Higgins boats order the men
16:16over the sides into the lagoon.
16:28I think we were all amazed that all of a sudden, his Higgins boats and several rounds
16:32of stop and the driver of the Higgins boat says, get out, we can't take you any further.
16:43We all looked at each other and our sergeant who was in charge of us said, let's go.
16:49And so we started slipping over the side.
16:57That's when we really realized that this wasn't going to be any fun, this was going
17:01to be the real deal.
17:06Myself and I think a few other guys offered a few prayers.
17:15It was just hectic.
17:18You just look around, a guy would follow you, there wasn't nothing you could do for him.
17:27Of course we were all moving in and we, of course there was a lot of casualties.
17:31We could see them going in the water.
17:34My gutter, he just went underwater and I thought, well he's slipped in a hole or something.
17:40I went over and pulled him out and he had a hole in his head and I knew that I couldn't
17:45do anything for him.
17:46So I grabbed the mortar that he had and started moving on in.
17:53In one of those Higgins boats stuck at the reef was Major Mike Ryan, a respected Marine
17:59Officer.
18:02Ryan was headed toward Red One, but Red One had some of the worst of the Japanese defenses.
18:11He ordered his men out into the water and as he looked out he saw just total chaos.
18:20Well he noticed that Green Beach, the right side of the island, seemed to be a little
18:27less defended.
18:28There were some Marines already there, so he started to veer his Marines over toward
18:33Green Beach.
18:40Major Mike Ryan is a perfect example of the Marine improvisation.
18:47To improvise it takes a person who under fire can still think, can still be calm, can still
18:54substitute his own plans.
18:56Not everyone can do that.
18:58Major Mike Ryan certainly did.
19:02Ryan, landing on Green Beach, finds an undefended gap in the entrenched Japanese fortifications.
19:11He realizes that if he can assemble a force, he can knock out the Japanese fortification
19:16in the gap.
19:17And if he can hold on to his part of the beach long enough, he can provide a secure landing
19:22area for a larger, intact assault unit that can surge eastward to meet up with Red Beach
19:27forces and break the Japanese stronghold.
19:32But Ryan is faced with an immediate problem.
19:35There are no intact units on Green Beach.
19:38Now, in the chaos of trying to get to shore, he had men from his unit with him, he had
19:47men from other units with him, he would go up and take other men who were just by themselves
19:51or in pairs, he'd say, come with me.
19:54And one by one, two by two, he started to build up some sort of an outfit that he knew
20:01he could lead inland and start knocking out some of these Japanese fortifications.
20:07These Marines would forever after be known as Ryan's orphans.
20:15Ryan not only gathers up orphaned troops, but something to prove rare and priceless
20:20on Tarawa.
20:21Two of the few surviving Sherman M4 medium tanks, driven west from the fire-swept Red
20:27Beaches, commanded by brash and courageous Lieutenant Ed Bale.
20:34I was unaware until I got on the beach and saw the horror.
20:42It was a shock.
20:45The beach was cluttered with wounded, dead, equipment of all kinds, and I ran into Mike
20:53Ryan and he had to gather this outfit together and reorganize it under fire.
21:06By the end of the first day, the situation on the three Red Beaches was critical.
21:14Marines had landed in isolated spots and held a slender toehold at the invasion beaches.
21:23Only at Green Beach had some progress under Major Mike Ryan begun.
21:28However, Marines at the three Red Beaches and the Green Beach understood the big fear
21:35was yet to come, the fear of a Japanese nighttime counterattack.
21:50I'm, you know, never been in battle before, but to me it didn't look like we had enough
21:55men that was alive scattered up and down that seawall there to fight anybody.
22:04And I didn't sleep a wink, nobody else slept a wink or anything, and anybody that moved,
22:08you got shot.
22:12The time that I became scared was after dark that night, laying on that beach, knowing
22:18that if the Japanese could mount an attack and come over that seawall, we'd all die.
22:26I was scared to death, and I shook, I shook, and I lay there and shook, and I had trouble
22:33getting control, and I said to my God, if I can survive tonight, I'll never ask for
22:42anything from myself.
22:51The Japanese on Tarawa had long planned and rehearsed night attacks to overwhelm any invading
22:56force.
22:59But unknown to thousands of Japanese defenders, Ryan's small ragtag group, fewer than 200
23:06men, planned to attack their fortified positions and steal Green Beach from their grasp in
23:12a daring mission that will give their fellow embattled Marines a fighting chance.
23:21Their Japanese foe has other plans.
23:42It says here, a battleship commander had boasted, we are going to bombard at 6,000 yards.
24:08We've got so much armor, we're not afraid of anything the Japs can throw back at us.
24:13A cruiser commander had said, we're going into 4,000 yards, we figured our armor can
24:19take anything they've got.
24:23General Smith rose to reply, he said, gentlemen, remember one thing, when the Marines land
24:30and meet the enemy at bayonet point, the only armor a Marine will have is his jacket
24:40shirt.
24:49After 24 hours of vicious fighting, the battered Marines clinging desperately to the beaches
24:54of Tarawa have miraculously survived their first night on the island.
25:01The feared night bonsai attack by masses of Japanese never materializes.
25:08Unknown to the Americans, the previous day's bombardment has killed the brilliant Japanese
25:13commander, Admiral Shibasaki, and his staff, and obliterated the island's thinly buried
25:19communication lines, preventing them from organizing a coordinated attack.
25:28But the Japanese are still very much in command of the island.
25:39But at 11 a.m., Colonel David Shoup, commanding officer on Tarawa, receives a shocking radio
25:45message from Major Mike Ryan, thought to be dead, along with the men of L Company.
25:51Ryan reports that he is not only alive, but in charge of some 200 shocked and straggling
25:57Marines and sailors, along with the only two functioning tanks on Tarawa, and they are
26:02attempting to secure Green Beach.
26:06The news is incredible.
26:11Major Ryan got his orphans up off the ground and moving.
26:19As the orphans move out, Ryan faces a deadly reality.
26:25His ragtag group of infantrymen, tankers, mortar men, sailors, cooks, have never trained
26:32or fought together as a unit.
26:35If they are to survive, they must adapt and improvise new tactics to overcome the challenges
26:41presented by a never-before-faced battlefield.
26:48We spent all that day developing what became the standard tank infantry tactics in the
26:55Pacific in World War II.
26:58Tanks and infantry had never trained properly together.
27:04What we did is the infantry would get behind us, and when they would spot Japanese activity,
27:10then we would fire into the Japanese position.
27:14Then the infantry coming right in within two or three seconds and throwing explosives in
27:24those positions or putting flame in there.
27:48Of course they took a tremendous amount of machine gun fire.
27:54I had no idea before that how really violent combat could be.
28:15Pillbox by pillbox, they began seizing more land until they controlled all of Green Beach.
28:23However, time was of the essence at Tarawa, for the toehold was so slim that at any moment
28:30a Japanese counterattack could still push these Marines back into the sea.
28:40With no time to plan an assault onto Green Beach, no undamaged transport vessels to carry
28:46out an assault, and limited reserve troops, command must rely on a daring, untested, new
28:53amphibious unit.
28:57While the fighting unfolded at Tarawa's beaches, out to sea a reinforcement battalion waited
29:03for orders to go in and join their fellow Marines in taking this island from the Japanese.
29:11Commanding the unit is 27-year-old Major Willie K. Jones.
29:19His men have christened him Admiral of the Condom Fleet, because they assault enemy beaches
29:25not in mechanized steel-hulled vehicles, but rubber boats.
29:31Trained for stealth situations, they are not designed to assault fortified beaches in broad
29:36daylight.
29:41Jones' men are lethal and bold, specialists in the use of assault demolitions, and their
29:48hour has come.
29:52Now, the men before them had already gone to shore, but in mechanized boats.
30:01You get a sense of security when you have this shield of metal between you and the water,
30:07or between you and a shell.
30:09Jones' men were going to shore in rubber boats.
30:16Anxiety, fear, you know, going into the beach.
30:25There's a moment you're afraid, but after a while I think it's hysteria that takes over.
30:34I don't know what it is, but suddenly there were moments I felt like I was ten feet tall,
30:39that nothing could stop me, and that's crazy, but that's the way you felt, and I think that's
30:44what the heck made heroes, or whatever, they're out of their minds.
30:51On Green Beach, Ryan's orphans continue to fight and die, struggling to keep the beach
30:57open for Jones' men.
31:00At this critical hour, freedom's fate rests not only on their shoulders, but on the small
31:07group of unlikely heroes in rubber boats, now paddling into hell.
31:38On day three of America's first engagement in their Central Pacific campaign, the incredible
31:50sacrifice and tenacity of the Marines on the three red beaches of Tarawa has seen some
31:56movement forward, but it has come at a heavy cost.
32:07On Green Beach, the fragile toehold captured by Mike Ryan and his orphans has provided
32:13a critical clearing to land Major Willie K. Jones and his condom fleet in rubber boats.
32:24When Jones landed his men at Green Beach for the first time in the whole battle, the Marines
32:30had an entire organization, a battalion, ready to go.
32:38That rubber boat took me to the barbed wire, and of course you can't go through barbed
32:43wire, so we get out of the boats, and across the barbed wire, there's a, there are bodies
32:52on that barbed wire.
32:58One officer told me, Mammy, he said, get your man the hell out of here. I heard it
33:05from my squad, second squad, follow me. That's one run I remember. I took off. I prayed I
33:18zigged when I should and zagged when I should. And I knew, I can tell, when bullets are going
33:25real close, they're cutting the air.
33:33I went back to where I knew Ryan was, and I found Bill Jones there with him. He had
33:42lots of troops. They were fresh. Ryan's people were filthy dirty and dead tired. They were
33:50deciding exactly how Jones's troops were going to relieve Ryan's troops and push down
34:00that side of the island.
34:05With the entire western end of Tarawa now in the hands of Ryan's exhausted orphans,
34:11Jones and his men will attack eastward in an effort to annihilate hundreds of fortified
34:16Japanese defenses. If they survive, they will sweep across the island's middle, encountering
34:23ever-increasing machine gun and artillery fire, and join forces from the Red Beaches
34:30to secure the island.
34:47I couldn't find a target. There was no targets. I saw no Japanese. You couldn't tell their
34:58bunkers. They looked like big sand piles. But under those sand piles, you wouldn't believe
35:09it and I wouldn't believe it when I saw it later, a three-story building. I never saw
35:15a three-story building on an island.
35:20As Jones's men begin moving across Tarawa's middle, the men on the Red Beaches begin to
35:25consolidate their gains and together they seal off the western and eastern edges of
35:30the island, forcing the Japanese back into isolated pockets of resistance.
35:45As night approaches, Jones spreads his men out in a protective perimeter and prepares
35:59them. Now isolated, Jones believes the Japanese will throw everything they have at the young
36:06Marines in a fight to the death. And they will.
36:15We set up for the night. The Japanese, they kept yelling at us. They spoke good English.
36:23We found out later they got all sackyed up. That's what they usually do. Get up their
36:28nerve, you know.
36:29Now I'm about 100 yards off to the other end of the airfield, and I see Japanese charging
36:37and screaming. I saw a group of Marines going up, and I also saw Japanese that we pushed
36:52to the ends of the islands coming at them, and I knew there were going to be a hand-to-hand
36:57combat there.
37:01Jones fields a call from a young lieutenant yelling, we're killing them as fast as they
37:06come at us, but we can't hold out much longer. We need reinforcements.
37:13Jones can only yell back, we haven't got them. You've got to hold.
37:21He didn't have to worry about some guy getting up and taking off. We'd stay there and fight
37:28to the end. He'd stay right there and fight until he died.
37:59As the battle for Tarawa rages into its third night, Major Willie K. Jones and his men are
38:04now locked into a horrific battle with the Rikusintai Japanese troops on the eastern
38:10end of the island.
38:18The Japanese are screaming, and I hear firing, and after a while they get so close there's
38:28no firing. That's when your enemy is within arm's length. That's when at times you probably
38:36smell his breath, and you're there to kill each other.
38:47They charged in four different attacks that last night. Each time the Americans repelled
38:55them, but at great cost. Eventually it turned the tide there that night. Enough Marines
39:04stood up to this bonsai attack to break it at its fullest fury.
39:12By 6 a.m. on the morning of the fourth day, it was over.
39:19The Japanese, confident their night attacks would break the will of the young Americans,
39:24now lay dead en masse.
39:32The Japanese, confident their night attacks would break the will of the young Americans,
39:39now lay dead en masse.
39:44The Japanese, confident their night attacks would break the will of the young Americans,
39:51now lay dead en masse.
39:56For the valiant Marines of Jones' unit, 45 lay dead, 128 wounded.
40:06Major Jones come up here and saw the front lines and everything, see how many men got
40:11killed.
40:19In the final hours of Taralon, America unleashed its fury in one final devastating blow that
40:27eliminates the last of the Japanese resistance on the eastern tip of the island.
40:35True to their warrior code, the few remaining hard-core Japanese defenders choose death
40:44by suicide over surrender. Fewer than 20 of the 4,500 Japanese defenders are captured
40:52alive by the time the island was declared secure at 3.30 p.m.
41:05Mike Ryan and his orphans, Willie K. Jones and his condom fleet, and the men of the Red
41:13Beaches had accomplished in 76 brutal hours what Japanese Admiral Shibasaki had once proclaimed
41:21couldn't be done by a million men in 100 years.
41:29The young, often inexperienced Marines had done the impossible.
41:40Against brutal odds and an unrelenting foe, they had given America its first and most
41:47crucial victory in the Central Pacific Campaign.
41:53The invaluable experience and momentum, along with new battle tactics inspired and proved
41:59on Bloody Tarawa, would eventually lead America to the doorstep of Japan and the end of World
42:05War II.
42:10All these ragtag guys with their uniforms falling off and a lot of wounded and complete
42:26decimation and crawling back aboard the ship and just good guys, ones that you'd take
42:33to back you up or you'd go with them or do anything that needed to be done.
42:39We kind of looked at each other and said, hey, we made it. It's over with.
42:46You know what it comes down to first? Your outfit, your buddies. Honest to God, that's
42:52where you do it. You're not thinking of country. You're not thinking of nothing. When you get
42:58into a battle, you're thinking of your buddies. You are fighting for them. You're fighting
43:04for your buddies.
43:09These were buddies that would stick with you. They would stay with you. They would help
43:15you. They would see that you was taken care of if you was hurt in any way. And all the
43:21things that we would do for each other, to me, is the essence of what makes the Marines
43:27so cohesive.
43:32You didn't have to worry about some guy getting up and taking off. We'd stay there and fight
43:37to the end. That's the way it was. And you would give your life for the man to save his
43:43life. That's the way we was trained. That's the way we fought. We were United States Marines.
43:49You know, I was a 23-year-old First Lieutenant with a company of young Marines. Most of them
43:58were 18, 19. They were kids. They were kids. They were brave. They did what they were asked
44:09to do. They were really tremendous.
44:15As long as our flag flies over this capital, Americans will honor the soldiers, sailors,
44:23and Marines who fought our first battles of this war against overwhelming odds. Their
44:30unconquerable spirit will live forever.
44:44Music
44:49Music
44:54Music