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       The Bloody, 76-Hour Battle on a Tiny Atoll That Helped End World War II

       The Battle of Tarawa, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, took a heavy toll on American forces and led to outrage at home.

       Marines take cover from Japanese fire after making it ashore to Betio, a small, strategic island that was the site of a well-documented and brutal battle in 1943. Credit...Hulton Archive/Getty Images

       The Bloody, 76-Hour Battle on a Tiny Atoll That Helped End World War II

       The Battle of Tarawa, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, took a heavy toll on American forces and led to outrage at home.

       Marines take cover from Japanese fire after making it ashore to Betio, a small, strategic island that was the site of a well-documented and brutal battle in 1943.Credit...Hulton Archive/Getty Images

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       By Natasha Frost

       Produced by Maud Bodoukian Meyrant

       Published Nov. 18, 2023Updated Nov. 19, 2023

       Over three days of intense fighting, thousands of soldiers perished on beaches and in the ocean for a prize — a strategic speck of coral sand and its critical air strip, in the middle of the Pacific — that would help decide the outcome of World War II.

       Eighty years ago, the United States military attacked the island of Betio, part of the Tarawa atoll in what is today the archipelago nation of Kiribati, to wrest it from Japanese control.

       At just 2.5 miles in length, Betio had little significance. But its location would allow the United States to move northwest: first to the Marshall Islands, then to the Mariana Islands and eventually to Japan itself. These were the “leapfrogging” tactics the Allies used in the Pacific to weaken Japan’s control of the region, as well as to establish bases to launch further attacks.

       On Betio, the United States military had expected an easy conquest by air and sea, a so-called amphibious assault involving about 18,000 Marines and an additional 35,000 troops. But awaiting them were heavy Japanese fortifications, including concrete bunkers and cannons along the sandy fringes of the atoll and some 5,000 troops, nearly a quarter of them enslaved Korean laborers, on the front line.

       Map locating the Tarawa Atoll in the Gibert Islands in the Pacific Ocean, east of Indonesia. The map also locates the Marshall and Mariana Islands, which are northwest of Kiribati.

       10 miles

       JAPAN

       Pacific Ocean

       REPUBLIC OF

       KIRIBATI

       CHINA

       Mariana

       Islands

       Hawaii

       Pacific

       Ocean

       Marshall

       Islands

       Tarawa

       Atoll

       INDONESIA

       Kiribati

       Betio

       AUSTRALIA

       1,500 miles

       JAPAN

       Pacific Ocean

       CHINA

       Mariana

       Islands

       Hawaii

       Marshall

       Islands

       Detail, below

       INDONESIA

       Kiribati

       AUSTRALIA

       1,500 miles

       10 miles

       REPUBLIC OF

       KIRIBATI

       Pacific

       Ocean

       Tarawa

       Atoll

       Betio

       By The New York Times

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