McQuaid: ‘Jap’ bodies near Tarawa turn out to be American
Yanks kill 4,500 of enemy but suffer heavy losses
By B. J. McQuaid
Betio Atoll, Tarawa, Gilbert Islands – (Nov. 24, delayed)
“Look at all those dead Japs down there,” someone in our plane cried out as we flew low over Betio’s reef and our pilot coursed slowly back and forth “dragging” the treacherous waters for a safe landing area.
There were scores of these bodies, floating in gruesome incongruity upon the surface of this deceptive smiling southern sea.
But when we got ashore, we found that they were not Jap bodies.
Most of them were the corpses of young Americans who died off Betio’s glistening beaches in order that their comrades and fellow Marines might successfully storm some of the most formidable shore defenses in the history of warfare.
Losses may be heaviest
Among the assault troop personnel, the total casualties, when finally tabulated, will probably run the heaviest of any engagement in this war.
Maj. Gen. Julian C. Smith of Elkton, Maryland, 58-year-old commander of the 2nd Marine Division which took Betio, today personally escorted Maj. Gen. Holland M. Smith, commander of all amphibious troops in these Gilbert Islands operations, on a three-hour hike around the battleground. I tagged along, with Bob Trumbull of the New York Times, who flew down from Makin with me and was the only other correspondent to get ashore both at Makin and Tarawa.
Looks like holocaust
What we were shown was a rubble heap of ragged palm stumps, battered installations and rotting corpses. It looked more like the scene of some ghastly holocaust than any battlefield I had seen or of which I had heard or read. Compared to this, our show up at Makin was a pink tea party, Guadalcanal a picnic and Rendova, New Georgia and Vella Lavella penny ante.
The bodies of Marines lining the beaches and the twisted smoke and blackened hulks of their half-submerged landing craft, are but part of this sickening picture of slaughter and desolation – and thank God, a lesser part.
For every American body on the beach, there are many Jap carcasses lying inland within a few yards of shore.
Virtually all killed
With the exception of several score of prisoners, said to be mostly Korean laborers, and a handful of snipers and skulkers, still to be dug out, the Marines killed every Jap on the island.
There were some 4,500 in all, including about 3,500 combatant troops. These were Imperial Marines, the best Japan can put in the field. Judging from the few corpses which were not withered and mangled beyond recognition by our flamethrowers and incendiary shells, these were husky, strapping fellows, many more than six feet tall.
Though about 60 Japs have been killed so far today in isolated pockets, including a nest of snipers which killed two of our own Marines in the area through which Gen. Holland Smith had been escorted a few minutes earlier, this island is now considered “secured.” In half-a-dozen crude cemeteries, our own dead are being buried in long, straight rows. Soon the last traces of battle will have been removed.
Breeze carries stench
But tonight, the breeze over Betio carries the nauseating stench of death and stale cordite and this smell is a fitting accompaniment to the physical appearance of the tiny island.
From far out at sea, Betio’s appearance betrays its ugly secret. Seen 10 miles away, from our low-flying plane, Betio’s flat skyline appeared to have been gnawed by rats or eaten away by locusts.
Nearly all the palms are minus their fronds and coconut clumps. They stand like flame-seared skeletons of telephone poles, as a result of the heavy naval bombardment which prepared the way for the first waves of landing craft. It seems unlikely that any Japs survived this blast until you get ashore and study their installations.
Pillboxes line beach
The Jap’s proficiency as a digger-in is well known, but on this island, he surpassed himself. Pillboxes lining the beaches are less than 10 feet apart – a solid perimeter of defense all around the atoll. Inland, similar defenses are constructed in death mutually supporting each other and covering every square yard of the island except the runways of the airfield.
Betio is only 800 yards across at the widest point and 2.5 miles long. Nowhere on this sliver of land except on the airfield can you take 20 steps in any direction without encountering a prepared defensive position. Some are just deep dugouts covered with multiple layers of coconut logs, coral rock and sand. But many have solid concrete walls and roofs a foot or two, and in some cases as much as five feet, thick.
The Jap dead who litter the interior of nearly all these positions were not the victims of bombing or shelling. The Marines had to go in and kill them, with flamethrowers, rifles, knives, bayonets, grenades, tanks and small-caliber field pieces, which were, in some cases, dragged by hand up to these flame-spitting, heavily machine-gunned fortresses and discharged at point-blank range into their nearly inaccessible apertures.
Took guts and skill
We gave the Marines much new equipment for this job as well as a tremendous amount of naval and air support, but these things, valuable as they were, do not deserve to be mentioned in the same breath with what the Marines themselves contributed. What it took to do this job was guts and skill on the part of each individual foot soldier, and competent, devoted leadership by officers and non-coms.
We took Tarawa in three days. We might have failed to take it at all. Had the Japs staged a determined counterattack during the first night, while they had our troops pinned down on several isolated and dangerously shallow beachheads, the headlines and communiqués which America has been reading might have been very different.