Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 189 - The Battle of Tarawa

Episode Date: January 3, 2022

Fun times with the USMC on the beach! * *your experience may vary Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Sources: With the Marines At Tarawa One Square Mile of Hell https://www.historynet.com/remembering-bloody-bloody-tarawa/

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the

Legion of the Old Crow today. the family and me to share someday. Hello and welcome to yet another lovely episode of this podcast that we do. Lions Led by Donkeys. It's Lions Led by Donkeys. WTYP FM radio for some reason. Oh God, the zoo crew is back. I don't have enough sound effects for like, I don't know, Joe. And Leo.

Oh, that's good. Why do I have the long order noise? I don't know. There's only two up here. The other ones I have is like the USSR's national anthem and Russian hard bass. Oh, okay. Can't get rid of those. I needed like a fart noise

to really harness the 90s DJ energy that we're going for. Liam, how you doing today, buddy? Oh, I'm fucking terrific but outstanding because we're talking about the Rwandan genocide today I'm already in the mood for it I'm kidding

I'm ready to learn about the radio stations being seized I can promise that's probably coming summer summer of 2022 uh because i have i am now in a grad course about the rwanda genocide so yeah look forward to that uh but i'm actually going to talk about something we honestly don't talk about that often um even though we go back to the world war ii content mind quite quite regularly because you know it's's only one of the largest armed conflicts of human history.

But the Pacific Theater, specifically about World War II, we've talked about a little bit. We've talked about the Japanese soldiers being left behind, like the stranded ones. Yeah, that was the first episode I was on. The first one that you're on i think was um the first one you're on i think was the torpedoes okay actually also incorrect it was the jewish adventures yeah yeah yeah um we talked about the unit 731 before that was a i believe a

halloween episode a couple years ago um we. But we haven't talked much about the actual combat of the Pacific Theater. I don't know how that happened. Whoops. My bad. So today we're going to talk about probably one of the more formative, horrific, and forgotten battles of the Pacific Theater involving the United States military. And that is the battle of Tarawa. Um, now,

uh, if you've ever watched the Pacific, which I still hold is better than band of brothers. This is depicted in there. Uh, but oftentimes, uh, we don't like to talk about this when we like to talk about,

you know, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Guadalcanal, cause they're like triumphant victories, right? Midway, midway,

Coral Sea, um, stuff like that. Tarawa was also a victory. However. Well, you sound convinced. Yeah. You know, it's hardly a triumphant victory, but we'll get there. So I do have to yada yada my way through some of the general Pacific theater stuff, how we got there.

For instance, when I talk about Pacific Theater of World War II, most people probably remember it for one or two things. Namely, the nuclear bombs, maybe Iwo Jima, Okinawa, the flag raising, etc. But the thing that we generally, at least not anymore, you don't see it depicted is just how awful the war was um this slow grinding war of attrition that the allies it's not your friend no um and specifically we're kind of talking about the birth of island hopping today what would become island hopping i guess we could say um now this is because this war was awful. It was a slow, grinding war of attrition, mostly between the United States and Japan, though other allies were involved. The Commonwealth was involved in some islands, the British more specifically, and Burma, modern-day Myanmar. in Myanmar, but specifically in the island hopping

campaign that we envision in the American narrative. We get some help from Australia and stuff. That's cool, I guess. Thanks, guys. Yeah. Now, the reason why we generally don't like to think about

these, specifically the Battle of Tarawa, is because we were effectively reducing one another into a soup-like homogenate over islands so small that many of them could be measured in literally the singles of miles. So these tiny insignificant

tracts of land would end up becoming the graveyards of thousands of people and it's hardly something you can turn into fun movies and such. though attempts have been made bless them yeah now some that stick out are you know like i said iwo jima okinawa guadalcanal um which at some point we will definitely talk about all of those though they will probably be significantly more than one episode definitely guadalcanal um but uh like everything in the pacific war the

background of this and japan's imperial ambitions throughout the pacific are tied to the u.s cutting off their main supply of oil that being us uh for committing unspeakable war crimes throughout china now we'll obviously go in this a bit more whenever we talk about say pearl harbor uh but this is the too long didn-didn't-read version. Of course, this started with attacks on Pearl Harbor on December 7th and quickly spread throughout the Pacific as the Japanese Army and Navy elements struck at various European colonial and American holdings, as well as a few independent nations for good measure.

Hong Kong, Guam, Wake Island, New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, the Philippines, Singapore, and a few others were all invaded or fell with only a couple of months after the start of the pacific theater by january 1942 there is a legitimate worry that the japanese might invade australia as weird as that is to believe well they've invaded uh what is the city i'm thinking of? Shanghai. Was there a battle of Singapore? They invaded Singapore. Yeah, they invaded Singapore, Hong Kong. That's not all that far. Specifically, the Battle of Singapore is very embarrassing,

which will definitely get a series or episode of its own one day. But, I mean, they invaded Papua New Guinea. They're right off the coast of Australia. I was going to go on ahead of the other, yeah. And not to mention, they bombed Australia about like a hundred times. Which I'm sure Australians listening are like, yeah, no shit

they did, but Americans absolutely do not learn about this in school. We're very dumb. It's very much American-centric and more specifically European-centric when it comes to World War II. And reading about how realistic these

dreams were invading australia i believe were a victory would have been a pipe dream because i just don't think japan had the military capacity to do this um but an actual attempt was not like the imperial navy heavily favored the invasion of austral, but the army thought it was a very bad idea. And owing to the constant internal bickering between the two branches of the military, which included various political power plays, the occasional coup, and more than one assassination, the army had more political pull at the time. So the Navy's plans were kind of shelved. Could you just imagine like japanese military divisions getting lost in the outback uh yeah it's 900 miles to the nearest airship because everything is four days from everything in australia uh this is a kangaroo he's your best

pal and your only hope of survival his name is jim good luck to you. If the emus could beat Australia, Japan's fucked. At this point, Japan's already invaded a large chunk of China, which is absorbing untold amounts of manpower on top of invading all of these small islands, defending the holdings that they

have. The invasion of Australia is not a realistic thing, though I would argue so is a realistic invasion of China,ia is not a realistic thing though i would argue so is it a realistic invasion of china but they attempted that too oh yep uh you know that japan was was definitely attempting to kirby the pacific and didn't work um now as you can imagine to all these things um happening so quickly the allies were on a bit of a back foot in the Pacific, and it wouldn't be until mid to late 1942 before they were really able to get their shit together in order to start striking back.

There were obviously stability operations, attempting to put defenses in place, but things were not going great. Now, these led to victories like at the battle of midway and coral sea which were kind of irreversible for japan you can't lose that many aircraft carriers and shrug it off right now like i think we talked about this before like way back late during our kamikaze episode it's more the accumulation of casualties and defeat more than any singular defeat. When you can no longer replace all of the fucking veterans and experienced

people you're losing. Like pilots are hard to train. Right. Specifically like naval pilots are hard to train. Were we talking, did you guys do an episode where like they shortened the training for pilots down to like 15 days by the end of the war or something? we talked a little bit about it when we talked about kamikazes there we go and uh we talked we'll talk a little bit about this more in like a future series i

have planned uh more to do with germany and russia but um yeah they they attempted to short and to be fair the japanese pilot program was like obscenely difficult when the Pacific War started. So they just kept chipping away at it and chipping away at it until it's like, fuck it. You're not going to land anyway. So here you go, kid. But yeah, I mean, that accumulation of loss of experience is what really breaks the back of Japan in this situation. But when it came time to start reclaiming islands leading to the Battle of Guadalcanal,

part of the larger Solomon Islands campaign, things kind of got bigger and bigger. And at this point, there's no longer any way for Japan's going to win. That ship has sailed. Their only hope of winning, even if you consider it a hope of winning was the united states deciding they didn't want any of that smoke after the pearl harbor attacks which is honestly one of the dumbest fucking military decisions i've ever read oh no but we we wanted that smoke baby yeah i mean like the the attack on pearl harbor was so egregious that even the like

the the isolationist campaign in the u.s is like yeah we got nothing on this one fuck them and the the isolationist movement in the united states was like largely fueled by like uh lindbergh and a lot of anti-semitic people uh also jfk's dad yeah j JFK himself donated to it. Yeah, and like, but to be fair, once Pearl Harbor got attacked, they're like, yeah, never mind. We're, go ahead.

Well, USA, USA. Because it's really, it's really easy. They're all going to wear your American German bun banners. Like, it's really easy to be an isolationist when shit isn't getting blown up. I would say in your backyard, but Hawaii is a fucking fair distance away from that but still like you the attack killed out what almost 3 000 uh american sailors airmen whatever uh so yeah japan really fucked themselves on that one and even admiral uh yamamoto was like this is absolutely not gonna work uh but we'll definitely

talk about that more when we talk about pearl harbor. But so far, Japan had a tendency to not meet invading forces on the beach in defense. They chose instead to allow allies to land and funnel them deeper into whatever island they were landing on to prepare deeper and more complicated kill zones. to prepare deeper and more complicated kill zones it's hard to argue which of these work better honestly because during world war ii most of the time no matter what island defense or beach defense you had amphibious landing succeeded um so it really seems to be the the once an amphibious landing began obviously like the landing at calais comes to mind as a miserable failure. But like most of the time when you launch an amphibious assault, you have such a buildup of men and material that's like, all right, well, that's two waves down. Shove six more in there like you're eventually going to win through sheer force of bodies. Right.

So it's hard to argue which one of these is better. But they decided that they were going to have a defense in depth um and this is actually where one of a bit of a historical misnomer comes from where japanese were like legendary jungle fighters they weren't they actually had no training in that um and japan doesn't have jungles and most of these kids are from like urban areas or rural farmland. They're not like jungle ninjas. What it came down to is fighting on the defense is always easier. And there were like specially trained, like special force units in the Japanese military. We talked a little bit on our, what do you call it?

Remaining Japanese soldier episode. There's a bonus episode at the $5 level. Go get it. There were hundreds of people, maybe thousands. There's not an army division of specially trained jungle soldiers. No jungle ninjas?

It just turned out that when you get a whole bunch of Midwest farm kids who turn into Marines to invade fucking Guadalcanal, they're like, oh shit, Hoss, what is this? It's very easy to shoot them in the face. Yeah, fair enough. But in Guadalcanal,

the Marines met, the Japanese met the Marines further inland and there were army units in Guadalcanal as well. I'm not ignoring them, but Marines get talked about the most. Kind of like Fallujah. In this case, we actually won. Oh, damn. But there

is some ideas that the Japanese did intend to resist the landings, but they were just like a fuck-up of intelligence. And there were some outlying islands that did resist landings, but it was an uncontrolled, uncoordinated way.

However, it was an unorganized defense of the beach. That would change with the Gilbert Islands campaign of 1943, and holy shit would it change. Now, I do have to talk about the Gilbert Islands a little bit because there's a good chance that you probably have no idea where they are, what they look like, and how small they are. They're the South Pacific. Sure. That's all I know. Okay, I'm look like, and how small they are. They're the South Pacific. Sure.

That's all I know. Okay, I'm done. Have a good podcast, Joe. They're virtually in the middle of nowhere. They're a small chain of atolls and coral islands, several thousand miles between Papua New Guinea and Hawaii. So truly the middle of fucking nothing. Yes.

Now, nowadays, part of them make up the nation of kiribati which i promise you if you look at how this island nation is spelled you will not believe it's pronounced that way i was going for kiribati so admittedly i only know it's pronounced this way because of the geography now youtube channel shout out to that guy uh for helping me with this one really led me into a wormhole um Now, the Gilberts were and are tiny, tiny specks of islands. Now, the reason why they're important

is because of war. They're literally not important for any other strategic reason. These various islands that the Japanese controlled acted as something of defensive perimeters for other islands they controlled. By invading and taking over the Gilberts, the Allies could then open up

the Marshall Islands, which in turn would open up the Marianas Islands. This is where island hopping comes from. Man, this sucks. These are islands that are so small they literally are only important because if we were to sail an invasion... Because we could slap an airstrip on it.

Meh. Kind of small for that. There slap an airstrip on it. Meh. Kind of small for that. There was an airstrip, but it's real small. Sure. Now, the reason why the Marianas were important was the airstrip, not the Gilberts. Because the Marianas were so close to Japan, they were within bomber range

with an airstrip. So, of course, we wanted that. Now, the reason why the Gilberts were important was to invade other islands. The Gilberts themselves were useless. Now, to set up forward bases capable of supporting operations in the mid-Pacific to, say, the Philippines, into Japan,

the U.S. wanted to take the Mariana Islands. The Marianas were heavily defended, and naval doctrine of the time, and honestly, probably today as well, would hold that in order for these amphibious assaults to succeed, land-based aircraft would need to be required

to weaken the defenses and protect the invasion force. Now, the nearest island to support those were again, not the Gilberts, but the Marshals. Taking the Marshals would provide the base needed to launch offensives into the Marianas.

But the Marshals were cut off from direct communication with Hawaii by a Japanese garrison and very small air base at the western side of the Tarawa Atoll in the Gilbert Islands. That meant for all of this to succeed, they would have to take the tiniest fucking island the US would fight a battle on probably

ever and the most annoying order to receive it's just like fuck it just turn it into glass now I need to point out just how small the Tarawa Atoll is it is only 11 square miles total god damn but

the majority of the battle would not take part on the Tarawa Atoll. The battle gets the name Tarawa because that is the bigger part of what the island is actually part of. So that is the Atoll bears the battle's name. But it would take place on an even tinier island called Batio. Now, Batio is only two miles long mind you and at its widest is 700 meters it is entirely flat uh with train mostly of rocks and coral and like a lot of it is completely unusable. Now, I say about two miles long because it's more like a high one mile.

It has been compared to the same size as Central Park. Okay. Now, if this sounds like a custom-built kill zone, you're pretty much right. And to make things worse, the Japanese had an idea that the Americans were going to attack bateo uh in august of 1942 colonel evan carlson and the now legendary macon island raiders

raided the other side of the gilberts on macon atoll uh so other than this being mostly a victory for the americans it did let the japanese know like, oh, fuck, they know we're here. They're going to come back. They're going to invade us. Something's going to happen. Yeah. So that meant they needed to dig into Bateo. So on February 1943, the Japanese set the 6th Yokosuka Special Naval Landing

Force as well as the 7th Sazubo Special Landing Force to reinforce Bateo Island. Now, these islands are sometimes called Japanese Marines, despite that not actually being a thing that existed to make things easier, because they had special landing forces and they also had landing

forces. The Japanese Imperial Navy and Army was really into different titles for very small units. Now, if these guys are better or worse than a normal Japanese imperial army conscript um it is really up for debate because you read some things say the special landing forces are much better the better led um they're more in uh they have more morale so they don't retreat

uh but then you read other reports like they actually kind of suck at attacking things because they're purpose-made amphibious landing units, literally in their name, right? Right. And most of the time they were used invading undefended islands or islands with very small garrisons, say like Wake Island, which was defended with almost as many civilians as it was Marines. And other times they'd invade parts of china and just get dusted uh like they didn't they did not have a great um reputation though for defenders like i already pointed out defending makes you look like a goddamn hero most of the time so in the when you see when you see u.s sources writing about them they'd call the special landing forces which their name would then be changed like Special Defending

Force. Would be like, oh, these guys are the best the Navy has to offer. They weren't. And also they weren't like purpose-built. Japanese SEALs, but it's literal SEALs. Oh, that's just cute. Or like a.50 cal.

My favorite technical. Also, they weren't like marines like the marines in the navy a wall one branch like the marines are separate right in the u.s in the in the japanese imperial navy these guys especially landing force sometimes called japanese marines were just sailors picked for landing duty like they were they were given very cursory infantry training like there you go sport um are you a real soldier now get out there but they did have a different uh command structure than the japanese imperial army which is going to be incredibly top heavy and not so good at small unit leadership which despite all of the problems that the u.s military

has is one thing that they actually are good at is small unit leadership, which despite all of the problems that the U S military has is one thing that they actually are good at a small unit leadership. Um, and the special landing forces were, were better at that. Allegedly. We're not ready for you to praise the U S military. It's a small unit leadership.

I'm, I'm honestly only helping myself there. Cause one of those was me. Oh, that's right. No, buy his book. Hooligans. Oh, that's right. No, I was going to say, buy his book. Hooligans are good. Well, especially back in the day, the U.S.'s reliance on non-commissioned officers was pretty unique.

Oh, gotcha. Most militaries are super top heavy with officers commanding everything. Right. And the U.S. is more of like, do what you want which worked really well uh until it didn't um sure uh another thing that was put in a place is japanese rear admiral keiji shibasaki i think uh now he's yeah nailed it fucking tag that one up there he was a veteran of several amphibious landings during his tour of duty in china and and i say successful because he didn't die um because there's all the success we need yeah i mean honestly when it comes

amphibious landing sometimes to be like a grizzled veteran just means you didn't die like everybody else it sucked real good yeah great beach running kid uh now they put him in charge uh because you know hypothetically if you're trained to do amphibious landings, you know really well how to reject one, right? There would be no defense in depth on Beto Island or BTO Island like the Japanese had been doing. Now, there's a very good reason for that. There was simply no room to do that. You only had, like, so many feet of beach to fight over before you're just on the other side of BTO Island. They would have to defend every inch of the beach and every inch of the island.

I'll fucking one and a half miles of it behind it in an attempt to bleed the Marines white. There was no intention of winning this battle. They knew it was going to be impossible, but their goal was to simply kill as many as you can maybe they'll fuck off but at least we'll buy some time right sure now unfortunately for the invading marines he was also an engineer by trade uh so he put his trade and skills to use placing 14 coastal defense guns dug in and concrete firing positions building 500 pillboxes out of logs and sand because he didn't really have any materials to work with. He scattered 40 different pieces of

artillery around the island and reinforced firing pits and all this is linked together by trenches and defensive strong points and all of them were linked by running points. A trench couldn't be cut off from another trench meaning runners could always get back and forth for supplies, medical stuff.

They also could lay communication wire. Not that that would matter much, but we'll get there. Now, there's also like 14 Type 95 light tanks that he had at his disposal, which are terrible tanks. Legitimately the worst of World War II we dog on the Imperial Japanese military often on this show and it's because they deserve it and specifically their tanks were comically bad

they were very bad I actually got to see one in person very very up close here and oh my god they're so small I'm taller than it tracks up almost you're what five five oh yeah a solid four three yeah um they were very underpowered virtually no armor um like an infantry squad could very easily

kill this tank without a anti-tank specific weapon is how weak it is oh damn yeah um like a heavy machine gun can puncture the armor oh okay yeah it's real real bad that's bad yeah uh now the japanese knew uh that their tanks sucked like they didn't see tanks is very important they saw them as specifically an infantry support platform which is true however you do need to make it survivable when it comes up against i don't know a guy with a 50 caliper machine gun or another tank they neglected that part but they knew their tank sucked so they used them as dug in and placed weapons which is unique they i believe they

actually did the same thing later on in iwo Jima. But there was more than just Japanese defenses built into this island. The defenses went all the way to the beach, and then they built seawalls, which were not there before, to make landing very, very hard. On top of those seawalls, they built heavy anti-boat machine guns slapped right there on the beach. There was no place for marines to land it butted right up against the sea walls which were mined and barbed wired and full of machine guns now the reason why the japanese yeah this would normally be a very stupid idea because you just have an exposed position out there but the reason for this was the island was kind of uninvadeable well if it's that small

one would think right um there was a 500 meter thousand sorry 500 meter wide 1000 meter long shallow reef that surround the island's north which is where the invasion was going to come from which was so well known for fucking up boats during the wrong tide that the Japanese had to build a really long pier just to get around it. Also, there were several Japanese boats stuck in the reef that they just abandoned,

which they also then turned into machine gun platforms. This is no secret. But now, Shibazaki looked over all of these defenses and told his men, machine gun platforms. Sure. Um, this is no secret. Um, but now Shibazaki looked over all of these defenses and told his men, quote, it'll take 1 million men, 100 years to conquer Tarawa.

Now that was not true, but facing him, Shibazaki would have the largest American fleet ever assembled up until that point, which included 17 aircraft carriers, 12 battleships, 66 destroyers, plus 36 different types of transport carrying the entire 2nd Marine Division, as well as parts of the U.S. Army's

27th Infantry Division. Now, the United States had over 30,000 men arrayed to invade the Gilberts, which gave them a 10 to 1 advantage over the Japanese invaders. And also more of a population than exists today on those islands. I think the

island like Tarawa itself has like a population of 17,000 today. How do you that's still like a lot of people. It's very, very dense. Yeah. But that doesn't mean the U.S. was exactly enthusiastic about the concepts of this invasion. Now, a lot of this comes from the writings of Norman Moises.

Might be pronouncing your name wrong. Sorry, bro. He was a Marine part of the invasion force, which had the codename Helen. which had the codename Helen. Now, he got to sit through the rousing speeches that officers give out and stuff. He was specifically

an Amtrak crewman. Not that kind of Amtrak. I was going to say, I wasn't forward until 71, so... Laying down track all the way to the beach from Philly. Well, let's go you guys have tickets you guys have tickets i'm gonna get on the portland to fucking beto island amtrak

cafe cars open bitches let's do this uh so an amtrak was uh an amphibious tracked vehicle um that's much lamer it's honestly even lamer than that. They're known for being horrible, unreliable pieces of shit back then. Even worse today, honestly. Obviously, newer versions exist. They exist now mostly to break down and drown Marines occasionally. But it looked like a normal armor personnel carrier, though if it fucked a boat. And it could very, very slowly make its way through rough

ocean water. And they were good for climbing over obstacles on the beaches and stuff like that. Gotcha. Now, that's what his job was. Norman was an Amtrak crewman. Now, he said, quote, several days before the landing, our small group was called together and informed that there would be approximately 80% casualties among our Amtrak crewman. Now he said, quote, several days before the landing, our small group was called together, informed that there would be approximately 80% casualties among our Amtrak

people. Our group went quiet, too quiet to break the spell. I put an armor on our corpsman, which is what Marines call medics and said, quote, I'm going to be sorry to see you go fella. And then everybody burst out laughing,

including the corpsman. So yeah, expectations were not high. Now, like most amphibious landings, the Americans opened fire early in the morning with a heavy air raid over the island, as well as a

sustained naval bombardment. Now, according to Norman, as well as the movie with the Marines at Tarawa, there's around 4 million pounds of explosives dropped on this tiny island. Fuck. Though it doesn't have too much of an effect.

Now, the reason for this is because that the Japanese didn't have many building materials on the island, they just dug down really fucking deep, which turns out is really all you need to do. The bombardment did do something that would fuck up the defenses, though I can't see any stretch of the imagination where this succeeds if this doesn't happen.

And that is, despite doing all of this reinforcement, all this digging, the Japanese actually neglected to bury their network cables very deep for their radios. So when the island gets shelled and bombed, it severs their communication lines. We did one thing, right? Yeah, it's kind of like

an important thing to sleep on, in my opinion, but whatever. Now, this forced the Japanese to use runners uh as you know we've talked about before it's just a dude with a letter um a letter if you're lucky sometimes i know the japanese were very very worried about uh having runners intercepted because they would rely on runners a lot especially in china um it's one of the reasons that their military just incredibly weirdly advanced and also strangely backward at the same time during the same war.

That a lot of times small units didn't have radios, so they would have to use runners. But they were so paranoid about runners being intercepted, having letters taken. Runners would have to memorize what their officers told them meaning you're playing combat telephone right and hoping that they uh remember it yeah exactly so i mean hypothetically speaking all these units are connected via their trench system anyway so you can easily run runners back and forth so this led to a slowdown of information rather than a total failure at least for now now the bombardment was called off 10 minutes before the marines packed into what are known as higgins boats which are the vast majority of them are packed in as well as m tracks we're supposed to make landfall now a higgins boat is

what everybody has in their head when i say amphibious landing it's the boat from d-day yeah yep it's the boat from d-day um, Higgins boats were not good for the Pacific. They were okay for Europe. The reason for this, we'll get to that point, is they need a fair amount of water in order to work. Now, the Amtraks would be the first wave, though. And the reason why the Barma was called off 10 minutes before was because it was putting out a lot of smoke

and so much smoke that the pilots of the Amtraks and the Higgins boats couldn't fucking see where they were going so they had to call off yeah whoopsie doodle you know that's the one that problems with smoke screens is nobody can fucking see

they don't know what we're doing how can they possibly know what we're doing some like 4D chess amphibious landing brain thinking there Nobody can fucking see them. If they don't know what we're doing, if we don't know what we're doing, how can they possibly know what we're doing? Exactly. Get some 4D chess amphibious landing brain thinking there. So they call it out and wait for the wind to pull away the smoke. Now, if you're wondering, well, couldn't that just mean the Japanese

can see them coming? Yes. Yes, it did. Yeah. Hell yeah. It's to strike fear into their hearts as what make eye contact as we slowly get mangled on your beach defenses. Hey guys, we're here to invade. So remember those reefs that we talked about?

Yeah, those are going to become very important. Oh no. Now the US knew about them and they simply assumed, based on their tidal charts that they had, that the water would be deep enough for the Higgins boats to make it ashore. Well, it turns out sometimes, regardless if you have tidal charts or not, tides are kind of unpredictable, and they were way lower than they were supposed to be. Now, this also was not an unforeseen problem, because they had been warned ahead of time by a New Zealand liaison officer who was familiar with the tide pattern on the Beto Island area and said, it's always lower than you think it is.

Right. And they said, fuck you. Yeah. Fuck you, Kiwi. I forgot they were Kiwi. Sorry, our New Zealand listeners. So they ignored him and the invasion went ahead

and those reefs would... Well, I don't know if blood is good for a reef, but if it is, these fuckers are probably immortal now. Now, as the Amtrak, which were the first wave, began to approach the beach, the Japanese actually held their fire until they were about 50 meters from the beach, waiting so long that the Marine with the... So there's a very, very good video called With the Marines at Tarawa that I'm not going to encourage anybody to go watch because it's very graphic. that I'm not going to encourage anybody to go watch because it's very graphic.

So it's where we get, honestly, some of the most jarring footage of the American side of World War II because this guy was a Marine and he's taking incredibly graphic footage of Marines. It was so graphic that it was refused to be released until FDR himself signed off on it. Wow.

So the cameraman who was filming Marines at Tarawa during the invasion assumed like other battles, the Japanese had simply retreated further inland and they would land unopposed at the beach. Like that's what the narrator is saying in the video. Right. Marines are like smiling on the Amtrak and shit. Oh no. Yeah. Or another thing is, remember, they just bombard them with 4 million pounds of explosives.

Like, maybe the bombardment killed them all. Fuck it. We don't know. Well, some rules didn't happen. Then the Japanese infantry or Marines, whatever, opened fire when they're only about 50-ish meters away, tearing into the first wave of Amtrak's. Amtrak's are not heavily armored because remember they have to be able to float right uh now the amtrak's kept moving forward attempting to dislodge their troops but they were stopped by the sea walls which they did not have

the ability to climb over and then behind them became came the wave uh waves of higgins boats now the higgins boats need about four feet of water in order to draft but they need five feet in order to turn the tide on this particular day was three feet so that meant as soon as they got into the uh the area of operations the higgins boats hit the reefs and got stuck now the Japanese kind of had an idea something like this would happen, and they had sent divers out there to plant mines all over the reefs, as well

as barbed wire in the shallow water, which also had more mines on it. So, the Higgins boats stuck in the reefs triggered the landmines that the Japanese had placed. This forced other Marines seeing this happen, like, oh dear fuck, we need to get out of here jumped into the water which was about chest high for most of them attempting to dislodge their higgins boats from the reefs like shaking them loose all

while they're being shot at i remember thousands of machine guns and artillery um all while remember i don't know if you've ever been in a reef before, a coral reef. Incredibly sharp. Yes, it hurts. So these people, these guys are getting torn to shit by barbed wire that's in the reefs, the reefs themselves, and gunfire. All while

weighed down by 60 pounds of gear. Now, they realized they cannot knock the Higgins boats loose. So they decided they'd have to wade to shore, which was at this point about 700 meters away. Oh, fuck that. Now, and remember, chest high, you can't run. You're being torn to shreds by the Reeves, the barbed wire, the, uh, the landmines, machine gun, rifle fire cannons are tearing through everybody.

Now at this point, the Amtrak set got to the seawall began getting blown up, set on fire and disabled because they're now a sitting duck. The ones that made it through to get stuck on the first wall of seawalls couldn't make it over creating something of a traffic jam of dead, destroyed vehicles on top of a growing number of bodies. Not to mention all of the Marines that were dying just behind them in the reef. Now, noticing how bad off the Higgins boats were, the Amtrak guys kind of turned into the heroes of the story and decided, fuck, we cannot leave these guys to wade through

that water. They kicked out all of their infantry to take cover behind the seawall, which was literally their only cover, which was still in the water. And they turned around and drove back out into the reefs to try to pick up these guys that were wading to shore. Now, at this point, the Higgins boats are completely fucked and the Amtrak's are the biggest targets out there, leaving them becoming a gigantic magnet for fire. Right. The same guy I was talking about before,

Norman, was in one of those Amtrak's and said, quote, I told Bro, which is a nickname for one of his crewmen, to stop along two Marines whose rifles were held at port arms wading through water towards

the beach. I told him to get on board and we'd take them to shore. Both look frightened. The one that appeared to be leading said, quote, no. I again told them to get aboard the Amtrak and this time he yelled, get that fucking thing away from me because there's drawing so much fire

they figured they were safer in the reefs than in the Amtrak. Fuck that, dude. Oh, fuck all of that. Nope. Yep. And soon, so many Amtraks and Higgins boats were stuck in the reef or destroyed. They created an obstacle for more reinforcing waves to come in.

Soon, Amtrak drivers had no choice but to run over the dead and dying who were caught in the barbed wire in the reefs, creating a corpse pier. What a phrase. Thank you, Joe. You're welcome. Unfortunately, that tends to come up quite often in the history of warfare, where they're like, corpses are a road now. It happened again.

Jesus fucking Christ. Marines trapped in this nightmare found out a really bad thing about salt water and electronics and that is their radios wouldn't work right because the vast majority of marines had to jump into the water even the ones that had come to shore and survive the amtrak journey were pretty much sitting in a pool of water behind the sea walls so they couldn't contact the fleet to tell them what was happening or contact air support. This was made worse than one of the supporting ships that was supposed to come close to shore to act as a relay.

Yeah. Four of these fired their 16 inch guns and then somehow had them traversed in such a way and knocked out their own comms array. Jesus fucking Christ. Oh, it's a comedy of error or tragedy of errors yeah yeah yeah the phrase that comes to mind soon more and more waves hit the beach

getting pinned down behind the long seawall or lost out on the on the reefs creating a bigger and bigger literal dam of corpses with so many people they were running out of places to hide. Soon, men were having to take cover behind other men, and three or four ranks of

people were piled behind single rocks. Other people had no choice but to hide behind the dead. The first attempts to get tanks to shore ended with their Higgins boats, you guessed it, stuck in the reefs. Finally, landed Marines got organized under the command of Colonel David Shoup.

Funny last name, but also a future commandant of the Marine Corps. Now, Shoup was involved in the planning of this battle, but had not been originally meant to lead any part of it during the invasion. That was left to a guy named Colonel William Marshall. But then Colonel Marshall had a nervous breakdown overlooking the plans right before the invasion. Fair enough. Which, yeah, sure.

Then General Julian Smith promoted Shoup, and this would actually be Shoup's first ever time in combat or commanding anything ever. Good for him. I'm talking like the president. Good luck to you. To be fair, he hit the beach like a boss he immediately ordered like

organized what he had into a cohesive whole to include like units were so shattered and lost that like one got nicknamed the orphans because it was a unit like slapped together by some lieutenant made up of marines from other units

and now as soon as he stormed ashore, he got wounded twice, catching shrapnel in the leg and getting shot in the fucking neck. But he just kept on going because, you know, sometimes death is more of a suggestion. Now he

finally organized a breakout from the seawall to get an assault further into the island, more just to make room for more Marines. Because there were so many people on this tiny sliver of cover, there was nowhere to go. Right. Now, finally, some armor support finally made it to shore

when the first Sherman tanks triumphantly appeared to support the Marines and then flipped and fell into a shell crater in the beach. In other places, smaller Stuart tanks released too early and sank. Then another got hit by a rocket, taking its cannon out and reducing it to a mobile pillbox. Now, at the end of the first day of fighting, only one tank that made it to shore would still be operational. What's better than none, I guess.

Unless you're one of the tankers, honestly. That sounds miserable. Like, we're going to the beach. Why is everything wet? Fuck. I just wanted to go home. From this precarious position, General Julius Smith, Radio General Holland Smith, no relation, mid-afternoon

stating successful landings on beaches Red 2 and 3 toe hold on red 1 the situation is in doubt by the end of the first day the Marines hit a tenuous hold on all three landing zones designated 1 2 and 3 now they are corralled onto

these very very very narrow beaches and no unit had penetrated more than 70 yards inshore oh shit now by nightfall being driven back into the sea was legitimate threat if the japanese managed to throw together an organized counter-attack which was coming not to mention marines described the weather of tarawa of like being in a sauna, a tropical Island, uh, like that was pushing nearly a hundred degrees of nearly as much humidity.

There was not nearly enough water to go around and men were passing out right and left from heat stroke and exhaustion after only a few hours of fighting. Like when the things that, uh, Amtrak crewman remember it was, when people running to their their vehicles when they'd come to shore, what they assumed were

evacuating wounded, they were desperately asking for water. Oh, God. They were trying to ferry some people out from the combat zone onto the Amtrak back to the fleet that they were wounded, but it was slim fucking chances, man.

There is a very rare chance an Amtrak is making more fleet that they were wounded but it was slim fucking chances man there is a very rare chance an Amtrak is making more than a one way trip that is the one time I will say that probably luck more than anything depended on completely turned the case of the entire

battle hey what an ugly still winning baby that's true that's true and I say that because the marines on the beach remember no more than 70 yards onto the island where grace with quite possibly the biggest stroke of luck in all of military history by the end of the first day of fighting the japanese commander was getting pretty pissed about how slow his flow of information was getting because you know his comms wires were fucked up and it was based on some dudes sprinting through a combat zone and playing telephone while trying not to die

not the best way to send and receive messages and to be fair i can't imagine a situation where he could order a quick and decisive counter-attack if he hoped that the system was going to work he would have to get closer to shorten his line of command so he ordered his entire command staff to pick up stakes and move closer to the fighting this would shorten the distance for runners and it could give him the needed edge on this decisive moment of the battle that is it could have if at the same time he and his entire command staff were out of the bunker and moving toward the new spot a u.s destroyer nobody is sure which one lobbed a shell directly into them killing them all immediately oh that works there is absolutely no way the gunners on the ship could have known

what they were shooting at meaning they fired what has to be the luckiest shot in human history completely obliterating the entire japanese command structure on the island in seconds through sheer dumb luck now pretty much everybody agrees that shibazaki's next move was to launch a bonsai charge down the beach that probably would have destroyed the invasion of tarawa or come very close obviously there were still tens of thousands of men in reserve another wave would have just come i'm not saying that they would have won right um maybe we would have been like all right maybe this island isn't worth it but probably not um going off of what normally happens in situations like this and would occur more later on the war a bonsai charge is certainly

coming and most people they think of a bonsai charge in their head they're thinking samurai sword wheeling screaming uh yeah a melee assault or whatever and it's more accurate to think of as more directly a frontal counter-attack than anything to do with swords granted the officers would have swords but more often than not they used firearms uh because they weren't stupid yeah fair enough fair enough. Instead, with Shibazaki dead and literally every other regimental commander dead too, there was just no command structure anymore.

And there was no counterattack. Japanese soldiers just sat in their bunkers doing what they were last told, which was holding and defending, waiting for orders that would never come. From this point on, each Japanese unit and each Japanese position would act completely independent in its own isolation from a greater command structure. At this point, the battle is over. Now, by the end of the first day of the 5,000 Marines put ashore, 1,500 were casualties, either dead or wounded.

Jesus. Mostly dead. 1,500 were casualties, either dead or wounded. Jesus. Mostly dead. From that point forward, the Marines moved steadily further inland because the organized defense is kind of dead at this point. Now with fresh supplies and reinforcements, they were able to call in naval and airstrikes

on the hundreds of pillboxes and trenches they came up against, slowly chipping away at the advantages that the Japanese had on the beaches. The Marines also landed several mortar units and their own artillery as well. So the amount of fire now being put out accurately on the Japanese is not something that they can overcome. Right. Now, there was still hundreds, if not still a thousand more Japanese dug in at various points of the island. So the advance was still incredibly deadly. There was almost nowhere for Marines to hide. Remember, like I said,

it's effectively just a flat barren island. There's palm trees and stuff, but they'd all been cut down to make in the pillboxes or blown away by the literal millions of pounds of explosives that had been dropped on the island. There was virtually nothing for Marines to actually use for cover other than other captured Japanese defenses which they would also be surprised whenever they jumped down inside to find Japanese people hiding in there when they

were way behind their own lines. Yeah. It's gotta be a mindfuck. They were effectively forced to walk uncovered through a barren moonscape uh and like hope that they didn't get shot and whenever you look at footage from marines at

tarawa you'll see like five people crowded behind like a tree log collapsed in the open because it's the only thing to hide behind uh most of the marines are just like kneeling out in the open right now another problem uh the marines are just like kneeling out in the open right now another problem uh the marines ran into were japanese soldiers who had been buried alive within their bunkers from the

bombardment and i don't mean buried alive as in they're like they have to go rescue these men um because that doesn't happen now that sounds fucking nightmarish and it was but the the soldiers buried inside were buried so deep that there was air pockets and they were still able to fight oh no that nope nope nope nope nope nope nope don't like that so there would be like mounds uh or collapsed uh bunkers and stuff that still had a fighting hole sticking out of them and japanese people shooting out of it and the marines had no fucking way to assault the subjective because there's no way in and they're like 20 feet underground so you can't just like put a satchel charge on top of it they'll still

survive they just survived getting hit by a fucking naval cannon or whatever so they had to land bulldozers on the beach and literally dig them up while fighting like you can see you can in the video you can see bulldozers pulling things apart and like a marine with like a pistol peering in like every time they'd shovel up a chunk of dirt they'd have to cover it with a gun because they didn't know when they were actually going to hit the air pocket where the japanese soldiers were hiding that That is fucking terrifying. In other cases, they would call in bulldozers to collapse them more and hopefully just suffocate them,

because they're not going to fight over every piece of dirt on the island. But BTO was so small that when the actual frontline defenses were broken, there wasn't really much left for the Japanese to do. There was no room for defense in depth. There was no room to maneuver, regroup, and launch a counterattack. So they just rapidly broke down. So instead, on day three, November 23rd, at around 4 a.m., the Japanese decided to launch their last hurrah at the Marines with a 300-man bonsai charge. Now, this one mostly was a hand- hand affair because they had to run out of

ammo at this point. Sure. Nearly all of them were killed though. Like most bonsai charges, there's parts of it that are weirdly successful and like snap through a, a weak part of the, of the link that makes up defenses. And there was like some bayonet wielding

soldiers that made it all the way through the front line and then like ended up next to the cooks and like near the rear and like they like put down their soup and gun these guys down right quick like hold my goddamn fucking ladle or whatever

the worst part of this is he bled into a perfectly food-safe bucket. It's still good. It's still good. Everybody just has cholera now. Hope you guys like human being soup. Don't worry. It's just borscht. Don't ask where I got all the red from.

One of the last Japanese strongholds was a bomb-proof blockhouse garrisoned by around 100 men. And if that sounds crazy all these guys packed into a very small small area it was taken out by about 21 people uh now a guy named lieutenant alexander bonnieman jr led a very very small detachment of around 21 marines where they flushed them out of this bomb-proof blockhouse by throwing in a satchel charged through its breathing hole, which caused them all to run out,

where Lieutenant Bonnyman and a machine gun were waiting for them. That'll do it. Yeah. Bonnyman was wounded in the exchange and ended up getting the Medal of Honor. But I really don't like referring back to something that has nothing to do with this, but it's like that scene from Band of Brothers.

It's like, it's a whole other company. They're just coming over the hill because they assumed it was like 30 people in there or something. Right. And there's 100 people ran out. And so Lieutenant Bonnyman ordered his men to retreat and he covered their retreat and died. But they also

took out the last organized position. RIP to a real one. He's actually buried here in an area called the Punchbowl, which is not its real name. Like the Veteran Cemetery. Wherever they find unclaimed remains

or like, because a lot of time um when uh like all these marines died they would be buried on the island well it's actually a pretty relatively new thing for bodies to be brought home for burial right um and uh he was buried in one of the graves there and then eventually disinterred and brought here i think he was then disinterred again and brought home. I don't remember. So by the time this tiny island was declared secured on the 23rd of November of the Japanese garrison of 3636, only one officer and 16 enlisted men surrendered. Everyone else was dead. Jesus fucking Christ

among the dead on the island were Korean slaves that the Japanese had brought with them they brought 1200 and only 129 survived there's some evidence that they were killed in the bombardment like sent out on purpose during unsafe times and there's other evidence

that the Japanese simply murdered them when they realized they were losing the second Marine Division suffered 894 killed in action during unsafe times. And there's other evidence that the Japanese simply murdered them when they realized that they were losing. Now the second Marine division suffered 894 killed in action. All additional 84 of, of the wounded with later succumb to their wounds. Another 2,188 men were wounded in battle. Now remember this is in three days on an Island, roughly the same size of central park.

Right. For a comparison, today, the island of Beto, Etio, has a population of around 17,000. The amount of dead in 76 hours was 6,400 total. Now, the public backlash for this incredibly high amount of casualties over such a tiny meaningless island in a short period of time was immediate and the government couldn't exactly censor the amount of people being told their sons just died right now uh i think it was nimitz uh admiral nimitz said that he had received like literally endless letters from angry angry family members for the rest of his life um yeah, I can understand that.

Yeah. General Holland Smith compared it to Pickett's Charge and said, Was Tarawa worth it? My answer is an unqualified no. From the very beginning, the decision of the Joint Chiefs to seize Tarawa was a mistake, and from their initial

mistake grew the terrible drum of errors, errors of omission rather than commission resulting in these needless casualties now to this day islanders occasionally will still find skeletal remains on their very very small island and as recently as 2019 another marine mass grave was found wow it's estimated that there's at minimum still a hundred unaccounted for bodies somewhere on the island and nobody's entirely sure where.

Now, I know some people will be mad if I don't point out that Tarawa was a lesson learned for the United States military. Now, this included the need for underwater demolition teams to clear mines and barbed wire and sea walls and things. This led to the founding of the Navy Underwater Demolition Teams, or UDTs, which eventually spawned into Navy SEALs.

So, yeah, we have Tarwa to thank for that. of tar what i think for that um though i i also think that the i say this is someone who did not go to school for military history nor ever attended a military academy where this kind of thinking is taught i don't think there's a bright side when it comes like well we learned so much no that's just meat grinder shit yeah that that's like uh that's what when you tell that's what you tell someone when they fail a test well you'll do better next time i fucking hope so yeah um i think it's a cop out personally and it always it's covering your own ass for your failures like obviously this is a victory they won the battle however did they go out right um victory comes to mind. Yeah. It's 100% the same brain that ends with, like, Napoleon in Russia saying, we've taken the field as he sits upon, like, 20,000 dead bodies.

Right. Like, yeah, well, they just left it. Like, what did we really gain? So that is the Battle of Tarawa. And unfortunately, theific theater in a nutshell uh obviously we'll talk about the subject more right um down the line because i'm very interested in it it's like you don't see that kind of treatment being done to the western front of europe um it's certainly a different kind of fighting between two different enemies. But, you know, it's one of those situations where whenever you read about the Eastern Front, to a lesser extent, because there's a racial supremacy idea in mind on one side or in the Pacific Theater's case, both sides, which is a very weird point to have.

So there wasn't like it was one of those situations where a quarter was not asked for or expected. Right. And that's why we have... There was a lot of ideological issues as to why the Japanese soldiers refused to surrender much of the time. And there was a lot of the idea that the Americans simply would not surrender because they knew what would happen to them if they surrendered. And by and large, that was an unfounded fear. Right. They knew what would happen to them if they surrendered. And by and large, that was an unfounded fear. There were large amounts of Americans to surrender, a large amount of British to surrender at various times.

And it was large groups rather than isolated incidents. You would see people writing accounts from the Western front. They feel very comfortable surrendering to the Germans. And the Germans didn't feel so bad about surrendering to the Americans either. Well, they did not want to surrender to the soviets no they sure did not just like if the soviets did not want to surrender to them right like we both understand what's going to happen here right like this this time in captivity will be very short and bloody uh but that is the battle of tarawa um so we do have a quick question from Legion today, which is more about the behind the scenes stuff of podcasting. It says, you guys both host podcasts.

Why do you not have ads? Why are you not part of a network or something? We refuse to. I mean, that's my quick answer. It's that the ads we get, I will go a little bit behind the scenes. We get ad requests all the time. I assume you get more ad requests than I do because you're on YouTube. Yeah, we get two or three a week.

People will usually send us emails basically saying, what's your price? But we make enough from Patreon that we also really don't feel super comfortable advertising at all you know if if i don't use a product personally i'm not gonna vouch for it um if you know i've said multiple times i'm not really joking that if buy snooze.com came to me with a uh with an ad offer i would listen listen. But yeah, in order to A, preserve our integrity, and B, we just don't need the money that bad. Yeah, I mean, I solicited ads way back in the day. And of course, people remember that I did run an ad once.

It was because I knew the guy personally. So I wasn't lying about anything I said. I remember that. Also, I feel like part of me would like if iHeartRadio came calling, part of me would certainly entertain that offer simply because I'd rather take rich

people's money than listener money. Yeah, that's fair. And you could still have this show in its current form and I wouldn't have to take anybody's money to be able to pay my bills. I would take advertiser money. However, I understand now

that's simply never going to happen. I think we have and Well, There's Your Problem has a unique show as well where we're not exactly advertiser friendly. No, we're not. We're hard not. And as far as like the closest thing

to a network i think we have is just i i simply share extended universe yeah i simply share a producer with a ton of other people and we all work together all the time um and it's like of course part of it goes into having a patreon allows us to be completely independent. At no point can anybody tell us other than our own... Really, just Nate tells me that's something I probably shouldn't have in the show or I should reword something. I'm never going to lose... Well, unless you guys really don't like it. It's never going to cost me money by voicing my opinion on top of history, which a lot of people find distasteful, which I think is why academia is,

is incredibly boring and hard to parse because they make it that way on purpose. Yeah. So I got out of academia. Yeah. And I am getting further into it and I hate it more. But like, I,

that's why, that's why we do this show is to allow to kind of distill that into something entertaining. Because I think people find history boring because of what it looks like, not what it actually is. And I think by doing that, there's shows that do this already that are part of, I mean, to some extent, that are part of networks. And nobody's calling. I mean, I've had a few requests like i uh and i hilariously i think i made a joke like this is what happens when your podcast host is armenian because i had like manscape reach out that's funny we have not had manscape we've had war thunder of course you have

everybody gets war thunder and rage shadow legends yeah we got rage shadow legends we've got a vpn a couple vpns have reached out oh yeah it's like the you i'm surprised you didn't get uh the the headphones are really trying to sell on youtube now oh raycons raycon yeah i'm yeah they're a scam yeah i'm gonna start cutting fake ads in the middle of incredibly inappropriate areas we've thought about doing that yeah when uh when an amtrak is churning over a dead 18 year old conscripted marine i'm like you know what doesn't turn over dead 18 year old conscripted marines vpn uh manscape yeah you know you know he doesn't have to worry about anymore manscaping

brought to you by manscape um i mean like i did reach out it's a bit of a bit now. I did reach out forever ago to Old Crow, which I did not know was a subsidiary of a larger distiller. Owned by Jim Beam or Buffalo Trace? I think it's Jim Beam. It's Jim Beam. And I sent their customer service rep the only email I could find. This is a long time ago and we're a very, very small show. I think we might be able to swing it now. But their simple answer was just no.

I didn't even get the HR, like, thank you for contacting us and being interested in our product, blah, blah, blah. It was just like, no. Signed like Sarah from HR. Well, there's a shot. Yeah, but yeah, that's the fun of podcasting. Advertisers suck. i don't want to have

them uh yeah same so thank you for supporting the show you make all of us not having to do that possible thanks guys um and nate nate and liam uh oh yeah just oh because he's jewish and i'm jewish is that why fuck you uh and. And Nate for having to parse everything we just said into something that's palatable. Thank you. Thank you for joining me. And for everybody, don't invade small Pacific islands. They tend to kill you.

Yeah. Watch out for those reefs, baby. Watch out for the reefs. Feed the reefs outside of Australia blood. Maybe they'll come back to life. Later.