“Tarawa No. II,” a sketch by combat artist Kerr Eby, reflects the difficulty in landing reinforcements over the long pier throughout the battle. As Gen Julian Smith personally learned, landing across Green Beach took longer but was much safer.
Marines fire a M-1919A4 machine gun from an improvised “shelter” in the battlefield.
Department of Defense Photo 63495
The toughest fight of the fourth day occurred on the Red Beach One/Two border where Colonel Shoup directed the combined forces of Hays’ 1/8 and Schoettel’s 3/2 against the “re-entrant” strongpoints. The Japanese defenders in these positions were clearly the most disciplined—and the deadliest—on the island. From these bunkers, Japanese antiboat gunners had thoroughly disrupted the landings of four different battalions, and they had very nearly killed General Smith the day before. The seaward approaches to these strongpoints were littered with wrecked LVTs and bloated bodies.
Department of Defense Photo (USMC) 63455
A Marine throws a hand grenade during the battle for the interior of the island.
Major Hays finally got some flamethrowers (from Crowe’s engineers when LT 2/8 was ordered to stand down), and the attack of 1/8 from the east made steady, if painstaking, progress. Major Schoettel, anxious to atone for what some perceived to be a lackluster effort on D-Day, pressed the assault of 3/2 from the west and south. To complete the circle, Shoup ordered a platoon of infantry and a pair of 75mm halftracks out to the reef to keep the defenders pinned down from the lagoon. Some of the Japanese committed hara-kiri; the remainder, exhausted, fought to the end. Hays’ Marines had been attacking this complex ever since their bloody landing on the morning of D+1. In those 48 hours, 1/8 fired 54,450 rounds of .30-caliber rifle ammunition. But the real damage was done by the special weapons of the engineers and the direct fire of the halftracks. Capture of the largest position, a concrete pillbox near the beach, enabled easier approaches to the remaining bunkers. By 1300, it was all over.
At high noon, while the fighting in both sectors was still underway, a Navy fighter plane landed on Betio’s airstrip, weaving around the Seabee trucks and graders. Nearby Marines swarmed over the plane to shake the pilot’s hand. A PB2Y also landed to take out press reports and the haggard observers, including Evans Carlson and Walter Jordan.