Balance Sheet

Possession of the Gilberts gave the U.S. 166 square miles of coral and sand (half as large as New York City) scattered along 500 miles of blue water. The Japs had occupied the islands, a British Colony, in December 1941, about the time gallant Wake was being overrun. Some 6,000 strong, they met no recorded opposition from the 27,000 brown-skinned Gilbertese or the few Europeans who ran the copra trade on the 16 atolls. What they had won without cost they surrendered for a price which was high to the men involved, remarkably low to the U.S.

A ruthless little blitz virtually exterminated the Japs in 76 hours. The greatest carrier fleet ever assembled clawed down enemy planes striking from the adjacent Marshall Islands. At Tarawa, the Gilberts' stronghold, Marines crunched through the bloodiest melee in the Corps' history (see p. 24). On Makin, the Army's 27th Division, mostly New Yorkers, overwhelmed a small suicide garrison, cut down fanatical sword-swinging officers, shot and clubbed singing, apparently drunken soldiers. Abemama, lightly defended, swiftly fell.

Credit. Among the immediate gains: >> One battered airfield on Tarawa, suitable for heavy bombers and therefore the Gilberts' chief prize.>> Piers for light naval craft, a seaplane anchorage and centers for land-based fighter planes on Makin, northernmost of the Gilberts and nearest to the Marshalls.

>> Lagoon anchorage and runway possibilities on Abemama, on Tarawa's southern flank.

Debit. This was the price: For the U.S. Marines, the heaviest loss per square yard in a long chronicle of fighting, from Tripoli to Guadalcanal. Of 2,000 to 3,000 men who stormed the Tarawa beach, only a few hundred came through the hail of Jap lead without death or injury. No ship losses were announced (Rear Admiral Henry Maston Mullinnix was reported "missing in action").

Place in History. Marine historians ranked the Gilberts with other red pages of the Corps' history: >>With Chateau-Thierry, where in 1918 a thin force of devil-dog sharpshooters held an Allied line in a hell of German shellfire; where a Marine officer, ordered to fall back, answered: "Retreat, hell! We just got here!"

>> With Sohoton Cliffs, on the Philippine Island of Samar, where in 1901 two leatherneck columns scaled almost vertical heights against fanatical native rebels fighting with guns and bone-crunching boulders.

>>With Fort Fisher, on the North Carolinian coast, where in 1865 the Marines landed, helped storm Confederate defenses in the face of murderous fire. >>With Guadalcanal, where last year, in bloody frays from Matanikau to Lunga Ridge, the Corps lost 3,767 men killed, wounded and missing.

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