Red 2 had become a killing zone for landing troops, but the regimental commander Col. Those Marines that reached Red 1 carved out a small isolated pocket on the island’s northwestern-most point. Many Marines never made it ashore, victims of exceptional Japanese defensive planning and well-disciplined troops. Map of Marine lines on the evening of the first day of battle. So fierce was the combat on the three landing beaches (Red 1, Red 2 and Red 3) that by the end of the first day the Marines had not established a defensible beachhead. Seventy-five years later, American military historians find few analogues to the intensity of the fighting. The ensuing battle, passed down to us as the Battle of Tarawa (Betio is part of the Tarawa Atoll) was the most violent engagement yet for American forces in almost two years of war. The men of the 2nd, 8th and 6th Marine regiments confronted 4,600 well-entrenched, experienced Japanese combatants in a very confined space. If we add the White House grounds and the grounds of the US Capitol, the total grows to 385 acres, creating an area roughly equivalent to Betio.
To put that into perspective, the National Mall in Washington, DC encompasses just over 309 acres. That island, now part of the nation of Kirbati in the Gilbert Islands chain, occupies a mere 0.59 square miles or 376 acres. Between 20 November and mid-day on 24 November of 1943, the Second Division of the United States Marine Corps poured over 10,000 men onto Betio island.
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