As the sun rose up over the beach there was no sound, save for the occasional cry from a bird, there was nothing. The sand was white as snow, with the green vegetation slowly poking out until it merges into fields and mixed vegetation. Interspersed in the grass was palm trees with bird’s nests nestled into the top. Up and down the shore lay coconuts scattered along the grass and sand. The waves slowly rolled onto shore, where foam rested on the sand until fading back into the blue abyss.

Many of the men who would soon lose their lives on this beach were not thinking of the ensuing battle that would be the defining moments of their lives, they were focused on other things. It was November, they were thinking of turkey and stuffing, not artillery and machine guns. As they boarded the landing craft they listened to the whine of the electric motor that lowered the tin boxes into the blue.

Underneath the placid vegetation of Tarawa Island was something far more nefarious. Thousands of Japanese soldiers scurried like rats in the trenches and tunnels, dipping and ducking between pillboxes and bunkers. They had seen the ships bobbing on the Horizon for nearly a week and were well aware of the fate that awaited them. They had already resigned themselves to their deaths and were now determined to bring as many Americans with them. Machine guns were installed in the vegetation that allowed them to fire without being seen and pillboxes were topped with sand to absorb any kind of artillery. The network of trenches and tunnels was expanded to allow for easy maneuvering and snipers.

Before the soldiers were deployed, United States tax dollars were converted into noise, lots of noise. This noise was not from speakers, or singing, but from artillery. In the hours leading up to the attack, the United States Navy dumped thousands of tons of ordnance on this 2 mile strip of land in the Pacific Ocean. This was all done in an attempt to kill as many Japanese as possible to save the lives of the visiting Americans.

The Americans bobbed up and down on their landing craft as they floated ashore. Many of the soldiers were “Three Week Wonders” who had undergone only three weeks of training back in the states before being deployed in all corners of the world. These men, who were largely seventeen year old boys, were woefully unprepared for the horrors of war that they were about to experience. As 20,000 US troops floated ashore they were greeted with nothing. They waded through the shallow water and onto the powdery beaches absolutely uncontested.

They became excited, thinking that their artillery had done its job properly, and that all the Japanese soldiers had perished. However this dream quickly transitioned into a nightmare when the defending force of 3,000 Japanese simultaneously opened fire. The machine guns’ report sounded like ripping cloth as they cut down Americans on the shore. The white beaches of Tarawa quickly turned bright pink as the blood of 8,000 American soldiers spilled into the water and sand.

The Japanese scurried between pillboxes and the other defensive structures as the Americans attempted to push up onto the shore. They were fighting an ideological enemy and were going to fight until the very last breath, ensuring that they brought as many Americans with them. The Americans however had the numerical advantage, with ten times as many troops and the most powerful navy the world had ever seen. While the Japanese targeted the medics on the shore, known by their distinctive red cross on their helmet. The Americans rolled balls of flames into their bunkers and tunnels, either burning the Japanese to death or sucking all of the air out of the confined spaces, collapsing their lungs.

Terrified American teenaged boys hurled themselves into the trenches and pillboxes, attempting to expel the Japanese into the open so that they could be put down. As the Americans pushed their way through the tiny atoll they hunted down the remaining Japanese defenders. They were slowly exterminated as the invading force squeegeed the defenders until they were reduced into corpses. At the end of the second day the fighting fizzled out the lattice of tunnels and sandy beaches became the final resting place of three thousand Japanese soldiers. They had fought to the very last breath in an effort to prolong the Americans inevitable retaking of the small speck of sand in the ocean. The Japanese were successful in maiming and killing as many Americans as they could. They gave eight thousand Americans lifetime agony or permanent slumber and only a handful of the Japanese were taken alive.

As the Americans extinguished the remaining files of the Japanese resistance they combed over the landscape looking for remaining enemy combatants. After weeks of struggling they had finally expelled all Japanese forces from the island. For the remainder of the war Tarawa served as an important leaping point for American bombers that would go on to destroy the shrinking Japanese empire. It slowly regrew its vegetation and the sand was rinsed of its blood. Bodies from both sides became buried under the dense vegetation and some drifted away to see. Today Tarawa is nothing of note, it's a sleepy atoll who's seen more carnage then any of its neighbors.