Marines of Tarawa, 1943

The book is an unparalleled visual chronicle of the Battle of Tarawa in the Pacific theater in World War II. What makes this book particularly rare is the access The Battle of Tarawa was a bloody harbinger of the many Pacific Island battles that were to come. Second Marine Division prepare for, enroute to and invade the tiny Pacific atoll known as Betio TARAWA in what becomes the largest and most ambitious amphibious operation of its time, 1943 of the Second World War. This assault from the sea was comparable to that of the Normandy Invasion of the follow summer of 1944. In Volume I we follow the men of the 2nd Marine Division and that of Task Force 53 via their daily battle diaries, in their own words as written per each day of the operation, combined with a series of photographs as they were taken on each day of Operation Galvanic. For a first time since the 1943 battle, the reader follows the daily events as they unfold per the page. Featuring a collection of some 450 images and recovered daily battle diaries. After two years of intense touch and go fighting over the Solomon Islands, the Gilbert were next up in aconcerted push to deny Imperial Japan of her distant island bases, garrisons and air strips that had enabledthem to dominate over the Pacific. Operation Galvanic, the invasion of Tarawa, was to serve twofold, asa launching point for the Island-Hopping Campaign and as a baptism of fire for all future amphibiousoperations to follow, thus began the doctrine of how such warfare was to be conducted and orchestrated. The Author has designed this first volume and those that follow as a visual diary that encompassesOPERATION GALVANIC, the Invasion of Tarawa, the first major amphibious operation of the Pacific War inWorld War Two. Period photographs, situation maps, ships logs and battle diaries have been placed into thechronological order in which they were taken, made and entered as written by the various battalion andcompany commanders, ships duty officers and by the Marines and Sailors themselves. Thus by the pagereaders are able to reexperience the events of each day, as they unfolded by the hour and by the moment?