Makin) (9), a few days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, in order to protect their south-eastern flank from allied counterattacks, and isolate Australia. The islands were to become a staging post for the planned invasion of the
Ellice Islands by the Japanese, under the codename
Operation FS, but their setback at the
Battle of the Coral Sea
The Battle of the Coral Sea, from 4 to 8 May 1942, was a major naval battle between the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) and naval and air forces of the United States and Australia. Taking place in the Pacific Theatre of World War II, the batt ...
delayed the plans, and their defeat at the
Battle of Midway
The Battle of Midway was a major naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II that took place on 4–7 June 1942, six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea. The U.S. Navy under ...
and later in the
Solomon Islands
Solomon Islands is an island country consisting of six major islands and over 900 smaller islands in Oceania, to the east of Papua New Guinea and north-west of Vanuatu. It has a land area of , and a population of approx. 700,000. Its capit ...
put a definitive end to it.
Following
Carlson's Raiders' diversionary
Raid on Makin Island and the
defeat at Guadalcanal, the Japanese command was growing aware of the vulnerability and strategic significance of the Gilbert Islands, and started adopting a defensive stance. Although Imperial leaders wanted to heavily fortify the Marianas and Palau before the Americans could get there, commanders in the outer islands were told to try and hold the island as long as possible.
Fortifications were quickly improved by the Japanese, starting in March 1943. Makin Atoll had a seaplane base built on the main island of Butaritari, while Tarawa housed barely enough room for an airfield on its main harbour island,
Betio.
When the Americans landed, in the
Battle of Tarawa fought on 20–23 November 1943, nearly 5,000
Imperial Japanese Navy Land Forces, among them 3,000
Special Naval Landing Forces
The Special Naval Landing Forces (SNLF; ja, 海軍特別陸戦隊, Kaigun Tokubetsu Rikusentai) were naval infantry units of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) and were a part of the IJN Land Forces. They saw extensive service in the Second Sino ...
and 1,247 construction laborers were stationed on Tarawa; the Makin Islands, in contrast, were only held by a total of 798 combat troops, including some 100 isolated
Japanese aviation personnel.
A detachment of soldiers from Tarawa island also occupied the island of
Abemama
Abemama (Apamama) is an atoll, one of the Gilberts group in Kiribati, and is located southeast of Tarawa and just north of the Equator. Abemama has an area of and a population of 3,299 . The islets surround a deep lagoon. The eastern part o ...
in September 1942, and though initially numbering about 300, by the time the Americans invaded the island in November 1943, most of them had been evacuated back to Tarawa, leaving only 25 Special Naval Landing Forces behind to defend the island.
Lieutenant Junior Grade
Seizo Ishikawa, the Japanese commander in charge of defending Makin, ordered his troops to build extensive fortifications on the island. These included coastal defense guns, anti-tank gun positions, machine gun emplacements, rifle pits, deep tank barriers with anti-tank guns and barbed wire. These were designed to hold the island until reinforcements could arrive.
On Tarawa,
Keiji Shibazaki
was a Rear Admiral in the Imperial Japanese Navy. He was the commander of the Japanese garrison on the island of Betio of the Tarawa atoll during World War II.
Biography
Shibazaki was born in Kasai, Hyogo prefecture. He was a graduate of the ...
had 4,836 troops, including around 2,600 Special Naval Landing Forces, 1,000 Japanese construction workers and 1,200 Korean laborers. He planned to use these units to primarily defend Betio, the largest island in the atoll. Betio was the site of a crucial Japanese airfield. To protect it from capture, Keiji had 14 coastal defense guns, 50 pieces of field artillery, 100 machine gun nests, and 500 pillboxes installed, as well as a large wall built across the northern lagoon.
Marshalls
Prelude
After the Gilberts fell to the Americans in late November 1943, Admiral
Mineichi Koga of the Japanese Combined Fleet was unsure of which islands the Americans would strike. Without any carrier aircraft to inform him, he ordered Admiral
Masami Kobayashi to disperse his 28,000 troops primarily to the outer islands of
Maloelap
The Maloelap Atoll ( Marshallese: , ) (also spelled Maleolap) is a coral atoll of 71 islands in the Pacific Ocean, and forms a legislative district of the Ratak Chain of the Marshall Islands. Its land area is only , but that encloses a lagoon of ...
,
Wotje
Wotje Atoll ( Marshallese: , ) is a coral atoll of 75 islands in the Pacific Ocean, and forms a legislative district of the Ratak Chain of the Marshall Islands.
Geography
Wotje's land area of is one of the largest in the Marshall Islands, and en ...
,
Jaliuit, and
Mili. However, Allied intelligence intercepted Imperial code, informing the Americans of which islands were more heavily defended. The Americans decided to invade the least protected but strategically important islands of
Majuro,
Kwajalein
Kwajalein Atoll (; Marshallese: ) is part of the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI). The southernmost and largest island in the atoll is named Kwajalein Island, which its majority English-speaking residents (about 1,000 mostly U.S. civilia ...
, and
Eniwetok
Enewetak Atoll (; also spelled Eniwetok Atoll or sometimes Eniewetok; mh, Ānewetak, , or , ; known to the Japanese as Brown Atoll or Brown Island; ja, ブラウン環礁) is a large coral atoll of 40 islands in the Pacific Ocean and with i ...
.
As early as November,
Consolidated B-24 Liberator from the
Seventh Air Force stationed in the Ellice Islands had flown bombing missions over Mili and Maloelap. On 3 December 1943,
Task Force 50, under Rear Admiral
Charles Alan Pownall, including fleet carriers , , , and and light carriers and , launched carrier aircraft against Kwajalein. Four transports and fifty Japanese aircraft were lost, but the attack lacked strategic value. Fearing a counterattack from Wotje, Pownall ordered a second strike against the island. The Japanese did counterattack via a night bombing strike, in which ''Lexington'' sustained a torpedo hit but was not sunk. The task force later returned to Pearl Harbor. The ''Yorktown''
's aircraft would continue to fly air cover over the atoll on 29 January, 31 January, and from 1 February to 3 February.
The invasion of the Marshalls was delayed for about a month due to logistical problems. Japanese commander Rear Admiral
Monzo Akiyama was aware that he lacked sufficient fortifications.
He had 8,000 men, but only about half of them were soldiers; a large fraction of the rest were Korean laborers.
To defend Kwajalein, Akiyama planned to use an aerial counterstrike with his 110 aircraft to weaken the American landing forces.
However, on 29 January 1944, American carrier aircraft from carriers ''Yorktown'', ''Lexington'', and ''Cowpens'' destroyed 92 Japanese fighters and bombers. Akiyama now lacked the ability to effectively mount a successful counteroffensive.
Battle of Majuro
On 31 January 1944, Rear Admiral
Harry W. Hill dispatched the Reconnaissance Company from the
V Amphibious Corps
The V Amphibious Corps (VAC) was a formation of the United States Marine Corps which was composed of the 3rd, 4th and 5th Marine Divisions in World War II. The three divisions were the amphibious landing force for the United States Fifth Fleet ...
of the Marines and the Army's 2nd Battalion,
106th Infantry,
27th Infantry Division to land on Majuro. This marked the beginning of Operation Flintlock, the invasion of Kwajalein.
The island was seen as an important base for conducting air operations against the rest of the Marshall Islands and eventually the Marianas.
The force took the lightly defended island in one day without any casualties.
Battle of Kwajalein
The same day as the Majuro invasion, the
4th Marine Division
The 4th Marine Division is a reserve division in the United States Marine Corps. It was raised in 1943 for service during World War II, and subsequently fought in the Pacific against the Japanese. Deactivated after the war, the division was re- ...
under Major General
Harry Schmidt began their
assault on Kwajalein.
Schmidt's troops first landed on
Roi-Namur, a group of islands in the northern part of the atoll.
Major confusion and delays were caused by poor weather and American troops inexperienced in amphibious operations, but the
pre-invasion naval and air bombardment was extremely effective. Out of roughly 3,000 Japanese soldiers, only about 300 were left to guard the island.
On the southern island of Kwajalein, Major General
Charles H. Corlett's 7th Infantry Division landed on southern Kwajalein with relative ease. Although the Japanese pillboxes, bunkers, and intense infantry offensives slowed the Americans, more troops, more experience in amphibious landings, effective pre-landing bombardment, and Japanese defenses on the opposite side of the atoll from where the Americans landed contributed to the capture of Kwajalein and its surrounding islands on 7 February.
Of the entire force of about 8,000 Japanese guarding Majuro and Kwajalein, only 51 survived, and 253 were taken prisoner. The Americans suffered 348 men killed, 1,462 wounded, and 183 missing in the eight days it took to take the atoll.
Battle of Eniwetok
Eniwetok's islands and islets housed enough room for airfields critical for the upcoming invasion of the Marianas.
Major General Yoshimi Nishida knew that it would be extremely difficult to hold the main island of Eniwetok against the invasion. He had roughly 4,000 troops, half of them Army soldiers, while the rest were a variety of Navy sailors. Since the Americans would be landing with naval and air support, therefore giving them the upper hand, he decided to stop them at the beaches.
On 17 February 1944, a naval bombardment of Eniwetok Atoll began. This marked the beginning of Operation Catchpole. The same day, the
22nd Marine Regiment under Colonel
John T. Walker landed on the northern island of Engebi.
The landings were a logistical nightmare, with American troops, gear, and supplies scattered along the beach.
Walker and his Marines took the island on 18 February with 85 dead and 166 wounded. On 19 February, the 106th Infantry Regiment, under Lieutenant General Thomas E. Watson,
landed on the main island of Eniwetok after a heavy bombardment.
However, the Japanese
spider hole
Illustration of a spider hole
In military slang, a spider hole is a type of camouflaged one-man foxhole, used for observation.
Etymology
The term is usually understood to be an allusion to the camouflaged hole constructed by the trapdoor ...
s and
bunkers repelled much of the bombardment by battleships. The landing group also faced the same logistical problems as the 22nd Marine Regiment. Japanese forces concentrated in the southwest corner of the island counterattacked the American flank, forcing the Americans to attack mainly at night.
Eniwetok Island was captured on 21 February with the loss of 37 Americans and nearly 800 Japanese. On another one of Eniwetok's islands, Parry Island, the Americans used heavy gunfire support from battleships before the 22nd Marine Regiment, under Watson, waded ashore at Parry Island on 22 February. They captured the island and the entire atoll on 23 February. Of those engaged, 313 Americans died, 879 were wounded, and 77 were reported missing on Eniwetok, while the Japanese suffered 3,380 dead and 105 captured.
This marked an end to the Marshall Islands campaign.
Aftermath
In the Gilberts, the Americans emerged victorious, but were caught unprepared, suffering 2,459 dead and 2,286 wounded. Japan suffered a total of 5,085 dead and 247 captured.
The heavy casualties and gruesome fighting conditions for both sides convinced General
Holland Smith, commanding general of the V Amphibious Corps, that Tarawa should have been bypassed, although other American admirals disagreed.
[Smith, Holland M.; Finch, Perry (1976). ''Coral and Brass.'' New York, NY: Viking.]
The Marshalls, by contrast, were a much easier landing. The Americans used the lessons learned at Tarawa by outnumbering the enemy defenders nearly 6 to 1 with heavier firepower (including use of armor-piercing shells) after the islands took nearly a month of heavy air and naval bombardment.
In the Marshalls, the Americans lost 611 men, suffered 2,341 wounded, and 260 missing, while the Japanese lost over 11,000 men and had 358 captured.
After the Gilberts and Marshalls were taken, the Allies built naval bases, fortifications, and airfields on the islands to prepare for an
assault
An assault is the act of committing physical harm or unwanted physical contact upon a person or, in some specific legal definitions, a threat or attempt to commit such an action. It is both a crime and a tort and, therefore, may result in cr ...
on the
Marianas
The Mariana Islands (; also the Marianas; in Chamorro: ''Manislan Mariånas'') are a crescent-shaped archipelago comprising the summits of fifteen longitudinally oriented, mostly dormant volcanic mountains in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, betw ...
.
The Japanese defeat forced military leaders to draw back to a new defensive perimeter, the Absolute National Defense Zone, which included the Marianas and Palau. These islands were heavily fortified for an upcoming assault because if captured, they would put American heavy bombers within range of Tokyo.
See also
*
Japanese occupation of the Gilbert Islands
The Japanese occupation of the Gilbert Islands was the period in the history of Kiribati between 1941 and 1945 when Imperial Japanese forces occupied the Gilbert Islands during World War II, in the Pacific War theatre.
From 1941 to 1943, Imp ...
*
Mariana and Palau Islands campaign
*
Marshalls–Gilberts raids
*
Raid on Truk Lagoon
References
Further reading
*
*
*
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1943 in the Marshall Islands
1944 in the Marshall Islands
1945 in the Marshall Islands
Articles containing video clips
Campaigns of World War II
Conflicts in 1943
Conflicts in 1944
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Douglas MacArthur
Gilbert Islands
Kiribati in World War II
Marshall Islands in World War II
Pacific Ocean theatre of World War II