The major focus on this episode, although it is far more than one story, is the invasion of Tarawa, an atoll in the South Pacific, a small island manned by 5,000 or so Japanese soldiers. For strategic reasons, it needed to be captured.
The problem was, as is vividly shown here "in living color," is that it cost us 1,500 (out of about 5,000) lives. When the citizens back in the USA heard about this, they asked , "Why didn't we just bomb the hell out of the island? Why did we have to send in all those marines, who wound up dying?" Good question.
In brief, a lot of problems stemmed from coral reefs which made our landing boats get stuck 700 yards from shore. From there, the Marines and to walk through waters to reach shore and en route they were sitting ducks to the Japanese machine-gunners. It was similar to what the men on Normandy would experience a year later on D-Day. In this case, in this little one-mile island, when the fighting was over, about 6,000 dead bodies were strewn across this small piece of land. Pictured are some of the surviving soldiers examining the dead. It's fairly gruesome.
Anyway, this is a very interesting but emotionally exhausting one-hour episode, which also includes some other Pacific jungle footage and our beginning advances into Southern Italy.
Much of the information is given through the word of two correspondents: Richard Tregaskis (who wrote the best-selling "Guadalcanal Diaries") and Robert Sherrod. They give us a heroic accounts of our fighting men but a brutal reality of the horrors of war.
The problem was, as is vividly shown here "in living color," is that it cost us 1,500 (out of about 5,000) lives. When the citizens back in the USA heard about this, they asked , "Why didn't we just bomb the hell out of the island? Why did we have to send in all those marines, who wound up dying?" Good question.
In brief, a lot of problems stemmed from coral reefs which made our landing boats get stuck 700 yards from shore. From there, the Marines and to walk through waters to reach shore and en route they were sitting ducks to the Japanese machine-gunners. It was similar to what the men on Normandy would experience a year later on D-Day. In this case, in this little one-mile island, when the fighting was over, about 6,000 dead bodies were strewn across this small piece of land. Pictured are some of the surviving soldiers examining the dead. It's fairly gruesome.
Anyway, this is a very interesting but emotionally exhausting one-hour episode, which also includes some other Pacific jungle footage and our beginning advances into Southern Italy.
Much of the information is given through the word of two correspondents: Richard Tregaskis (who wrote the best-selling "Guadalcanal Diaries") and Robert Sherrod. They give us a heroic accounts of our fighting men but a brutal reality of the horrors of war.