Courtesy of NARA (U.S.)

U.S. Marines wading ashore at Tarawa.

Quotable quotes
Let’s talk about love

“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”
— William Shakespeare, 1564-1616, English poet, novelist and dramatist.

“Love, friendship, respect, do not unite people as much as a common hatred for some thing.”
— Anton P. Chekhov, 1860-1904, Russian playwright and short story writer.

“When you love you should not say, ‘God is in my heart,’ but rather, ‘I am in the heart of God.’”
— Kahlil Gibran, 1883-1931, Lebanese poet, philosopher and artist.

“First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity.”
— George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950, Irish critic and playwright.

“True love is like ghosts, which everybody talks about and few have seen.”
— La Rochefoucauld, 1613-1680, French author.

“The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love.”
— W. Somerset Maugham, 1874-1965, English novelist and playwright.


November 20

A day stained with blood

Tarawa, an atoll among the Gilbert Islands in the Central
Pacific, was one ofthe bloodiest battlefields in the history
of the U.S.

In 1943, during the Second World War, U.S. forces
advancedrough the Central Pacific and regarded the Tarawa
as the main target of assault because there was an airfield
and formidable Japanese defenses.

On November 20, the Second Division of the U.S. Marine
Corps first landed on Tarawa.However, the U.S. had
underestimated the Japanese military skill.

The Marines met heavy fire and nearly one-third of the men
were hit as they waded ashore. The water around the island was rife with mines, barbed wire and barricades to divert the landing craft into lanes that were heavily covered by artillery.

The U.S. Marines suffered heavy causalities. By evening, of some 5,000 men who had gone ashore, 1,500 were either killed or wounded.

Yet, on the next day, aided by tanks and howitzers, they slowly fought their way inland and cut the Japanese defenders into two groups.

By the end of the second day, the leader of the Division radioed to headquarters that the Marines were winning.Indeed, after three days of bloody battle and heavy causalities, by the afternoon of November 23, Tarawa was fully in the hands of the U.S.Almost the entire Japanese garrison had been killed, only 17 of 4,000 surviving to surrender.

This victory established the amphibious assault as a method the U.S. used thereafter to defeat Japan in the Pacific campaign.