SACRILEGE IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC

Betio Island, Tarawa Atoll, Kiribati.  I might as well warn you right up front.  You are really, really not going to like this.  You are going to get seriously steamed. 

Tarawa is sacred history in the annals of the United States Marines.  The Battle of Tarawa was one of the most brutal and lethal in the Corps’ history.  It’s a right triangle-shaped atoll in the Gilbert Islands, now a part of the country of Kiribati[1].  Although there are numerous islands and islets along the east and south sides, and a reef on the west enclosing a large lagoon, the only deep channel access into the lagoon is above Betio Island at the southwest end of the chain (bottom left corner of the map).

After losing Guadalcanal to the Marines in 1942, the Japanese were determined not to lose Tarawa, with its vitally strategic position in the Central Pacific.  They spent a year building up an incredibly well-fortified array of defenses on Betio to control the entrance to the lagoon and thus the entire atoll.

An airstrip was laid along the two-mile long island, and a long wharf.  500 pillboxes were built along with dozens of thick concrete bunkers and ammo magazines, defense guns and artillery riddled the coast, including four huge Vickers 8-inch guns that the Japanese had bought from the British during their war with Russia in 1905 (!).  Trenches were dug connecting all troop emplacements.  Thousands of extremely well-armed and trained soldiers were ready for battle.

The Japanese commander, Rear Admiral Keiji Shibazaki, was so confidant of his preparations and men his message to Tokyo was, "It would take one million men one hundred years" to conquer Tarawa.

It took the US Marines 76 hours. 

But at a horrible cost.  There were five landing areas:  Red Beach 1, 2, and 3 facing the lagoon, Green Beach and Black Beach facing the ocean. 

The US invasion force was gigantic:  17 aircraft carriers, 12 battleships, 8 heavy cruisers, 4 light cruisers, 66 destroyers, and 36 transport ships carrying 35,000 troops, most all of them from the US Marines Second Division.  On the morning of November 20, 1943, after a massive naval bombardment and pre-dawn clearing of mines with minesweepers, the Marines were launched – and promptly got stuck on the reef, hundreds of yards from shore.

The Navy planners had made a huge mistake, forgetting about Tarawa’s "neap tides," when the tug of the sun counteracts the tug of the moon twice a month and the incoming tide rises much less than normal (there’s a neap tide here on Betio today, in fact.).  Marines were sitting ducks as they had to wade across the tidal flats and were gunned down mercilessly on Red Beach 1. 

But by noon they had taken it.  By late afternoon, they had taken Red 2 & 3.  5,000 Marines made it ashore – but 1,500 of them were dead or wounded.

All during the second day, November 21, the fighting was constant and incredibly fierce.  The Marines took Green Beach, then Black Beach, and controlled both ends of the island but not the center.  Fighting was equally fierce the third day, November 22, with Marines consolidating their positions, yet with many pockets of Japanese left.

Before dawn on the morning of November 23, the Japanese led a series of banzai charges, one of them killing 45 Marines.  Nonetheless, of the 1,000 estimated Japanese alive on Betio early that morning, there were less than 500 after banzai.  All morning long, more Japanese were killed as they refused to surrender and fought to the death.  By 1:30pm the island was declared secure. 

Of the thousands of Japanese defenders, one single officer and 16 soldiers had surrendered.  The rest were dead or wounded-captured.

The Marines had demonstrated epic bravery and heroism – guts and glory beyond normal imagination. 1,113 Marines died, 2,290 wounded.  It is no mystery whatever that Tarawa is a sacred memory for all Marines – and to trash and besmirch it would be sacrilegious.  Yet that is exactly and precisely what has happened, and in the most disgusting manner thinkable.

Here is the Navy and Marines’ Memorial on Betio today.  Note the weeds.

The plaques read:

This is going to get rough now, so gird yourself.  The people of Tarawa, of Betio in particular, have defecated on the sacrifice of the Marines that made their freedom and their country possible – literally.

First, they have utterly trashed it.  There’s a Sherman tank sunk trying to reach the shore – at low tide you can walk out to it:

In the distance is Red Beach 1.  Here it is close up:

Here’s part of Red Beach 2:

And Red Beach 3:

All the beaches Marines died on have mounds and piles of trash and garbage and corpses of dead animals like pigs and dogs.  They also have something else – lots of it everywhere.

This is a Japanese gun knocked out on Black Beach. 

Here’s another shot of Black Beach.  Note the man squatting.

Yes, he is defecating, right in the open on the beach – just like most all the people do on Betio, men, women, and children. It’s part of their cultural traditions. The beaches that a thousand Marines died on are covered with human feces.

The international aid folks call it "the open defecation problem."

Kiribati as the Gilberts was the part of the GEIC that Tuvalu seceded from, as we discussed last week in Serendipity in the South Pacific.  Tarawa is Kiribati’s capital where most Gilbertese live – actually South Tarawa (see map above, few people live in North Tarawa).  Since independence in 1979, South Tarawa’s population has tripled to well over 50,000 – on 6 square miles for a density of over 8,200 per square mile.

Those 50K people have a habit of using the lagoon and its beaches as a latrine.  As a result, the lagoon is so polluted children are dying swimming in it – Tarawa has one of the highest rates of child mortality on the planet now.  And it’s going to get much worse because the population continues to explode – it’s normal for a woman here to have as many as 8 to 10 children.

This cannot be sustained.  There are no sources of water except rain and desalination is way too pricey, so they have to import water as well as most of their food.  Fish in the lagoon makes them sick.  Tarawa and Kiribati with it is doomed.  The people here have failed to take the Marines’ advice to guard their independence well.  The day is thus not far off when that independence and the existence of their country will cease to be.

What happens to all these people then?  I frankly don’t have a clue.  And just as frankly, after seeing what I’ve seen of their committing what I consider sacrilege, I don’t much care.  Except that, when the Tarawa Crisis comes and the bleeding-heart libtards clamor that we must take the suffering Tarawans in, we’ve got to be prepared to deny such a sacrilegious people the opportunity to pollute our own shores.

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[1] .  Pronounced kiree-bess, which is how the native islanders pronounced Gilberts.  For some unfathomably perverse reason, particularly since they never had a written language before Europeans came, they insist on spelling it like kiree-ma-ti.  They do the same thing with Christmas Island.  They pronounce it kirees-mas and spell it Kiritimati.