When we landed in Tarawa, a tiny atoll in the middle of the vast Pacific Ocean, after a 24-hour trip from Los Angeles, the plane windows were soaked with rain. I had been warned that the island would ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Alexander "Sandy" Bonnyman, Jr. (Marine Corps) After the U.S. Marine raid on Makin Island on Aug. 17-18, 1942, Japanese garrisons ...

The Battle of Tarawa was a battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II that was fought from November 20 to November 23, 1943. It took place at the Tarawa Atoll in the Gilbert Islands. Nearly 6,400 ...

The Marines landing at Tarawa Island had high hopes for a quick and easy victory. It was November 20, 1943 and for several days before the planned attack Marines had witnessed special task forces pour ...

Aboard one of the many troop transports plowing the long sea furrows to Tarawa, and later in the hell of Betio, was TIME Correspondent Robert Sherrod. His story: Ship life was dull. The men of the and ...

LEVELED to shadeless desolation by bombs and bulldozers, the sweltering sand of Tarawa is hallowed ground. Many an embattled place has flared into brief, exclamatory prominence during six years of ...

A Malibu man’s personal crusade to clean up a trash-strewn beach 5,000 miles away will gain national attention this week when it is the focus of a cable television documentary. For more than three ...

Betio Island, white and wasted at the end of a palmy green bay, was more than ever a base of war. But elsewhere in the Tarawa Atoll the sturdy brown Gilbertese had picked up again an old, familiar ...

Rows of American flag-draped coffins rested on pavement cracked by the relentless heat of a tropical summer sun. For decades, the Marines inside the caskets had been deemed "unrecoverable," lost to ...

Where: Tarawa Atoll is part of what then was known as the Gilbert Islands and today is called the Republic of Kiribati. It’s a collection of 32 pancake-flat coral atolls. The battle was fought on the ...