Osprey's study of the conflict between Japan and the United States
during World War II (1939-1945). The island of Betio in the Tarawa Atoll
was defended by the elite troops of the Special Naval Landing Force,
whose commander, Admiral Shibasaki, boasted that the Americans could not
take Tarawa with a million men in a hundred years. In a pioneering
amphibious invasion, the Marines of the 2nd Division set out to prove
him wrong, overcoming serious planning errors to fight a 76-hour battle
of unprecedented savagery. The cost would be more than 3000 Marine
casualties at the hands of a garrison of some 3700. The lessons learned
would dispel forever any illusions that Americans had about the fighting
quality of the Japanese.