The famous Chesty Puller won the third of his five Navy Crosses on Guadalcanal, and was also wounded there.
Manila John Basilone was a machine-gun sergeant in Puller’s battalion during night battle in which he won Medal of Honor. Basilone was killed at Iwo Jima more than two years later.
Bougainville in the Northern Solomons was the next big Marine assault, after numerous actions in Central Solomons. On November 1, 1943, landing boats began putting Third Marine Division ashore at Cape Torokina.
LEFT: Among Marine airmen who helped make Bougainville landing light in casualties was Lieutenant Robert (Butcher Bob) Hanson. He shot down three planes on D-Day, was downed himself, but survived. Hanson had total of 25 kills to his credit when death in action two months later cut short the most phenomenal career of any American flier.
RIGHT: Torokina Airfield became the base from which Major Gregory (Pappy) Boyington led his swashbuckling Black Sheep Squadron on the fighter sweeps which helped strangle the big Japanese base at Rabaul. Boyington (with paper) was later shot down and imprisoned, but his mark of 28 planes remained tops for Marine aces in World War Two.
Marines roll drums of oil out of Puruata Island dump that Japanese bombers set afire. Puruata, the storehouse for troops on Bougainville, was bombed night and day.
A machine-gun position in Bougainville rain forest.
Tarawa was next. Second Marine Division hit Betio, chief islet of the atoll, on November 20, 1943; many of them were killed and wounded under the fortified sea wall which surrounded the islet.
On Tarawa there were only the quick and the dead.
Many Marines, such as these riflemen working along pier, had to wade into Tarawa through withering fire. Amtracks, which were to take them ashore from reef a half mile out in lagoon, were knocked out early in the battle.
The sea wall on the second day of battle after the Marines had gradually forced their way into the island’s defenses. Colonel David Shoup (above) kept separated and battered Marines together during first critical two days and won Medal of Honor.
These Marines are fighting to take, not a hill, but the top of a Japanese bombproof. Japanese admiral inside this fort boasted his defenses were so strong that “a million men cannot take Tarawa in one hundred years.” They fell to about 15,000 Marines in less than four days.
Many Japanese on Tarawa killed themselves inside their bunkers. Man at left disembowled himself with grenade; man at right put rifle muzzle in mouth and pushed trigger with big toe. Marines regarded Japanese suicides as first sign of enemy collapse.
RIGHT: Fatherly Major General Julian Smith (right) commanded the Second at Tarawa. With him is his chief of staff, Colonel Merritt (Red Mike) Edson, the famous Raider leader and a hero of Guadalcanal.
In December, 1943, the First Marine Division was back in action. Here riflemen wade ashore at Cape Gloucester on New Britain.
War on New Britain was a hellish compound of mud and misery as Marines and Japanese fought each other during monsoon rains in some of the world’s foulest jungle.
Strain of battle is etched in face of machine-gunner George Miller as he comes off the line. Lieutenant Colonel Lewis (Silent Lew) Walt (below) helped gain New Britain victory by rallying Marines behind wheeled cannon, which they pushed uphill through enemy fire to storm vital height .
Spectacular explosion on Namur when Marines dynamited what appeared to be enemy blockhouse but was actually warehouse full of torpedo warheads. Only man of attacking squad to survive grim mistake was blown 200 yards into sea.
At Saipan in the Marianas on June 15, 1944, Japanese artillery had the beaches zeroed-in. Drenched Marine was blown from his landing craft. He ducks, with man beside him, to avoid shell fragments.
Big American naval guns always helped the Marines ashore, although this 16-inch shell hurled into Saipan failed to go off. Torn and frayed dungarees of Marine sitting on it testifies to grimness of battle.
Lieutenant General Holland M. (Howlin’ Mad) Smith (in helmet) toured battlefield with Admirals King (center) and Nimitz. Smith’s Fifth Corps—Second and Fourth Marine Divisions, 27th Infantry Division-took Saipan in 24 days. Marine divisions alone took nearby Tinian, the island from which the world’s first atomic bomb was flown to Hiroshima.
Saipan-Tinian gave Marines first contact with civilian populations. Most of Japanese civilians killed themselves, but native Chamorros welcomed the Marines. Here, Sergeant Federico Claveria gives candy to Chamorran child inside internment stockade.
Guam in the Marianas—where Third Marine Division and First Marine Brigade landed July 21, 1944—was another backbreaking fight for men such as this machine gunner weighed down with his weapon’s tripod.
Soap and water can be among the fairest fruits of victory: Marine riflemen on Guam wash island’s grit off their bodies after fighting is over.
Tiny Peleliu was obscured by smoke and fire of American bombs and shells when First Marine Division assaulted it September 15, 1944.
Marines were immediately pinned down on hot white coral beaches, for Japanese had merely “gone to ground” during bombardment and returned to their guns after it lifted.
A Marine gives his wounded buddy a drink from his canteen. Sometimes temperatures on Peleliu were more than 115 degrees and many men fell of heat exhaustion while attacking what was, in effect, a huge coral rock honeycombed with fortified caves.
America seemed to have everything at Iwo Jima, and these men in new armored amtracks, which could discharge them from the rear, were smiling and confident the morning of February 19, 1945.
But at Iwo—a mere eight square miles of volcanic ash—Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayashi (inset) had prepared the most formidable position in world history. An hour after Marines began landings on beaches below Mount Suribachi (rear) the Japanese began hurling shells into them and the bloodiest, fiercest fight in Marine Corps history was on.
A man always fights alone. This Marine was shot in the head by one of Iwo’s numerous and accurate snipers.
The sight of a man helping his wounded buddy to the rear became common on Iwo Jima. Many lives were saved by transfusions of whole blood within a few hundred yards of the fighting.
There were two flag-raisings on Mount Suribachi, and this photograph (perhaps never published before) tells their story. A small flag went up first to signal the fall of Suribachi, highest point on Iwo. But it could not be seen, so a second, larger flag went up. The second raising became the most famous photograph of World War Two, and here it appears in the right background while the camera focuses on the lowering of the first flag, left.
At Okinawa, the largest amphibious assault in history, the Marines had fully developed close air support tactics. This Corsair sends a string of rockets flashing toward a Japanese position.
Okinawa’s sea wall didn’t have the terrors of Tarawa’s, although these Marines weren’t sure of that as they scrambled over it on D-Day morning of April 1, 1945.
The Okinawans were in pitiful straits when the Americans landed, and the Marines who found relatively little fighting in their sector-the island’s northern hal f-spent much of their time caring for them.
Okinawans place their ancestors’ bones in these hillside tombs, but the Japanese turned them into pillboxes—as the Marines learned when they came south to help the Army divisions crack the main line of resistance.
This Marine is hurling a satchel charge into an enemy cave. Resistance began crumbling after Marines captured Shuri Castle in May.
The Tenth Army was led by Army Lieutenant General Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr. (left), but after he was killed by Japanese artillery, command passed to Marine Lieutenant General Roy Geiger (right). Geiger, who had been at Guadalcanal, had the honor of announcing the fall of Okinawa, the last battle, on June 22, 1945.
The last Marine landing of World War Two was a peaceful one, as men came ashore to accept the surrender of Japanese forts near Tokyo.
It was a tactic used at Tarawa, when Julian Smith had placed artillery on Bairiki to support troops advancing on Betio. At Roi-Namur, as well as at Kwajalein Islet, it would be used for that reason and also to force a passage into the lagoon itself. For even the transports were going to go inside the lagoon. Unlike Tarawa, where the Marines were boated outside the reef, the Americans were going to sail inside Kwajalein Atoll already boated in the bowels of LST’s. To enter the lagoon at Roi-Namur—Roi, the air base on the west or left, joined by a causeway to Namur, the supply dump on the right —the Marines must first seize a pair of islets to either side of the lagoon passage below or southwest of Roi.
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