MISSING IN ACTION----COMIN' HOME!

Tarawa, pronounced two ways; TA-RA-WA, OR TER-A-WA.  Either way the story is the same.
The battle of Tarawa was essentially the battle of Betio, a two mile ribbon of sand and coral in the Gilbert Islands, some 2500 miles southwest of Hawaii.
The planning was flawed.  The intelligence was bad.  The charts were wrong.  The bombardment was ineffective and the planes were late.  But the Marines assaulted anyway.
It was November 1943 and taking control of the south Pacific was paramount.  It cost the lives of 1,100 Americans in three days of intense fighting.
The Japanese were dug in and zeroed in on the beaches. Some of the Higgins boats had to discharge there Marines 600 yards from the beach because they were blocked by the coral reef when the tide changed.  Those Marines were forced to wade to shore in the face of withering machine gun and small arms fire.  2,500 other Americans were wounded in the fight while 17 of the 4,500 Japanese defenders survived.
The killed were hastily buried where they fell and remained there, carried as MIA until 1949 when the military review board declared many of them unrecoverable.  Now, 70 years later---thanks to the efforts of History Flight, a non profit group many of these Marines are coming home....Medicineman!