I WAS THERE TARAWA

this is the army-navy screen magazine cutting room for a combat film taken by Army Navy and Marine camerman comes in from battle fronts all over the world the Marine Staff Sergeant with the expert metal is 22 year old Norman hatch from Boston Massachusetts sergeant hat went in with the first wave on the landing at Tarawa armed with a pistol and a hand camera and brought back a film record of the fighting on that island that looks as though it had been taken to a front-line gun sight let me say that say you know that's the best friend of combat ok well an army man said that to marine brother he means it oh just luck you mean guts well it didn't take any more guts and you fellows had when you went in on Kiska well we have plenty of camera plenty and film and Kiska but we didn't have any Japs how many cameras did that game with you took um 3 ammo and cameras cooler Cole got his camera wet the first day there that left us with two cameras Kelly's in mine we took in about 5,000 feet of film my only shot of mm only mm well Webb so I picked my shots if YouTube might film on this ship well I'm gonna cut real over here do you want to see it I've seen the new trailer we shot some stuff on the way over and the Navy boy shot some stuffs on the wagons this is a shot of the task force underway I was trying to save film but it was my first big job and there were a couple of pictures I had to take on the last day out father Francis Kelly celebrated Mass [Music] 24 hours later a lot of those fellows were dead a navy Stewart baked the cake and the frosting had a big laugh but the warning didn't seem so funny when we hit the beach on the next day every marine in the outfit including the cameraman who as much about the operation as his Co we were going out to take baisha Island key to an atoll called Tarawa a move that would drive the Japs out of that part of the Pacific up into their faces in the Marshalls a couple of hundred miles north d-day was the 20th of November naval bombardment began at 0 500 there weren't any [ __ ] airplanes around if there's a [ __ ] sub out there that the boys kept on the move one thing I didn't want to take a picture of with a [ __ ] torpedo heading for my boat our army and navy planes have been pacing the island for five days and it didn't seem as though anyone on base show could have lived through that bombing and we weren't green I've served with the Marines for five years and more than half of the Task Force were veterans of Guadalcanal if we figured there wouldn't be many live Japs left on the island Navy men on the wagons took these pictures of the loading of powder charges I was slated to go in with the first wave and we were waiting around with the Amtrak's everybody got a kick out of watching the wagons unload on the target twenty-eight hundred tons of bombs and shells hit the beaches and cut through the piles like a whipsaw we packed shoulders along with us but we figured we wouldn't have to dig any foxholes only [ __ ] graves [Music] there was a heavy smoke coming off the island right along by initially breeze the Japs are still answering our fire when we headed in the water was choppy these pictures of the first wave of Amtrak were taken about a thousand yards from shore we were heading straight in for the bloodiest operation in the history of the Marine Corps but we still thought it was going to be a picnic there's a gas leak dump filling up the air support was good we kept about a hundred planes in the sky all the time blasting and scraping the Japs along the beach then the Higgins boats snagged on a reef the Japs began to get our range and the range of the Amtrak's we had to get out weighed about 400 yards a terrific crossfire the sniper was firing me when I got those shots these shots were made a few minutes after the landing the guys were hugging the beach trying to get the wind after the 400-yard boys it wasn't gonna be any 24-hour operation there were plenty of Japs on the island and they decided to die there [Music] the Japs have spent every day and night for 15 months getting the island ready for a fight top of that block us is about 15 feet wide [Music] [Music] we had the exits covered with machine gun and rifle fire and the deficit coming up trying to knock out the machine gun there's one of them that snipers gotta feed on another there's a squad of them boy it was hot that day and was i sweating [Music] the camera tells the truth but it doesn't give you any idea of how it smells and the smell on that island was bad [Music] the wounded started going back six minutes after we hit the beach and the stretch of birth all members of the shore party for the unsung heroes of tower buddy Ephraim got hit stretcher-bearers loaded the wounded on to rub around and push them out to the Higgins boat off the reef that was the only way of getting them out they couldn't load them on at the pier because of the sniper we lost more than 1,000 Marines more than 2,000 of our men were wounded that's served with the outfit for 15 months and I knew a lot of them on the third day that marine the one without the helmet was souvenir hunting when he found a couple of Japs in that foxhole the Japs lost fifty seven hundred men Imperial Japanese Marines defending an island that wasn't two miles square that gives you an idea of how important Tarawa was in their plan it was the stiffest price they've ever paid and one of the greatest defeats we call those two the brothers [Applause] we brought in a few Japanese prisoners for intelligence no more than a couple of hundred that sniper was nearly 6 feet tall the prisoners had to be stripped to keep them from concealing weapons the net had a weapon anywhere it was stolen and still hooked up over the idea that they were Superman even after they've been captured the Koreans were different they were men whose country have been captured by the Japanese and the JAF brought them out to tower to work as slaves when we got back to Pearl Harbor they told us that in Cairo Roosevelt Churchill and shine kai-shek that guaranteed Korea her independence on the same day that we saved these Koreans from the Japanese I took these pictures the day before Thanksgiving [Music] the camera gives you a good idea a kind of desolation the cracked brains in Berlin and Tokyo has wished on the world the wrecked [ __ ] equipment we found has been brought in from all over China Malaya Burma man Chico they had that two-by-four island loaded down with the loot from every country they've overrun they even dragged guns down from the old British fortress of Singapore but none of it was much good to them after the second day of fighting with the guns knocked out and the Gunners dead [Music] there's a kitten I found in the tracks of a [ __ ] tank the smell of water brought her out that's me giving her the water the other cameraman took the picture the men got around to taking fresh water bath on the third day and boy they needed him Seabees were already working on the tube armor strips on the island and on the fourth day tower began to function as an advanced air base in San Phil Kelly of New Castle Pennsylvania caught the first plane is everybody got around to watch the flag go up a lot of good guys from the outfit weren't there anymore I'm glad I got these pictures because when you remember the roaches you've been fighting and the things they represented and when you saw the flag go up and remember the freedom that flag stood for you knew you were in on a good thing [Music]