Battle of Tarawa

battle_name=Battle of Tarawa

Aftermath

For the next several days the 2nd Battalion of the 6th landed on Bairiki, moved up the remaining islands in the atoll to clean up, completing this on the 28th. Portions of the 2nd division started leaving soon after, and were completely withdrawn by early 1944.

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In the end only 17 Japanese and 129 Koreans were alive at the end of the battle. Total Japanese and Korean casualties are about 4,690 killed in action. For the United States, about 1,000 were killed in action, and a further 2,200 wounded. The heavy casualties sparked off a storm of protest in the United States, where the high losses could not be understood for such a tiny and strategically unimportant island.

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