This presentation of In Their Own Words is dedicated to the brave men and women of the United States Armed Forces.

The By 1943, the war in the Pacific burned in its full fury.

After the bloody engagements at Guadalcanal, it was time to continue the offensive.

On November 20th, the United States Navy planned a daring frontal assault against the westernmost

edge of the Japanese Empire. The target was the island of Basio in the Tarawa Etoll. Only 300 acres in size, it was protected by 5,000

hardened Imperial Japanese Marines. The only route to the island was to attack the beaches

facing the lagoon, but concentrated on those beaches like a living fortress wall were thousands

of Japanese. Marines manning countless

machine guns, mortars, and artillery pieces. Into them would go the best of America's youth,

the second division of the U.S. Marine Corps. They would use amphibious tractors and assault

boats to reach the beaches. After that, their only protection was bravery and a khaki shirt.

It was the first amphibious assault against heavily defended beaches in U.S. history.

By day's end, hundreds of Americans would be dead or dying on the sun-parched reefs and island sands.

Ed Moore was a master sergeant in the U.S. Marines.

His job was to drive one of the 175 amphibious tractors or Amtraks onto the beach.

Once there, he was to attempt to breach the sea wall that girdled the island and make his way inland. But the run to the beaches was an arduous, almost ballet-like series of steps

that needed to be practiced on other less contested shores.

Before November the 20th, the 1943, the D-Day of the operation, we had had two practice

runs at a little island in the south of New Haberdese called EFadi.

And we had maneuvers on the 6th of November and again on the 9th of November and went over the

battle plan in those two maneuvers. So when we got up to Tarawa, although we had never seen

it before anything, we knew basically the formations and how we would be lifted over the side from the hatch of the

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