It was a weird, ugly structure.

From a distance, silhouetted against the setting sun of the South Pacific, it looked exactly

like a shabby out of the way radio station, just a square box of a building with a pretty

unimpressive radio tower right next door, like something you might have seen in the 50s

out in the middle of West Texas.

These structures were a long, long way from West Texas.

The buildings may have been shabby, but the location was stunning.

Nothing but the sound of Pacific swells breaking on the beautiful sandy beaches of the enormous

circular A-tall known as Innoe Talk.

Seen in the early morning, it was about as quiet and peaceful a place as you could imagine.

But twice before, things had gotten pretty loud on this little island housing the boxy

building in the adjacent tower.

During the late Cretaceous period, the top of an underwater volcano blew itself to atoms,

leaving the thinnest sliver of islands surrounding the caldera.

A bit over two square miles of island, enclosing almost 400 square miles of lagoon, a turquoise

bulls eye with a 50-mile circumference.

Now significantly less impressive was the roar made by the guns of the battleships Colorado,

Tennessee, and Pennsylvania, which opened fire from offshore on the very northern tip

of this spidery island chain just before 7am on February 18, 1944.

The big guns of the United States Navy softened up the uppermost island in Jebby, and then less

than two hours later, two battalions of the 22nd Marine Regiment won a shore.

They met minimal resistance from the Japanese on on Jebby, and the island was declared

...