The Battle of Makin was an engagement of the Pacific campaign of World War II, fought from 20 to 24 November 1943 on Makin Atoll in the Gilbert Islands.
Japanese invasion and fortification
On 10 December 1941, three days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, 300 Japanese troops plus laborers of the Gilberts Invasion Special Landing Force had arrived off Makin Atoll and occupied it without resistance. Lying east of the Marshall Islands, Makin was intended as an excellent seaplane base to protect the eastern flank of the Japanese perimeter from an Allied attack by extending Japanese air patrols closer to islands held by the Allies: Howland Island, Baker Island, Tuvalu, and Phoenix and Ellice Islands.
Heavy aircraft losses and the disabling of four heavy cruisers during the bombing of Rabaul meant that the original Japanese plan of a strike at the American invasion fleet by forces based at Truk in the nearby Caroline Islands was scrapped. The garrisons at Tarawa and Makin were left to their fate.
On 17 August 1942, 211 Marines of the 2nd Marine Raider Battalion under command of Colonel Evans Carlson and Captain James Roosevelt were landed on Makin from two submarines, USS Nautilus and USS Argonaut. The Japanese garrison only posted 83 to 160 men under the command of a warrant officer. The Raiders killed many Japanese but ultimately, under heavy fire withdrew after losing 21 killed and 9 captured. The Japanese moved their prisoners to Kwajalein Atoll, where they were later beheaded. One objective of the raid was to confuse the Japanese about U.S. intentions in the Pacific, but it had the effect of alerting the Japanese to the strategic importance of the Gilbert Islands and led to their further reinforcement and fortification.
After Carlson's raid, the Japanese reinforced the Gilberts. Makin was garrisoned with a single company of the 5th Special Base Force (700–800 men) in August 1942, and work on both the seaplane base and coastal defenses of the atoll was resumed in earnest. By July 1943 the seaplane base on Makin was completed and ready to accommodate Kawanishi H8K "Emily" flying boat bombers, Nakajima A6M2-N "Rufe" floatplane fighters and Aichi E13A "Jake" reconnaissance seaplanes. Its defenses were also completed, although they were not as extensive as on Tarawa Atoll—the main Japanese Navy air base in the Gilberts. The Chitose and 653rd Air Corps were detached and deployed here. While the Japanese were building up their defenses in the Gilberts, American forces were making plans to retake the islands.
The end of the Aleutian Islands campaign and progress in the Solomon Islands, combined with increasing amounts of men and materiel, gave the United States Navy the resources to make an invasion of the central Pacific in late 1943. Admiral Chester Nimitz had argued for this invasion earlier in 1943, but the resources were not available to carry it out at the same time as Operation Cartwheel, the envelopment of Rabaul in the Bismarck Islands. The plan was to approach the Japanese home islands by "island hopping": establishing naval and air bases in one group of islands to support the attack on the next. The Gilbert Islands were the first step in this chain.
In June 1943, the Joint Chiefs of Staff directed Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet (CINCPAC), to submit a plan to occupy the Marshall Islands. Initially both Nimitz and Admiral Ernest J. King, the Chief of Naval Operations, wanted to attack right into the heart of the Japanese outer defense perimeter, but any plan for assaulting the Marshalls directly from Pearl Harbor would have required more troops and transports than the Pacific Fleet had at the time. Considering these drawbacks and the limited combat experience of the U.S. forces, King and Nimitz decided to take the Marshalls in a step-by-step operation via the Ellice and Gilbert Islands. The Gilberts lay within 200 miles (320 km) of the southern Marshalls and were well within range of United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) Consolidated B-24 Liberator aircraft based in the Ellice Islands, which could provide bombing support and long-range reconnaissance for operations in the Gilberts. With those advantages in mind, on 20 July 1943 the joint Chiefs of Staff decided to capture the Tarawa and Abemama atolls in the Gilberts, plus nearby Nauru Island. The operation was codenamed "Operation Galvanic."
On 4 September, the U.S. 5th Fleet's amphibious troops were designated the V Amphibious Corps and placed under Marine Corps Major General Holland Smith. The V Amphibious Corps had two divisions, the 2nd Marine Division based in New Zealand, and the U.S. Army's 27th Infantry Division based in Hawaii. The 27th Infantry Division had been a New York National Guard unit before being called into federal service in October 1940. It was transferred to Hawaii and remained there for 1½ years before being chosen by Lieutenant General Robert C. Richardson Jr., U.S. Army Commanding General in the Central Pacific, for the Gilbert Islands invasion. Captain James Jones (father of James L. Jones, Commandant of the Marine Corps 1999–2003), Commanding Officer of Amphibious Reconnaissance Company, VAC performed a periscope reconnaissance of the Gilberts aboard the submarine USS Nautilus, establishing accurate accounts of the beachheads for the upcoming invasion.
The 27th Infantry Division was tasked to supply the landing force, with one regimental combat team (the 165th Infantry Regiment, the famed "Fighting 69th" of the New York National Guard), reinforced by a battalion landing team (the 3rd Battalion, 105th Infantry Regiment), supported by the 105th Field Artillery Battalion and the 193rd Tank Battalion, under Major General Ralph C. Smith, a veteran of World War I who had assumed command in November 1942. He was one of the most highly respected officers in the U. S. Army of the time. In April 1943, the 27th Infantry Division had begun preparing for amphibious operations.
Planning for the 27th Infantry Division's role in "Galvanic" (the Army portion was codenamed "Kourbash") began in early August 1943, with Nauru Island in the western Gilberts as the original objective. Unlike the other objectives, Nauru was an actual island, much larger in size and more heavily garrisoned.
However, in September 1943 the 27th's objective changed. The difficulty of providing adequate naval and air support of simultaneous operations at Tarawa and the much more distant Nauru, plus lack of sufficient transport to carry the entire division required to take the larger, more heavily defended Nauru, caused Admiral Nimitz to shift the 27th's objective from Nauru to Makin Atoll, in the northeast Gilberts. The 27th Infantry Division staff learned the change of target on 28 September, scrapped the original Nauru plan, and began planning to capture Makin.
The invasion fleet, Task Force 52 (TF 52) commanded by Rear Admiral Richmond K. Turner, left Pearl Harbor on 10 November 1943. The landing force, Task Group 52.6, consisted of units of the 27th Infantry Division transported by attack transports Neville, Leonard Wood, Calvert, and Pierce; attack cargo ship Alcyone; landing ship dock Belle Grove; and LSTs −31, −78, and −179 of Task Group 52.1.
Prior to the invasion, the strength of the Japanese garrison Makin Atoll's main island, Butaritari was between 700 and 800 men. There were as many as 284 naval infantrymen from the 3rd Special Base Force's Makin Detachment, about 100 aviation personnel from the 802nd and 952nd Naval Air Groups, and over 400 laborers from the 111st Construction Unit and 4th Construction Bureau Detachment. These men were under the command of IJN Lieutenant(jg) Saisuke Fujino (藤野斉助) from the 3rd Special Base Force. Including laborers who took up arms, the total number armed combatants likely did not exceed 300 men.
Japanese records list the garrison's main armament was two Type 95 Ha-Go light tanks, six 8cm naval guns, three anti-tank guns, two 13mm anti-aircraft machineguns, several light and heavy machineguns, and a small number of grenade dischargers and flamethrowers. Butaritari's land defenses were centered around the lagoon shore, near the seaplane base in the central part of the island. There were two tank barrier systems: the west tank barrier extended from the lagoon two-thirds of the way across Butaritari, was 12 to 13 feet (4.0 m) wide and 15 feet (4.6 m) deep, and was protected by one anti-tank gun in a concrete pillbox, six machine gun positions, and 50 rifle pits. The east tank barrier, 14 feet (4.3 m) wide and 6 feet (1.8 m) in depth, stretched from the lagoon across two-thirds of the island and bent westward with log antitank barricades at each end. It was protected by a double apron of barbed wire and an intricate system of gun emplacements and rifle pits.