Climate Change's Ground Zero — the overcrowded atoll where the Pacific meets the dateline, WWII's bloodiest 76 hours per square yard, and a nation building artificial islands because its homeland is sinking
Tarawa is the capital of Kiribati (pronounced 'Kiribas') — a Pacific nation of 33 coral atolls straddling the equator and the International Date Line, and one of the most climate-vulnerable countries on Earth. South Tarawa, the capital atoll, is one of the most densely populated places on the planet — around 60,000 people live on a strip of land rarely more than 200 metres wide between the lagoon and the ocean. The Battle of Tarawa (November 1943) was one of the bloodiest engagements in Marine Corps history: 1,000 Americans and 4,500 Japanese died in 76 hours of fighting on an island 3 km lon…
The Gilbert Islands (Kiribati's pre-independence name) were settled by Micronesian and Polynesian peoples around 3,000 years ago. British traders and missionaries arrived from the 1820s; the islands became a British protectorate in 1892 and a colony in 1916. In WWII, Japan occupied the Gilberts in 1941 immediately after Pearl Harbor and established a major fortified base on Betio (the main islet of South Tarawa), building 500 defensive positions in two years. The US assault on Betio (20–23 November 1943) — Operation Galvanic — shocked American public opinion: photographs of US Marines lying d…