During the Battle of Tarawa in the Pacific War, the bodies of nearly 1,000 or more U.S. Marines and sailors fell among the waves, beaches, shell holes, and fallen palm trees on Betio Island.

 　　During the Battle of Tarawa in the Pacific War, the corpses of nearly 1,000 or more U.S. Marines and sailors lay among the waves, beaches, shell holes, and fallen palm trees on Betio Island. The bodies of American soldiers were scattered around Betio Island and washed by the waves of the Pacific Ocean. Nearly 4,700 members of the garrison, which included Japanese combat troops and Korean labor units, all but 17 prisoners of war were killed.

　From November 20 to November 25, 1943, in Operation Galvanic, U.S. Navy and Marine Corps units carried out an amphibious assault to occupy Tarawa Atoll. The landing sites were knocked out by U.S. forces. Japanese base wrecked at Tarawa Atoll," ran the headlines in American newspapers. Often accompanied by photographs of the battle sent from the front lines. An unusually high percentage of the photos, which made the battle look worse than it was, showed unfamiliar dead American soldiers. The death toll rose shockingly as American corpses littered the beaches in a short period of time. A list of war casualties was released to the media. Local Marines replaced the photos of the dead with portraits of those who had died in the line of duty for their country. The bloody Battle of Tarawa buried the small island of Betio with some 6,000 corpses.

　Betio Island in Tarawa Atoll was an island of about 1 square kilometer, a 1.21 km2 sand island only a few meters above sea level. It was dotted with forts and fortifications, the pinnacle of Japanese defense engineering. Sand-covered concrete blockhouses, palm tree shelters, anti-ship batteries, slit trenches, minefields, and seawall launching pads were scattered across Betio Island. U.S. casualties in Operation Galvanic were 997 Marines and 30 sailors killed, 88 Marines missing, and 2,233 Marines and 59 sailors wounded in action.

　Tarawa Atoll, located just a few degrees off the equator, saw temperatures reach triple digits during the battle, and the heat and humidity created conditions for corruption. Corpses that were only two days old had already turned a sickly green color. The air was filled with coral dust, the miasma of death, and a stench that was nauseating and horrifying. The small area of Betio Island was the scene of fierce fighting and constant attacks by the Japanese. It was essential to carry the large numbers of lying, decomposing and fast-disintegrating corpses underground, and there was no time to give the dead a proper burial.