Mobile Radio Intelligence Units ISO OPERATION GALVANIC, November 6, 1943 – December 12, 1943

The Gilbert Islands, a group of 16 atolls near the equator, were viewed by the U.S. as a stepping stone to the Marshalls and became the first target of the Central Pacific Campaign. In November 1943, the U.S. launched an offensive code-named Operation Galvanic, in which the prime target was the tiny island of Betio in the Tarawa Atoll in the Gilbert Islands. (As part of Operation Galvanic, the U.S. would also send a smaller force to the Gilberts’ Makin Atoll, some 100 miles north of Tarawa. Compared with the taking of Tarawa, the U.S. faced far less Japanese resistance at Makin and the Americans secured the atoll by November 23, 1943.) In late December 1941, Tarawa, a coral atoll located some 2,500 miles southwest of Hawaii, had been seized by the Japanese, who heavily fortified Betio, Tarawa’s largest island.