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Tarawa was hammered before the invasion by the Navy destroyers' big guns. Second Marine Division troops who were waiting to hit the beach were told that the enemy would probably be wiped out by the time they got ashore. "But as I stood on my boat's engine box waving flags to line up the rest of the boats, I heard a sound like angry bees around my head — they were shooting at the crazy guy waving the flags," Cooper said of the Japanese defenders. "Soon I was seeing guys literally being shredded to pieces. Some of them died right there in my boat." Nanny State: How Food Fascists, Teetotaling Do-Gooders, Priggish Moralists, and other Boneheaded Bureaucrats are Turning America into a Nation of Children Cooper made about 10 beach runs, under heavy fire each time. "The Japanese were on a half-sunk freighter in the lagoon, shooting at us as we came in. They were sitting on a long pier shooting at us." The scene was chaotic. Marines were mowed down as they scrambled off landing craft. Others were pinned down on the beach by unrelenting gunfire from enemy marksmen who were hunkered down in sturdy bunkers that had survived the warships' artillery assault. A Los Angeles man, Marine Lt. William D. Hawkins, 30, became the battle's first hero when he led a squad of men to wipe out the Japanese machine gun nest on the 600-yard pier. Shot in the hand and then in the chest, he continued up the beach and used hand grenades to destroy several enemy pillboxes before being fatally wounded in a burst of Japanese shellfire. American military officials honored him several weeks later by naming Tarawa's airstrip, which had been the focus of the invasion, Hawkins Field. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. Cooper survived the Tarawa battle unscathed, as he did the later invasions of Kwajalein, Aitape, Guam, Lingayen Gulf and Iwo Jima. He stayed at Tarawa a week after the battle as remains of the dead were being removed from the beach. He thinks that the U.S. government needs to clean the beach once more. And while they're at it, he wants officials to move a Tarawa war memorial closer to the spot where 3,407 Americans were killed or wounded. So far, though, Cooper said he had received no response to his overtures to the White House, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) wrote to tell him that "we understand your concerns," he said. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Los Angeles) has expressed support. But he pointed out that any beach cleanup should be accompanied by a long-term plan to deal with the island garbage disposal issue. Last year Waxman saluted Cooper's campaign in remarks inserted in the Congressional Record. The congressman suggested that the trash might "create an opportunity for the 2nd Marine Division to restore the beach to a more appropriate and respectable condition." He encouraged the U.S. Embassy in Fiji to work with Kiribati's government on long-range beach preservation. "It would be a tribute to our veterans and a benefit to the Kiribati people," Waxman said. In his book, Cooper concluded that the Tarawa invasion was a mistake. He quotes one of the battle's main leaders, who wondered "why two nations would spend so much for so little." Nonetheless, Cooper does not plan to ease up on the beach cleanup. "I feel I owe it," he said, "to those guys who died there." Back to Contents, WW2 Stories