Several years ago, I wrote a piece on Tarawa for International Wildlife magazine that can be found at --http://www.nwf.org/internationalwildlife/article.cfm?articleId=15&issueId=3

In my judgment, there are two take away lessons from Tarawa.

1. Events on the island present compelling evidence that global warming is underway, resulting in rising sea levels. An islet there, Tebua, which was ringed with breadfruit and coconut trees at the time of the great amphibious landing, is now no more than coral rubble, completely underwater during seasonal high tides.

2. Most of the vast armada, as well as the tanks, trucks and aircraft they carried, did not exist at the time Pearl Harbor was bombed and the war started less than two years earlier. It thus illustrates what can be accomplished, and how quickly, if we are sufficiently motivated.

Finally, having once been in the Marine Corps myself, I cannot help but take pride of what they
accomplished. The Japanese commander said it would require a million men a thousand years to take Tarawa. The Marines did it in three days.