It is an insignificant piece of real estate in the central Pacific Ocean but to those who fought there for four days in November 1943, it was an address in hell. What made the Battle of Tarawa different from previous island clashes between United States and Japanese forces in the South Pacific was the level of Japanese defense. For the first time, U. S. Marines met stiff resistance to an amphibious landing, from the beach onward. And though the struggle for the atoll was fierce and costly for both sides – and the strategic significance to the American military operation ultimately questioned – the experience was a foreshadowing of important assaults later on other islands.

Among those who endured the landing under fire on Betio, the small islet where the battle was principally fought, was Leon Cooper, a U. S. Navy landing craft officer who ferried some of the 2nd Marine Division to Red Beach. It was a harrowing first combat experience for the young ensign.

“I still don’t know to this day how I survived. I saw scores of guys just falling … everywhere. We got on the beach fortunately. I wouldn’t allow these guys to get in the water because with their heavy packs they would have drowned.” Cooper didn’t think he would ever go back to Tarawa until a news item he uncovered a few years ago took him back with a disturbing report and photograph, “… a kid sitting on a garbage pile, a young Tarawan native obviously, and I looked closely at the picture of the boy and at this point I recognized that it was Red Beach where I had been as a young man many years before.”

Saddened by the image and the description of garbage littering the hallowed ground, Cooper commenced a correspondence campaign to bring the idea of a clean-up and memorial effort for Red Beach to the attention of U. S. authorities. His campaign was not successful, and so he returned to Tarawa with a camera crew to document the litter-strewn beach. Now that documentary, Return to Tarawa: The Leon Cooper Story, will air on The Military Channel at 10 pm Eastern Time, April 24. This also marks the debut of Military Channel’s History Fridays.

Narrated by Oscar-nominated actor Ed Harris, the program follows Cooper’s trip to the island and efforts to create a permanent war memorial. He met with the president of the Republic of Kiribati, the country formed from the former Gilbert Islands, and while the government is sympathetic to the issue, they lack the means to deal with the garbage dumped on the beach. As a result, Cooper has initiated a plan to get entrepreneurs to build a cost-effective and ecologically friendly incineration plant as an alternative. To date, the New Zealand government has commissioned a preliminary study of the idea.

In addition to garbage, Cooper also observed spent and live ammunition on the island. A group under contract from the government of Australia is still defusing live rounds there. And his attention was brought to yet another disturbing discovery.

“There are plenty of American remains still lying on that island,” says Cooper. Volunteer groups are accumulating evidence of this fact but according to Larry Greer, spokesman for the Department of Defense POW/MIA Office in Washington, none of the evidence has yet been presented to them. The Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command in Honolulu is aware of the situation Cooper and others have pointed to at Tarawa and claims all leads on unrecovered remains are taken seriously.

The documentary brings attention to the need for proper dedication and memorializing of hallowed ground outside the United States even as challenges to maintain and expand domestic war sites continue. The vastness of the Pacific War means numerous locations currently have less than ideal commemoration. For now, Cooper is focusing on Tarawa, where a pristine beach with the 2nd Marine Division monument permanently displayed on it will give him the feeling that he has done something for those comrades he saw fall there, many of whom gave their last full measure of devotion on Red Beach.

A preview of the documentary and program times can be found on the Return to Tarawa website. An exclusvie interview with Leon Cooper appears on ArmchairGeneral.com.

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