Local News in Brief : War Monument Dedicated
About 500 people attended the dedication Friday of a new monument in Long Beach honoring U.S. Marines who died in the battle of Tarawa during World War II.
A giant American flag was unfurled, scores of Marine veterans of the battle for the South Pacific atoll were honored and the crowd stood silently for the playing of Taps.
Author Leon Uris, who participated in the 1943 battle as a Marine radioman, noted that Tarawa was the bloodiest battle fought by the Marines in the Pacific at the time, with 1,113 killed and 2,290 wounded.
“There was no place for tactical finesse,” he said. “We had to storm straight in.”
The nine-ton granite monument, financed with more than $18,000 raised in Long Beach, was planned as a replacement for a monument on Tarawa that was removed to make way for a Japanese cold storage plant.
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