American Valor Quarterly Issue 10 - Summer 2013 | Page 33

long shot, a medium shot,
and a close up. Those basic three shots told a story.
I always established where
I was, showed what was
happening, and then
would show why it was
happening with a close up.
That’s the way I shot most
of the time. From there,
the editors would take it
and piece it together as
With the Marines at Tarawa, with cinematography by Norman they saw fit. In fact, I
Hatch and other members of the 2nd Marine Division
never saw my film until it
photo service, was released in March, 1944, and would win
came out in a finished prothe 1945 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.
duction.
take out Japanese snipers and press
forward even after being injured and During the battle, I never worried
in the face of major defensive ob- about not carrying a rifle because I
knew that if I needed a rifle I could
structions and heavy fire.
bend down and pick one up. UnforWe suffered terrible losses in ships tunately, we lost a lot of guys in the
and men with a great many amphibi- battle.
ous tractors being too bullet-torn to
remain operational on the first day. Other times, guys on the front lines
More than 1,000 Marines were killed
and over 2,100 wounded. Still, we
inflicted major damage on the Japanese, killing the Japanese general and
accompanying staff early with destroyer fire as he walked across the
airstrip to get to a different command
post. Even more importantly, our
Marines fought inland with dogged
tenacity to gain complete control of
the island in just a few days.

I would reply, in as short a sentence
as I could, "I have to be here because
the public needs to know what you're
doing if the President is going to get
any support." They were satisfied with
that.
My way of visualizing film in war is
that once the adrenaline hits you,
you're in a boat, or amphibious tractor or whatever it may be, and you
know you're going in, you have been
trained to do a job and that job comes
when you hit the beach, and so, that's
what you're concentrating on. You're
either a mortar man, or a rifle man,
machine gunner, or you're a pilot, or
whatever it is. You can be shot. That
is the reality of war. You know all
that can happen, but you put it in the
back of your mind. You have to say,

The beach on Betio Island, Tarawa Atoll, following the U.S. invasion in November, 1943.
Nearly 1,000 Marines were killed in the invasion. At the urging of journalist Robert Sherrod,
President Roosevelt authorized the use of these graphic images in With the Marines at Tarawa
to demonstrate that “war is a horrible, nasty business, and to say otherwise is to do a
disservice to those who died.”

AMERICAN VALOR QUARTERLY - Spring 2013 - 33

Top: Courtesy of the United States Marine Corps; Bottom: U.S. Navy photo

By the time of the Battle of Tarawa,
I was a staff sergeant with the job of
capturing footage on a hand-cranked
35mm eyemo camera. Of course, I
had no idea what we were in for on
Tarawa when the guys offloaded from
our landing craft and waded toward
shore. I filmed that battle using my
training, but also somewhat flew by
the seat of my pants. The March of
Time training had taught me that
when I saw something happening, I
should quickly take three shots: a

would see me up with them and they'd
say, "What the hell are you doing here?
You don't have to be here!"