Tarawa memorial unveiled

Wing Commander Leigh Collins talks with Mareko Ioteba in front of the new memorial.

Two Australians are among 22 Commonwealth citizens commemorated on a new memorial in Tarawa.

Kiribati president Teberoro Tito unveiled the 2.4m-high stainless steel memorial on Remembrance Day at the Temakin Cemetery on Betio, part of Tarawa atoll.

It commemorates the execution of the men – mostly coast watchers captured by the Japanese – on October 15, 1942, as well as the hundreds of Gilbert and Ellice Islanders who died during World War II.

During the service Wing Commander Leigh Collins, Defence Adviser South Pacific, laid a wreath with the Australian High Commissioner in Tarawa, Colin Hill, on behalf of the people of Australia.

Mr Hill was the driving force behind the memorial that replaced a monument on the same site that was showing its age.

The Office of Australian War Graves constructed the memorial, which received funding from the Australian, New Zealand and British High Commissions.

Those whose memory is honoured include 17 victims from New Zealand, three from Great Britain and Australians Reginald G. Morgan and Isaac R. Handley.

Mr Morgan ran a radio and maintenance course during 1941 on Tarawa, training Gilbert Islanders to assist the coast watchers in their vital duties.

Mareko Ioteba, who was a student of Mr Morgan, attended the dedication of the memorial.

“I was sent away before these men were executed but I remember the event and where they are buried,” Mr Ioteba said.
“Mr Morgan was a good man and a very good teacher.”

While the Battle of Tarawa – in which more than 1100 US Marines and nearly 4700 Japanese were killed between November 20-22, 1943 – is famous, the earlier phase of the war in the Gilbert Islands is lesser known, including the fate of the local inhabitants and the activities of the mainly New Zealand coast watchers who remained behind after the Japanese occupied the islands at the outset of the Pacific war.

The captured coast watchers were beheaded by the Japanese in retaliation for an American air raid on Betio.

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