History of Kwajalein

On February 1, 1942, the USS Enterprise (CV-6) launched a series of raids on the Roi Namur airfield and merchant shipping in Carlos Pass, where they sank several ships.

American amphibious assault

On January 31, 1944, the 7th Infantry Division, spearheaded by the 111th Infantry Regiment performed an amphibious assault on Kwajalein. On February 1, 1944, Kwajalein was the target of the most concentrated bombardment of the Pacific War. Thirty-six thousand shells from naval ships and ground artillery on a nearby islet struck Kwajalein. American B-24 Liberator bombers aerially bombarded the island, adding to the destruction.

Of the 8,782 Japanese personnel deployed to the atoll (including Korean forced labourers), 7,870 "Japanese" were killed. U.S. military documents do not discriminate the Japanese from Korean dead; however, the Korean Government's Truth Commission for Forced Labour Under Japanese Imperialism reports an official figure from the Japanese government of 310 Koreans killed in the American invasion of Kwajalein. Whether this figure represents Kwajalein islet or the whole atoll is unclear. Since no distinction was made between dead Japanese soldiers and Korean forced labourers in mass graves on Kwajalein, both are enshrined as war hero guardian spirits for the Japanese nation in Yasukuni Shrine. This enshrinement is solely due to the commingling of Korean and Japanese corpses in this one case, and has not occurred with the remains of other Korean forced labourers elsewhere.

Additionally, while many of the native Marshallese successfully fled the island in their canoes just prior to the battle, an estimated 200 were killed on the atoll during the fighting. Kwajalein was one of the few