Return to Tarawa
Narrated by four-time Oscar nominee Ed Harris, RETURN TO TARAWA follows the journey of World War II veteran Leon Cooper. Cooper—a U.S. Navy landing craft officer who in 1943 fought in the Battle of Bloody Tarawa—returns to the site in 2008 to investigate disturbing reports about the current state of the fabled “Red Beach.” Cooper helped launch this first major amphibious assault on a Central Pacific Japanese stronghold; he was dismayed to discover that this hallowed ground is now strewn with garbage rotting in the sun—a painful insult to his fellow marines and the sacrifice they made for their country in one of the bloodiest three-day battles in American war history. Cooper’s trip to Tarawa is full of wonder, anger, amazement and divine providence as he and filmmaker Steven C. Barber visit what is thought to be the graves of hundreds of soldiers still buried there.
