As Tarawa burns from an artillery barrage, Marines aboard a landing craft enjoy a pinup. 1943.

Source: Library of Congress (LC-USZ62-98192)

In the September 20, 1943 issue of LIFE magazine published the first image of dead American servicemen that American civilians had been allowed to see in the twenty-one months since Pearl Harbor.

Portrait of Mobile's Maurice Bell in his blue Navy uniform and white sailor's cap. Aboard the USS Indianapolis, Bell witnessed the battles of Tarawa, Saipan and the Philippine Sea.

Source: Maurice Bell

Maurice Bell was born in Mississippi on February 17, 1925, and grew up in the northeast corner of the state. Throughout 1942, he traveled around the country with his father on a construction crew that was building army camps. While in Indiana in early 1942, he met and started dating . . .

Mobile's Maurice Bell, in blue Navy uniform, and his bride Lois K. Richards on their wedding day in Nineveh, Indiana, October 29, 1944. Aboard the USS Indianapolis Bell witnessed the battles of Tarawa, Saipan and the Philippine Sea.

Source: Maurice Bell

Mobile's Maurice Bell poses for a portrait in his white Navy uniform. Aboard the USS Indianapolis, Bell witnessed the battles of Tarawa, Saipan and the Philippine Sea.

Source: Maurice Bell

A kamikaze pilot dove straight where Maurice Bell stood aboard the USS Indianapolis.

He still thinks about the war quite often and it seems like a dream.

Navy 7th Division, 2nd Section aboard the USS Indianapolis. Maurice Bell of Mobile stands eighth from the right. He witnessed the battles of Tarawa, Saipan and the Philippine Sea.

Source: Maurice Bell

One of the bloodiest amphibious assaults in military history. In December 1941, a Japanese task force seized Tarawa - part of the Gilbert Islands, which stretch some 500 miles along the equator. Tarawa is a hook-shaped atoll with a lagoon formed by a coral reef just beneath the ocean surface. . .

A sign on Tarawa marks the distance to the beach, Tokyo, and San Francisco. June 1944.

Source: National Archives (WC-1197)

A Tarawa beach strewn with dead bodies and wrecked equipment. November 1943.

Source: National Archives (WC-1342)

USS Indianapolis at the Mare Island Navy Yard after her final overhaul, 12 July 1945. Maurice Bell served on this ship which delivered the atomic bomb to Tinian. She also saw action from Tarawa to Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

Source: U.S. Naval Historical Center (Photo #: 19-N-86915)

The sinking of the U.S. heavy cruiser Indianapolis by a Japanese submarine in the Philippine Sea two weeks before the end of the war remains controversial to this day. Built in Camden, New Jersey, and commissioned in 1932 at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, the Indianapolis (CA-35) displaced 9,800 tons and . . .

Documentary short film depicting the harrowing battle between the U.S. Marines and the Japanese for control of the Pacific Island of Tarawa. (18:00)

Source: Directed and produced by Louis Hayward for the Office of War Information/Warner Bros. Pictures