Wow, after reading Mr. Coopers own words in his account of the battle. It is hard to look favorably upon the time he spent on an isolated island nearby. By his own admission, he stayed there for over three days while the fighting went on. He was cleared to return to battle and essentially decided not to. I have heard some amazing stories of heroism with regards to this war, and this is not one of them. I cannot judge because I have no idea what that must have been like. But it is hard to imagine myself taking off and abandoning my position which in this case was a very important one.

Return to Tarawa is a generally good presentation about Tarawa, but its credibility suffers when it dishonestly portrays Leon Cooper as some kind of hero when in fact, by his own admission (but just not in this film), he went AWOL early on the first day of the invasion, without ever having made it to the beach. He cowered on a nearby island for 5 days while his comrades were dying on Betio. The fighting was over before he even returned to his ship, and he never set foot on the beach where the film shows him walking through the trash and tearfully talking about the men who really fought and died there. It's a worthy goal to want to clean up the beaches where so many died, but egomaniac filmmaker Barber and cranky self-promoter Cooper do a disservice to the memories of the fallen to pretend that there's any motive in their hearts besides cashing in on the deaths of so many real heroes. Neither Barber nor Cooper had anything to to with the research that located the burial sites of hundreds of MIA marines, yet they continue to try to give the impression that they were responsible for both the research and the resulting congressional pressure to locate and recover the remains of the REAL heroes of Tarawa.

This documentary points out the miscommunication, poor intelligence reporting, mistaken strategy, and general disregard for individual lives lost that plague many governments in war, including our own government. The film shows how the expansionist policies of the U.S., the distancing of our generals and politicians from reality, and the hiding of the massive human slaughter of this war from the public, led to the death and erasure of many more human beings than were necessary. Many thanks to Leon Cooper and filmmaker Steven Barber, and all others who assisted in making this sobering documentary, to those who have been identifying soldiers' human remains, and to those who are cleaning up the hazardous toxic waste from the tragic ruins of this site. I hope that more people can be identified and sent home, and the remaining trash, sewage and toxic metals and explosives safely stored away from the living inhabitants, before the archipelago sinks into the ocean in the next few years, and adds to the destruction of our planet's water.

It's shameful that these servicemen, and the island on which they died, have been so neglected by the government they served. I hope that Mr Cooper's mission is successful, these men brought home, and the island cleaned as it should be.

As a Veteran, I am shocked to see so many of our dead Brothers left behind. This is a national shame!