Probably these kids too, playing what looks like a game of checkers a few metres from the shore of Red Beach One, don’t realise that they are now living on the site of one of the most savage battles ever staged in the Pacific. US General David M. Shoup, who was in 1943 the operations officer for the commanding officer of the Betio invasion, returned to the island in 1968 and said he wondered "why two nations would spend so much for so little."