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 was a U.S. Navy landing craft officer who fought in the Battle of Bloody Tarawa in 1943, helping to rescue numerous U.S. Marines from certain death. Cooper returns to the site in 2008 as a war historian to investigate disturbing reports about the current state of the fabled Red Beach and gather research for his book, The War in the Pacific: A Retrospective. Cooper is dismayed to discover that this hallowed ground where he once risked his life to save his fellow Americans is now strewn with garbage, a painful insult to his fellow marines and the sacrifice they made 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 visits what is thought to be the graves of hundreds of soldiers still buried there.