Mike Scholl
Posts: 9349
Joined: 1/1/2003
From: Kansas City, MO
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Betio and Tarawa are not the same thing. The island of Betio is perhaps less than 1/15th of the whole Tarawa atoll (a rough estimate). Indeed, it was the only place occupied by Japanese in any force, and there were around 5.000 of them there.
Correct. The entire surface area of the islets of the Tarawa Atoll is about 31 sq. kilometers. Of course, three of them are currently under water due to changes in the current.
Had they, for any possible reason, occupied the whole atoll (the remaining 90%+ of the area), it is my impression they could have installed 30-40, perhaps even 50k people there easily. However, Admiral DadMan is perfectly correct then, when he says "If my opponent is stupid enough to strand 2 divisions on Tarawa... that's fine with me"
Currently around 30k people live there (on the WHOLE Tarawa atoll), quote from Wikipedia:
"The population (as of 1990) was 28,802. The population is mostly Gilbertese (Micronesian). This probably exceeds the carrying capacity of the islands and is maintained at its current level without starvation principly due to foreign aid, largely from New Zealand."
Given the low maintenance levels of IJN troops, I think 40-50k could be crammed there, + population that was there in WW2 period (certainly smaller than today) could have been removed by the Japanese or.... worse.... it's not like they were squeamish about those things. I'd consider that strategic insanity, and as USN would simply bypass and isolate that place (or overwhelm, to invest mucho points for ground losses that would ensue).
You left out the part that stated that the one islet where 28,000 of these folks live is probably the most densely populated area on earth...., and totally dependent on large and continual shipments of foodstuffs and water just to survive. The Japanese were on a starvation diet even in Japan during WW II. Their garrisons were expected to provide much of their food support themselves..., not to require large shipments of food and water on a regular basis. And atolls have no "fresh" water, and require de-salanization plants or tanker shipments if the population is to exceed what can be gathered from rain.
I think people here in general underestimate atolls..... because they look small on World Atlas maps.
And I think you are totally overestimating the "carrying capacity" of Atolls..., maybe because 95% of that "look small on a map" you mention is water in the lagoon. Tarawa today is a unique and rather non-representative example because of the enormous overcrowding on the one islet. Some better ones might be:
KWAJALEIN (the largest atoll in the world, and much more valuable to the Japanese), which has an above-water land mass of 6.33 square miles and a current population of about 10,000.
ENEWETOK which has an above water area of 2.26 square miles and a current population of less than 1,000
MILI which has a land mass of 6.15 square miles and a current population of about 1,000
WOTJE with a land mas of 3.16 square miles and a population at the last census of 646.
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RE: Limits for Atoll Islands build up - 
That does not tell us anything as regards to how many *military* people (especially Japanese) could survive on an atoll, given spartan conditions normal for all WW2 armies (especially Japanese, known to survive on bare minimum of necessities). 
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