2000
Thus, when the 2d Battalion of Colonel Sato's 61st Infantry approached the shore shortly before midnight, it was clearly visible to the men on the beach. There was now enough light for artillery fire, and the Americans opened up with everything they had. The remaining 12-inch mortar of Battery Way went into action with a boom, followed by the shriek of the rotating bands. From nearby Fort Hughes came fire from the mortars of Battery Craighill while the remaining smaller guns at both forts, the 3-inchers and the 75s, dropped their shells on the landing barges nearing the shore. To the Japanese in the small boats it seemed as though "a hundred guns rained red-hot steel on them." Eyewitnesses at Cabcaben described the scene as "a spectacle that confounded the imagination, surpassing in grim horror anything we had ever seen before."