Charles William Tatum (23 July 1926 – 22 June 2014)[1] was an American World War II veteran, Bronze Star recipient, race car driver and builder.

Tatum's war memoir, Red Blood, Black Sand, was one of five books used as source material for the Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks produced HBO miniseries The Pacific.

Tatum landed with the Marine infantry and their attached Navy medical corpsmen in LVTs (amtracs; amphibian tractors) from LST #10 that they had boarded 11 February when the USS Hansford stopped at Saipan.

"Red Beach 2" was one of the seven color named and numbered landing zones that combined were two miles long on the east side of Iwo Jima.

His son, Blake Tatum, drove a Crusader that was manufactured by his father's company to become the 1994 Formula Vee West Coast Regional Champion.