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Wake Island

Wake Island (1942) One of the first Hollywood films to honestly deal with American front line forces in WWII, this blistering saga recounts the true story of a handful of Marines who fought off an overwhelming Japanese land, air and sea attack for 16 days.

Twelve hundred miles southwest of Midway, and 2,300 miles from Pearl Harbor, lay a still smaller group of islands only four and one-half miles long and a mile and one-half across. The three islets - Peale, Wilkes, and Wake - go under the name of Wake Island which the United States also possessed as a result of the Spanish-American War. A cable relay station and an airplane stop were the main activities on Wake, but Japanese ships and planes struck there, too. The small Marine garrison answered gallantly with what fire it could muster.

Early on the morning of December 8, 1941, Wake Island hummed with activity. For months, the wishbone-shaped Pacific atoll of three small islands less than 10 miles long and barely above sea level, had been the site of construction work. Working feverishly to complete an airstrip and defensive fortifications were 449 U.S. Marines of the 1st Defense Battalion, commanded by Major James P.S. Devereux; Marine fighter squadron VMF-211, equipped with 12 Grumman F4F-3 Wildcats, led by Major Paul A. Putnam; 71 Naval personnel; a five-man Army radio detachment, commanded by Captain Henry S. Wilson; and 1,146 American civilian construction workers of the Contractors Pacific Naval Air Bases Company, managed by Dan Teters–all under the overall command of Commander Winfield S. Cunningham.

War with Japan was imminent, and an airstrip on Wake, about 2,000 miles west of Hawaii, would allow American heavy bombers to strike the Japanese-controlled Marshall Islands. And, if Guam were lost to the Japanese, Wake would be one of the closest American outposts to the Japanese mainland. Each day work began early and finished late. There were no other diversions on the tiny, barren atoll, and the defenders all realized that war could begin at any time.

Around 7 o’clock that morning an Army radio technician on Wake picked up a radio alert from Hawaii: ‘Hickam Field has been attacked by Jap dive bombers. This is the real thing.’ Devereux shouted for his bugler, Alvin J. Waronker, and soon the clear notes of ‘General Quarters’ sounded across the atoll.

At 8:50 the Marines raised the American flag on its staff, something Marines did every morning all over the world, and Waronker began to sound ‘To the Colors.’ In the past he had had trouble with the bugle call, never getting it quite right, but this time he did not miss a note, and for several minutes all activity stopped as each man stood at attention and saluted the flag. Devereux recalled: ‘The flag went up, and every note was proud and clear. It made a man’s throat tighten just to hear it.’ Not long after the flag raising, 36 Japanese Mitsubishi G3M2 Nell bombers crossed Wake in three V-formations. Soon their fragmentation bombs, accompanied by a steady drumming of machine-gun fire, tore the island to pieces. For Wake’s defenders, the war had begun.

Japanese land-based aircraft from Roi in the Marshalls, later joined by aircraft from approaching Japanese carriers, pounded the atoll day after day. Before each attack, a dwindling number of American Wildcat fighters rose to meet them. At 3 a.m. on December 11, a Japanese invasion task force commanded by Rear Adm. Sadamichi Kajioka, consisting of a light cruiser, six destroyers, two troop carriers and two armed merchantmen, confidently approached Wake’s beaches. Marine gunners let them close to 4,500 yards before their 5-inch naval guns opened fire. Their patience was rewarded with the sinking of one Japanese destroyer and damaging of the cruiser and three additional destroyers. Kajioka retreated, now knowing that Wake would not be taken without a fight.

The bright streaks in the second week of the war included the cheering messages from Wake Island: 378 Marines and seven medical officers were holding off attacks by sea, air, and land with only light weapons and twelve fighter planes. No more than four were in operation at any one time. There was no fort or protected quarters on the little island. The only armament consisted of six 5-inch guns, two 3-inch antiaircraft guns; eighteen 50-caliber and thirty 30-caliber machine guns plus rifles and side arms. Most of the planes had been destroyed or damaged during four sea and air attacks on December 9, but the defenders sank a light cruiser and a destroyer. On December 14-15 forty-one Japanese bombers destroyed the airfield and other installations. The next day submarines joined the attack. A constant battle was waged until the twenty-first. The garrison had lost the island's power plant and all but one battery of guns. Yet in response to a query from Washington if anything was needed, Wake Island radioed back: "Send us more Japs."

By the 21st, the last of the Wildcats had been destroyed in dogfights over the atoll. With nothing left to fly, Putnam’s aviators were assigned duty as riflemen. Japanese airplanes now roamed over the island at will, pounding American positions in preparation for a renewed attempt to seize the atoll.

On December 22, the day after they had asked for "more Japs," the defenders on Wake Island were subjected to fierce assaults. The enemy attempted to land, but all sallies were repelled and two destroyers were sunk. In the dark, rain-swept early morning hours of December 23rd, Kajioka returned, his fleet bolstered by four heavy cruisers and various other warships, including landing craft, to assault Wake’s beaches with more than 900 well-trained infantrymen of the Special Naval Landing Force. At 2:35 a.m., the first Japanese landing barge ground ashore. Soon a desperate battle was being fought across the atoll between groups of men fighting with rifles, bayonets, grenades and fists. The Americans fought hard, but more Japanese landed and pushed them toward the island’s center. Teters’ civilian construction workers, many of whom had manned anti-aircraft guns earlier in the fight, now took up rifles and grenades to fight beside the American servicemen.

At dawn, Devereux and Cunningham, separated but talking over the single phone line between the islands, took stock of the situation. The American flag still flew from a battered water tower, the highest point on Wake, but Japanese flags fluttered everywhere else. Reports from the three islands were discouraging; there were simply too many Japanese and too few Americans. Pressure was increased the next day and the Japanese managed to land a number of men. On December 24 more than two hundred enemy planes hit the island and thousands of Japanese troops poured ashore. Wake Island sent out its last message: "The issue is still in doubt."

Meanwhile, enemy planes continued bombing and strafing while Japanese ships, beyond the range of the few remaining shore batteries, shelled pockets of American resistance. Devereux, unable to contact his remaining strongpoints, had no idea what was happening a few yards beyond his own command post. Later he would reflect: ‘I tried to think of something…we might do to keep going, but there wasn’t anything….We could keep on expending lives, but we could not buy anything with them.’

Cunningham, as the ranking officer, made the inevitable decision to surrender. The naval commander phoned Devereux to tell him the depressing news. The major gulped, then quietly agreed, ‘I’ll pass the word.’ Devereux and Sergeant Donald R. Malleck, who carried a white cloth tied to a mop handle, then walked across the island, ordering surviving Americans to lay down their weapons. Stunned defenders threw away rifle bolts, destroyed delicate range-finding instruments, drained hydraulic fluid from recoil cylinders and then surrendered. Eighty-one Marines, eight sailors and 82 civilian construction workers had been killed or wounded.

For more than sixteen days the gallant band on Wake Island, under Major James P. S. Devereux, U.S.M.C., had stood off the best the enemy could offer. His few guns and the planes under Major Paul A. Putnam had sunk seven Japanese warships, damaged two more, and shot down at least a dozen enemy planes. The Japanese, paid a heavy price for their victory. The fight for Wake Island had cost them two destroyers and one submarine sunk, seven additional ships damaged, 21 aircraft shot down and almost 1,000 men killed.

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