Pacific Alamo

by John Wukovits

  Numerous amenities made existence for the civilians quite pleasant. They worked long hours at tough tasks—after all, they had come to Wake for that reason—but should any man have an especially difficult day paving roads or blasting coral in the lagoon, he had only to think of what awaited him afterwards. Goicoechea labored with the steel crew, Kidd ferried men across the channel separating Wake from Wilkes, and Rosandick served food at the mess hall, but they returned at night to spacious accommodations. The barracks, which housed eighty men, boasted items that some men could not claim back home—indoor plumbing and showers. Five-foot partitions separated the beds into pairs, and each man had his own locker storage.

  The civilians also enjoyed the use of a thousand-man mess hall, a hospital stocked with the latest in medicines, a recreation hall, a laundry, post office, general store, and a canteen that freely dispensed ice cream sodas. In the evenings, the men watched the latest Hollywood films at Wake’s outdoor theater, then on their way back to the barracks swerved by the mess hall where cooks placed freshly baked pies on the windowsills for their consumption.

  Ask a construction worker what he most remembers about life on Wake before the war, and he will tell you about the mess hall, where a man could eat as much as he wanted from a varied menu. The food, served up by Chinese and Guamanian mess boys, included steaks, hams, potatoes, vegetables, fresh bread, doughnuts, and ice cream. Men boasted of the sumptuous fare in letters to family back home, and despite working ten hours each day, most civilians gained weight during their stay on Wake.

  When they had time off, the men could select from among a wide range of activities. Fishermen rushed to the lagoon, where they speared or caught lobster, moray eels, octopuses, turtles, marlin, flying fish, goldfish, and tuna. Barracks battled each other in baseball games on a makeshift field, while other men engaged in tennis and volleyball matches, sunbathed at the beach or the swimming pool, or read books and magazines from the camp library. J. O. Young took time to write his weekly letter to Pearl Ann back in Nampa.

  For those who preferred more “active” pastimes, alcohol and gambling offered attractive alternatives. Morrison-Knudsen made it clear to each worker that both items were banned, but short of Draconian measures, there was no way the company could keep some version of alcohol, poker, and dice away from more than 1,100 construction workers confined on an out-of-the-way atoll. After all, they had agreed to do without women. What more could be asked of healthy, vibrant males? They needed something to let off steam.

  For five dollars a gallon, a civilian walked away with the island’s version of alcohol distilled from fruit in illegal stills located in hidden spots in the brush. One still, operated by Guamanian laborers who worked for Pan Am, churned out alcohol from pineapple they took from their galley. Civilian worker John Rogge claimed, “God, it would really tear you apart! Some of the guys were happy to have it. They were willing to drink anything.”1 If the men wanted the real stuff, they waited for the next Army B-17 bomber, which invariably disgorged crew members eager to part with bottles of bourbon or Johnnie Walker scotch—for ten dollars a bottle.

  Poker games flourished most every night. With 1,145 men packed together, some knew more than others about playing cards, and they freely used that knowledge to advantage. As a result, a handful of men made a fortune. “A guy named Shorty Markam was quite a gambler,” recalled Rogge. “We had quite a few of ’em from Wake like that—they were not there for construction work or for salaries—they were there to play poker. There’s always a bunch of idiots around, and these guys didn’t even have to cheat. One guy, a foreman, supposedly shipped home something like twenty thousand dollars before the war started. The guys got a monthly allowance, and some had a lot of money before the war.”2

  Practical jokes seemed to be almost as popular as gambling. One of the favorites was the bed-and-bottle trick. A man filled a bottle with cold water, then carefully placed it in someone else’s bed with the stopper slightly ajar. When the target climbed in the bed, he usually jarred loose the stopper and soaked his sheets.

  Some men chopped bars of soap so they resembled potato salad, then placed the offending substance on the unsuspecting victim’s plate, or soaked vegetables in a chlorine solution to give them a ghastly taste. Rogge fell to both pranks, as did others, but everyone laughed off the incidents. After all, it was another way to break the monotony. Jim Allen so enjoyed his life that he wrote his mother on October 1, “Well, mother, [I] am the luckiest guy in the world, I do believe. I have had nothing but the best of it. I sure hope it holds out.”3

  A camp newsletter, The Wake Wig Wag, kept everyone informed of world events. Published almost daily by editor Louis M. Cormier, the paper contained news clips gathered from West Coast radio broadcasts and schedules of coming events. The Thursday, November 6, 1941, issue, for instance, reported results of the fall’s political elections, news of the fighting between Germany and the Soviet Union, information that mail was due to arrive on the weekend, and an item that the week’s movie was The Battle of Broadway, starring Victor McLaglen. According to the paper, meetings to be held that week included a gospel service, the American Legion, the Glee Club, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and a Bible Class.

  Goicoechea, Kidd, and Rosandick loved their time on Wake. They worked hard, but they knew it would last only nine months. In the meantime, they could save almost every dollar they earned—what, after all, could they spend it on at Wake?—and look forward to a bright future back in Idaho. “Boy, we were sure happy,” said Goicoechea. “We made lots of money and learned a trade at the same time.”4

  Fortunately for Goicoechea and his friends, they worked and played at Wake completely oblivious of events unfolding elsewhere in the Pacific. Those actions would soon have dramatic consequences for them.

  “Digging Holes and Filling Sandbags”

  Life on Wake for the Marines carried little of the excitement that was enjoyed by the civilians. Their job was to transform Wake from a placid atoll into an arsenal bristling with weaponry. On each of the three islands they were to emplace two 5-inch guns used against naval targets and four 3-inch antiaircraft guns. In between these larger guns, they had to prepare positions for thirty .30-caliber and eighteen .50-caliber machine guns to repel an enemy land assault or pepper low-flying aircraft. Once everything stood in place, Wake would pack enough bite to make an invader wary, but until then the atoll offered little with which to combat an attack.

  Each day brought the military closer to its goal of fortifying the islands. A typical machine gun pit stretched about six feet in diameter, room enough for two or three men. The Marines dug down four feet, then stacked sandbags on the insides for support and two layers of sandbags at ground level around the edges of the pit for protection from enemy bullets. Private Laporte, who served on a .50-caliber machine gun, started his routine the day after he arrived on Wake. “Everybody was digging holes and filling sandbags. That’s what it was day in and day out.”5

  Sent out to begin work on the defensive installations, Major Hohn hoped that when his men were not setting up guns and filling sandbags, they could assemble at their positions and practice firing live ammunition. He knew that would enhance team unity and precision, but unfortunately other pressing needs denied him the opportunity. Army B-17 bombers, heading to the Philippines from the mainland, poured into Wake on an almost-daily basis to be refueled for their long trek across the Pacific. Since the Army had detailed no aviation ground crew to Wake, the Marines had to fill in and hand-pump three thousand gallons of gasoline to each bomber that arrived. This sometimes required the Marines to work through the night, seriously impeding the time to fortify their gun positions and eliminating the opportunity for precious gunnery practice.

  As if that were not enough, the Marines also had to unload each ship that brought supplies to the island. Since a channel had not yet been widened sufficiently to allow vessels into the lagoon, the ships anchored offshore. In large work parties, the Marines piled the car
go onto barges, ferried the material ashore, and unloaded it into trucks for dispersal to storage areas.

  The civilians worked long days, too, but at least they could look forward to relaxing in a comfortable mess hall with the finest foods. The Marines had no such luxury. The fare usually consisted of nothing more than hard-to-digest bully beef, potatoes, or salami—which the Marines derisively called “horse cock.” While they choked on their chow, the Marines gazed across the lagoon toward the civilian camp, where they knew their civilian counterparts ate like kings. The thought of so much enticing food so close by tormented the men, but they had orders to stay away from the civilian mess hall.

  Not that fighting erupted or jealousies lingered between military and civilian. The two groups blended together relatively well, for after all, as Gross said, “We were Marines and we were disciplined and knew what we were supposed to do and what not to do.” But each day the Marines emerged from their Spartan tents and chafed at the obvious differences.

  “The civilians were eating like kings,” Corporal Gross explained. “We were eating lousy. It wasn’t that our food was so bad; there just wasn’t enough. Maybe one bowl of potatoes and something else. We hardly ever got any meat. The civilians had pies and cakes and ice cream. I ate over there one time, and it was just like sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner, and they fed them civilians like that three times a day!”6

  When they could, the men supplemented their diet by fishing or by sneaking over to the civilian mess hall for a decent meal. Cpl. Kenneth Marvin recalled that they could not head over too often, because it meant a three-mile hike, but they sure feasted when they did. “Hell, they had steaks and everything.”7

  Marvin and the Marines enjoyed their revenge, however, for they had something the civilians wanted—beer. Since all forms of alcohol were banned in the civilian camp, while beer was permitted in the Marine camp, the Marines purchased the beverage for $2.40 a case, and then surreptitiously resold it to the civilians for as much as $20 a case. Though the black marketeering did not make the food in the military mess hall taste any better, the Marines at least enjoyed the fact they had one item the civilians lacked.

  The military had a few characters who easily matched Goicoechea and his buddies for fun or Teters for efficiency and leadership. Along with Hanna, Holewinski, Johnson, Gross, and Laporte, the men forged the backbone to Wake’s fighting force and handed the First Defense Battalion its personality.

  Born in Dorchester, South Carolina, on May 26, 1914, Hohn’s executive, Capt. Wesley M. Platt, gained the respect of every Marine. The studious Platt graduated from Clemson University, where he specialized in chemistry and gained varsity letters in both boxing and football. He then joined the Marine Corps and received an appointment as a second lieutenant in July 1935.

  Platt could be tough as nails in a crisis, but he hated reprimanding his men. Corporal Johnson recalled a private who had once committed a minor infraction. When the Marine came back after being disciplined by Platt, the man explained that Platt had spoken so apologetically to him that “That’s the first time I’d been chewed out by an officer and I felt sorry for the officer.”

  The real reason why the men so loved Platt was that he never handed out an assignment he was not prepared to first do himself. “Platt would pick up a shovel and work with the men,” explained Johnson. “Familiarity breeds contempt, but he was the exception to that rule because the more you were around the man, the more you respected him.”8

  Lt. John A. McAlister and Gunners Clarence B. McKinstry and John A. Hamas formed a military trio to rival that of Goicoechea, Kidd, and Rosandick. When off duty, the three lived to joke, fight, or tease. The blond-haired, blue-eyed McAlister, nicknamed “Johnny Mac,” stood only five feet nine inches and barely weighed 150 pounds, but no one raised hell like he did. With his quick hands around, no drink, poker game, or assailant was safe—but the men respected his fierce loyalty. A fellow officer, Lt. Woodrow M. Kessler, later wrote that McAlister was “Not big enough to overwhelm the opposition in a barroom brawl, yet tenacious enough to make them decide to call it quits. You could respect him and be glad he was on your side.”9

  McKinstry, called “Big Mac” to differentiate him from McAlister, rarely took advantage of his 260-pound frame in a fight or to order people around. Recognized from afar by his flowing red beard and bushy mustache, he preferred the more low-key approach of talking things out or using humor to defuse an argument. An expert cardsharp, McKinstry could take a deck shuffled by someone else and still deal out whatever hand he wanted. Despite the obvious talent, the men trusted Big Mac so much that they never banned him from any poker game. He still won, not because he cheated but because he also knew how to count the cards and simply played the odds.

  The six-foot-four-inch, 260-pound Hamas, called “Big John,” astounded fellow Marines with his dexterity, which included the ability to walk through an open doorway, then kick backwards and touch the lintel with his foot. The men loved Hamas, who occupied such a tender role that Lieutenant Kessler described him as “something of a father figure, a great burly Santa Claus without the beard.”10 A soldier in World War I, when he fought in the Austro-Hungarian Army, Hamas immigrated to the United States and enlisted in the Marines. A veteran of action in China, Santo Domingo, and Nicaragua, where he won the Marines’ second highest honor for valor, the Navy Cross, Hamas spoke six different languages, often so thoroughly mixing them together that listeners did not know which language he was using.

  No one may have been more colorful than G. Sgt. Johnalson Wright. A veteran of the Nicaraguan fighting, Wright was known for his fearlessness. Possibly it had something to do with his being six feet six inches tall and weighing 350 pounds. According to his friends, Wright (nicknamed “Bustgut” because of the size of his enormous belly) could easily drink a case of beer and consume three whole chickens without batting an eye. Other men contended his courage had more to do with the lucky dollar he always carried in his pocket. Wright claimed that he could never be harmed in battle as long as he had that coin with him.

  Other Marines brought varied backgrounds. Cpl. Terrence T. McAmis worked as a carnie in a traveling circus. Cpl. Robert M. Brown rushed into the Marine recruiting office, signed enlistment papers, and then asked to be sent as far from the United States as possible so he could avoid an embarrassing paternity suit that had been erroneously filed against him. Sgt. Robert S. Box Jr. sought solace in the military when the girl he loved became engaged to someone else.

  Like the civilians, the Marines and other personnel had time to relax after their workdays ended. Once a week, a truck took them over to the civilian camp for a movie. Marvin especially loved the westerns they showed, even though rain frequently interrupted the showings. “We’d sit out in the open and watch the movie, and if a rainstorm came over, we’d run into a building, wait half an hour, and go back.”11

  Some men fished or played cards, wrote letters home, or chewed the fat with buddies. Cpl. Bernard E. Richardson worked on a novel he hoped to have published after the war. He’d titled it Another Locust Came, and had 25,000 words completed by November. Captain Platt and Navy Lt. (jg) G. Mason Kahn, a dermatologist in civilian life and now the unit’s military officer, enjoyed classical records, while the men in Holewinski’s tent listened to Tommy Dorsey and other swing hits of the day. Kahn also spent many hours studying an anatomy book, since he knew he might one day have to perform emergency surgery on one of the men. The strategy paid off on December 1, when an American submarine, Triton, put ashore CEM Harold R. Thompson for an emergency appendectomy.

  Pranks abounded in the military camp, as well. McKinstry and McAlister, aided by Kessler, once pulled a fast one on Hamas. Convinced that rumors about buried treasure on Wake were true, Hamas spent many of his spare moments scouring the beaches and brush in hopes of unearthing a fortune. McAlister obtained a piece of browned parchment paper from a civilian draftsman, had Kessler draw a map of Wake containing a huge on it, and then handed it
to McKinstry. Big Mac wrapped the treasure map in oilskin, then gave it to a collaborator, who buried it under a piece of coral near the location of Hamas’s next search. When the map was found, an ecstatic Hamas was sure he had struck it rich. The three secretly enjoyed watching Hamas make preparations for how he would use his newfound wealth, until one of Big John’s friends broke the news to him. Though at first angry, Hamas later laughed over the prank.

  Lieutenant Hanna cherished his spare time, for it was the one part of the day he could be alone, and when he was, he thought of Vera. Instead of enjoying beer or bull sessions, he headed to the jagged coral reef and to the beaches, where he searched for some of the luminous black shells that dotted the isle. When he collected enough, he planned to string them together and send them to his wife as a reminder of how beautiful he thought she was.

  More than anything, the presence of a beautiful woman made Wake tolerable. Morrison-Knudsen sent men of all ages to Wake, from teenagers to one man in his seventies, and most Marines had barely entered their twenties, so the thought of females was never far from everybody’s minds. Fifteen hundred young men with raging hormones faced nine months on an isolated island without women, but at least they had Florence.

  Dan Teters’s wife, Florence, was a shapely blonde who received permission from company executives to travel with her husband. As the only female on Wake, she acted as the island’s hostess whenever important people flew into Wake aboard the weekly Pan Am Clipper. The highlight came when celebrated author Ernest Hemingway arrived and took her deep-sea fishing.

  To the Marines and civilians, however, she represented other things. She reminded the married men of their own wives back home, and to the younger, unmarried Marines and civilians—or to those who simply possessed a roving eye—she served as the object of their lust. To all the men, she served notice that while they sweated under a blistering sun on a godforsaken land, decency and civility and normalcy existed. As long as she remained on Wake, the men figured nothing bad could happen. After all, Morrison-Knudsen and the military would never allow a female to stay if it placed her in danger. Before that happened, they would surely evacuate her. Each day they spotted Florence Teters sunbathing or walking about the atoll meant another day that all was well.