The red-bearded McKinstry seemed to be everywhere, cheering and coaxing his men forward and complaining in his booming voice that he had only a .45 with which to shoot the enemy. As McKinstry shuffled about the battlefield, he tossed grenades toward the Japanese as fast as Forrest Read (whom McKinstry later praised in a report as being outstanding) and the other civilians could hand them to him. Men marveled that such a huge individual could rush around in the midst of such heavy fighting, yet avoid being hit. If anyone lagged behind, whether civilian or Marine, McKinstry administered a verbal reprimand and threatened to shoot him in the ass unless he kept going.
Richardson heard Gunny Marshall yell that a man near Richardson, Pfc. Wiley W. Sloman, had just been hit in the head. When Richardson looked over, blood covered Sloman’s face and streamed down to his chest. Marshall, thinking that Sloman was dead, shouted to McKinstry that he could have Sloman’s rifle. In the heat of the fighting, Richardson had no time to feel shock or revulsion over the injury sustained by Sloman, but moved on with the line of Marines. A corpsman later tended Sloman’s wounds, and the man miraculously survived after being left for dead.
This group of Marines and civilians was one of the first in the war to experience a battlefield technique later employed elsewhere by the Japanese. In the heat of the fighting, McKinstry turned back to observe supposedly dead Japanese rise from the ground and bayonet Americans from behind. At one time, while McKinstry paused to put a new clip into his .45, he saw a Japanese soldier stand up and lunge toward an American. McKinstry yelled to the Marine and tried to fire his .45, but the gun jammed. The American swung around and thrust at the Japanese soldier with his bayonet just as the Japanese thrust at him. They both dropped lifeless to the ground, their bodies locked by the bayonets.
From that moment on McKinstry walked around the battlefield and pumped rounds into what he had assumed were already-dead Japanese. He urged his men to be cautious, shouting, “Be sure the dead ones are dead.”21
McKinstry and McAlister slowly reduced the area controlled by the Japanese. While McAlister closed in from the right and McKinstry moved in against the Japanese front, another American unit suddenly arrived from the lagoon side and attacked from the north. Almost completely surrounded, the Japanese had no chance to escape the trap.
Fed by Read, McKinstry tossed hand grenades into the final enemy position until the sound of gunfire ceased. After waiting a few moments in the silence, McKinstry spotted someone slowly stand up on the other side of the battery.
“Mac,” the man called out, “that ugly voice of yours sounded like an angel’s when you came through.”22 A grinning Captain Platt walked across dead Japanese toward McKinstry. The counterattack, mounted independently by three different groups, unknowingly turned into a coordinated assault that eliminated all Japanese opposition on Wilkes. By 7:40, the fighting on the island terminated.
Other than the two Japanese prisoners who survived Johnson’s onslaught, Takano’s force no longer existed. Nearly one hundred officers and men lay slain on the island, defeated by a smaller force of more determined, aggressive Marines and civilians. If the men on nearby Wake enjoyed similar success, the Wake defenders would register a second, more resounding defeat on Kajioka.
“On Our Way to Make a Last-Ditch Stand”
After the fighting ended, Platt ordered his men to sweep throughout the northern half of Wilkes, from the new channel to Kuku Point, to remove any pockets of Japanese soldiers that may have survived. The men found nothing but dead Americans and Japanese.
As Corporal Johnson moved around Wilkes, he saw a Japanese body lying near a foxhole occupied by a Marine. When Johnson walked over to make sure the Japanese soldier was dead, the Marine explained that he had killed him. Johnson remarked that he could see no wounds on the enemy body, but the other Marine replied that he had choked the Japanese. When Johnson wondered why he had not used his rifle, the American answered, “I wanted to feel him. They had been bombing us all this time and I wanted to get my hands on him and feel him.”23
The Americans still had to be careful, for Japanese pilots assailed them with repeated fighter and dive-bomber attacks. Men jumped into and out of foxholes and ditches as they moved through the brush, then rose after the planes departed and continued mopping up the island.
Corporal Richardson reunited with his buddy, Red Stevens. Stevens mentioned that if he had the opportunity, he planned to return to the foxhole the two had constructed earlier. “I’ve got some cigarettes there I could use,” he told Richardson. As the two neared their old foxhole, Japanese aircraft charged down for another strafing run. Red Stevens dived into the familiar foxhole while Richardson jumped into another that was closer.
He soon wished he had not. “To be in a hole alone is terrible,” he wrote. Richardson cringed as bombs shook the ground and heaved dirt on top of him. “They came and kept coming until I could shake no more. I just lay there in the coral sand and waited. And for the first time I began to relate this day, this action to me. It came to me that I was about to die. And I didn’t want to die, that day or ever. There was [sic] so many things I wanted to do. So many places to see. So many girls to love. So many books to read. Millions of books, and me not reading them.”24
Images flashed through Richardson’s mind as he waited for a bomb or bullet to take his life. He saw the many pages of his novel being destroyed; he thought of family and friends; he imagined the funeral service held in his honor in the Methodist church back home in Arkansaw, Wisconsin; he thought he could smell the family barn; he was pleased that he had not agreed to the tattoo that his buddies urged him to get.
Suddenly, calm returned. Richardson rose, looked around, and rushed over to Red, but where the shelter and Red should have been, Richardson found only a fifteen-foot crater. A direct bomb hit had obliterated his buddy and left no trace that a human being had occupied the foxhole only moments before.
After two hours, the Marines completed their sweep through the brush and reported Wilkes secured to Captain Platt. They counted ninety-eight dead enemy against the loss of seven Marines killed. Platt attempted to interrogate the two prisoners with sign language, but could obtain little information from them. Since the officer had no way of communicating with Major Devereux or anyone else over on Wake, he had no idea what had been taking place over there. All he could do was keep his men ready and hope that sooner or later he heard from Devereux.
Around noon, Platt sighted small boats drawing toward the island across the old channel that separated Wilkes from Wake. He looked farther offshore and found several cruisers and transports about four thousand yards out. Platt ordered Lieutenant McAlister to fire at the ships with the 5-inch guns, but when McAlister arrived at the battery, he found both out of commission. With his 5-inch and 3-inch guns useless, Platt told McAlister to lead the men to the old channel, take up positions as infantry, and fire on the small boats.
The men hurried eastward. Dead bodies, both Japanese and American, littered the way. J. O. Young, still armed with the rifle he removed from a dead Marine, assumed this was the final action. “It was supposed that the Japanese did not take prisoners, so we were on our way to make a last-ditch stand.”25
Richardson passed by the bodies of three friends killed in the morning’s fighting. Pfc. Clovis R. Marlow, a man everyone called Skinny, had apparently put up a valiant struggle before succumbing, since several dead Japanese lay beside him. Richardson said, “Skinny’s head was thrown back and his mouth was open as if he were snoring as he had done almost every afternoon after lunch in our tent before the war. His wasted blood had fired in the hot sun to a polished ebony. Flies crawled in his mouth and out his nose. For the first time, I realized how hot the day had become.”26
The men passed the new channel around 3:30 P.M. and had made it almost halfway to the old channel when a Marine shouted, “Someone’s coming down the road.”27 Everyone tried to ascertain who the individual might be. Their hearts lifted when they saw a white flag attach
ed to a pole. Could it possibly be that Devereux and his men had checked the Japanese at Wake as they had just done on Wilkes? Could this be the second victory for the American defenders? Captain Platt moved forward to find out.
“We’ll Make Our Stand Here”
“Shells Came Shrieking Like a Thousand Demons”
While Takano’s men swarmed ashore on Wilkes, the other Japanese contingents, among whom was Sub-Lieutenant Ozeki, silently approached Wake. Still unable to locate his shoes in the dark, Ozeki awkwardly tried to keep pace with his fellow soldiers of the Uchida Company as they filed to their embarkation points, but the rubber thongs made walking difficult. Nature proved to be an unreliable ally. A stiff wind created seas so rough that one Japanese officer said the waves were “raging like huge mountains.”1
The two converted destroyers headed toward their landing points, still apparently unobserved by the Americans in the moonless night. Soon the ships would crash onto the beach, giving the soldiers the opportunity to finally close with the enemy and at long last make amends for the December 11 debacle. Five hundred Japanese Special Navy Landing forces waited patiently for the battle to begin.
If the operation unfolded according to plan, the fighting would be over in a short time. Kajioka’s main force was to thrust straight inland to seize the airfield, in the process charging directly across Lieutenant Hanna and his small group of defenders. A second unit would land to the east to swing behind any opposition at the beach and to cut off any help from Peacock Point, while a third company crashed ashore near Camp 1 to eliminate opposition in that sector.
Nerves nearly immobilized each Japanese soldier and stomachs churned as the vessels closed in. The signs so far seemed good—the Americans on Wake had not yet opened fire. Maybe Kajioka had his surprise this time.
Around 2:30 each man’s thoughts suddenly halted when an officer shouted, “Shore ahead!”2 Men fell to the deck to brace themselves against the coming crash, and a shrill crunching sound emitted from below as the ships’ hulls scraped against Wake’s reef in an abrupt halt. Sailors tossed ropes over the side for the infantry to descend into the water, and men grabbed hold and prayed they could reach land before the enemy commenced firing.
The soldiers quickly learned they would have no such luck when an American shell crashed into the ship’s bridge, killing several men and sending tardy soldiers hastening to the ropes. “Out of the darkness in front of us, shells came shrieking like a thousand demons let loose,” remembered one Japanese officer. “Quick! Quick!”3 prodded another in a hasty attempt to move men over the side.
Phosphorescent tracer bullets, used to indicate the direction of fire, so thoroughly filled the air about the ship that they reminded Ozeki and the others on the rope of swarming bees. Bullets slapped men off ropes, then followed others into the water as the Japanese waded toward shore. Ozeki moved through such intense fire that he felt he was walking straight “into the jaws of a hungry beast that made its lair on Wake Island.” At the same time he could not help noticing the beautiful tapestry formed by the enemy’s tracer bullets, which lit up the sky as they crisscrossed in murderous majesty, as if a giant spider had spun an illuminated web. “Nothing is as enchanting as an approaching tracer round. It approaches you in slow-motion growing larger until at the last possible second it speeds up and flys [sic] by at incredible speed leaving a ‘vviipp’ sound buzzing in your ears.”4
Ozeki plunged into the water beside his ship and turned toward shore. Within moments, Patrol Boat 32 disembarked the 290 men of Uchida Company on the beach below the airfield, Patrol Boat 33 disgorged 140 men to the west, and a landing barge brought in WO Kiroku Horie’s 70 men just to the west of Peacock Point.
Ozeki had not expected such fierce opposition. In water less than three feet deep, Lieutenant Uchida led his men toward shore. The soldiers held their rifles over their heads while bullets whizzed by at chest and head height, some thumping into Japanese soldiers while others clanged off the destroyer’s metallic side. Ozeki splashed to dry land, thinking he “must have looked like a complete fool hitting the invasion beach in my thongs screaming ‘Banzai!’ (flipitty-floppitty) ‘Charge!’ (flipitty-floppitty).”5
Once the survivors reached the beach, they fell flat onto the sand, while artillery shells and bullets raced above. Few dared raise their heads even a little, for to do so meant giving the enemy a better target. Even as close to the ground as they were, soldiers still felt bullets tear into the gear they carried on their backs until it was shredded to tiny cloth strips.
Sub-Lieutenant Ozeki lay on the beach, hoping that this nightmare would end. He and other Japanese had assumed they could brush aside minor opposition on the beaches and quickly head inland, but that did not seem to be the case: They had not counted on Marines like Lieutenant Hanna and Corporal Holewinski, or civilians like Paul Gay and Bob Bryan.
“Every Damn One of ’em Was Ready to Do His Duty”
As he had done throughout the siege, Lieutenant Hanna frequently left his command post located in the middle of his two-and-one-half-mile defense line stretching east-west from Peacock Point to Camp 1 along the beaches south of the airfield. He liked to check on his men, especially since Devereux believed the main Japanese thrust would hit his line. The Marines seemed ready, but he wished he had more than the four .30-caliber machine guns with which to greet the enemy.
So did Corporal Holewinski, who sat with his machine gun one hundred yards from where Patrol Boat 32 would soon appear. Seven other Marines waited in their positions along the same section of beach, trying to spot any unusual movement. The fatigued warriors gazed from bloodshot eyes set deep in grimy faces, and stubble covered their chins, but they seemed ready. Private Laporte noticed the calm attitude of the men near him. “It wasn’t a desperation look, but a look you got when you know you had to do something. Of course there was some fear involved, but every damn one of ’em was ready to do his duty.”6
The haggard Marines bolted alert when the sounds of fighting erupted on Wilkes. Commander Cunningham dashed a message to Admiral Pye in Pearl Harbor that ENEMY APPARENTLY LANDING,7 and when Lieutenant Hanna noticed the shadow of a vessel approaching his lines, he rushed over to an unmanned 3-inch gun that had been moved to a small elevation south of the airfield. Corporal Holewinski, whose rifle had been stolen during the siege when he left it unattended for a few minutes, grabbed an older Springfield rifle and joined Hanna as the lieutenant raced by, as did civilians Paul Gay and Bob Bryan.
They reached the gun only moments before Patrol Boat 32, containing Lieutenant Uchida and Sub-Lieutenant Ozeki, rammed ashore. Hanna peered into the darkness, trying to obtain an accurate fix on the vessel, when a Japanese soldier unknowingly aided him. From out of the void, a light suddenly flared. “Some damn fool on the ship was hanging lanterns on there,”8 said Lieutenant Hanna later. What he saw were lanterns placed along the ship’s side to aid Ozeki and the other men dropping into the water, but instead of helping the Japanese, the lanterns handed Hanna a perfect target at which to aim.
With a loud, sharp crack, Hanna’s gun rocketed the opening shot toward Patrol Boat 32. The first shell dropped short of the ship, but Hanna’s second missile crashed directly into the bridge, casting flames about the deck that illuminated the craft and signaled every other Marine gun in that portion of the beach to open fire. As Hanna pointed the 3-inch gun at the lanterns, Gay and Bryan handed shells to Corporal Holewinski, who then fired the 3-inch gun as quickly as the two civilians brought up the next shell. In an amazing display of accuracy, Lieutenant Hanna hit Patrol Boat 32 with eighteen of twenty-one shots.
Instead of an easy landing, the Japanese stepped into a slaughter, as soldiers dropped into the water or spun around from bullet hits. When one of Hanna’s shells hit the ship’s magazine and ignited the ammunition, a tremendous explosion illuminated the beach and the enemy soldiers wading ashore. Marines took advantage of the light and added their guns to the carnage. The captain of the Japanese ship, mortal
ly wounded by the latest hit, ordered every man to abandon the blazing vessel, which he refused to leave. Sailors stepped toward him to help him off, but the captain waved them away and disappeared in the inferno.
Lieutenant Hanna swung his gun from the burning vessel toward the enemy soldiers, now crawling up the beaches. The Japanese knew they had to eliminate Hanna’s gun, or many more of their comrades would die, but fire from other Marine positions, including Kessler’s guns on Peale, forced the Japanese to hug the ground.
“It appeared as if all the island’s defenders had me in their sights,” wrote Ozeki. “Their bullets headed straight for my nose, then at the last second they’d change their metallic minds and veer off coarse [sic] missing me by centimeters.”9 Bullets splattered in the sand all around him, and tracers continued to light the night in eerie patterns. Ozeki heard what he at first thought was a bunch of bees buzzing around his head, then realized that rather than insects, bullets zipped by.
Explosions, shouts, and confusion reigned as Uchida’s men laboriously inched toward Hanna, while machine guns, 3-inch guns, rifles, pistols, and grenades joined in a symphony of destruction. The quick staccato of the .30-caliber and .50-caliber machine guns blended with the slower putt-putt-putt of the Japanese machine guns, while the more powerful Marine rifle overshadowed the snappier crack of the Japanese. Soldiers stumbled on the beaches, moaning in pain, and officers exhorted their men to greater effort. So many explosions lit the sky that men compared the event to a Fourth of July fireworks display.
“Do You Think You’re Really Big Enough to Make Us Stay Behind?”
Pacific Alamo Page 22