Pacific Alamo

by John Wukovits

  For a while every American, military and civilian, thought he was about to die. Around 4:00 P.M. the Japanese placed machine guns along the perimeter and turned the weapons toward the captives. Believing they were about to be massacred, the Wake Islanders prepared to meet their deaths. “I was staring at the gun barrel,” said Corporal Gross, determined to go out a brave man, “and I knew as well as I was going to take another breath that they were going to kill us. I looked right at that barrel and thought, ‘Well, I’m going to see you spit your fire.’ I was beyond praying. Nobody seemed scared. We knew we were dead, and our defense mechanisms kicked in. When all is lost you have no fear anymore.”23

  Pfc. John Edward “Ed” Pearsall forced himself to look at the sun one more time because he thought he would never get another chance. Pfc. James King decided with a small band of other Marines that at the sound of the first shot, they would all rush one machine gun and at least try to take out that position before dying. J. O. Young talked with the man next to him about what they could do if the Japanese opened fire, then stopped when they realized they could do little but accept the inevitable. “We figured this was the end—sick, wounded, civilians, Marines, Navy, Army—we were all together,”24 said Joe Goicoechea. The men from diverse worlds—civilian and military—who forged sturdy bonds during the fifteen-day battle for Wake, now stood in open defiance of the Japanese, doomed men mounting one final retort, this time with their attitudes rather than their weapons. Some men actually moved closer to the front lines to ensure they were killed in the initial rounds of fire rather than wait on the airfield, wounded yet not dead, for a Japanese officer to walk up and put a bullet in their heads.

  At the last moment, Admiral Kajioka—dressed in a pressed white uniform and on the atoll to formally accept the surrender—rushed to the airfield and ordered the Japanese to halt. He engaged in a heated debate with the Army officer in charge, with each man wildly gesticulating and screaming back and forth. After fifteen tumultuous minutes, Kajioka finally won the argument, and the Army officer reluctantly ordered his men to secure their guns and leave the airfield.

  Having survived one intense confrontation, the defenders tried to improve conditions for their wounded and naked comrades. By midafternoon Major Putnam obtained permission to separate the men into civilian and military and to place the wounded and sick in one location to make it easier for Lieutenant Kahn and Dr. Shank to provide care.

  Before the Japanese moved the captives away from the airfield, an interpreter read a proclamation to the prisoners about their fates. The men would not be harmed as long as they obeyed orders, but anyone who caused problems would be harshly treated. The interpreter ended by announcing that the emperor of Japan had kindly agreed to spare their lives. From somewhere in the middle of the conglomeration, a Marine shouted, “Well, thank the son of a bitch.”25 The comment crystallized what most men felt, but they at last knew they would not be shot that day.

  Later that day Admiral Kajioka proclaimed the atoll a possession of Japan and renamed it Bird Island.

  The men spent the remainder of December 23 at the airfield, alternately huddling against the cold and moving about to keep warm as the sun set. By nightfall, most at least had some article of clothing. “Still naked, we were assembled on the airfield,” wrote Cpl. Robert M. Brown. “After several hours the order was given to recover our clothing. Because it was piled helter-skelter at several sites, and because those prisoners who happened to be closest to a pile got to grab first, I wound up with one short-sleeve khaki shirt, one pair of khaki trousers and a pair of shower clogs. But it was better than being naked.”26

  That night the Japanese moved most of the men into the airfield hangar, more than one thousand men crammed into a structure with a capacity for less than half that number. The conditions quickly became intolerable, as men fainted in the stifling heat and became sick in the fetid atmosphere. Lieutenant Barninger kept his men together as much as possible and told them to move as closely to the hangar door as they could, where they might catch some fresh air.

  Finally, to relieve the situation, guards allowed some of the men to return to the open air. Even though the night would be cold and wet, at least outside they had room to move about. There were times that night, though, when the men wished they had remained in the hangar, for a rain squall drenched everyone and cold winds swept across the open field.

  “Tomorrow Is Christmas Day”

  A little more organization appeared over the next day and a half for the badly sunburned men, who had to sit under Wake’s scorching sun for much of that period. Other than a little jam and bread and some foul-tasting water that had been trucked to the airfield in huge gasoline drums, the defenders enjoyed no food, and their weary, battered bodies had little opportunity to rest and recover.

  On Christmas Eve, the Japanese formed a work detail of thirty men under Captain Tharin and Gunner Hamas to bury the American dead. They retrieved the bodies that had been stored in the refrigerator since the siege’s early days, now badly decomposed because bombings had destroyed the unit. Hamas picked up a jar of maraschino cherries in the same storage room and shared them with the other men. Later, when he returned to the United States after the war, Hamas discovered that he could not eat cherries without becoming ill.

  Workers gently moved the bodies of four Marines and twelve civilians to a four-foot-deep grave dug seventy-five yards inland, close to the area of Hanna’s gun. Decomposition and battlefield wounds hideously disfigured the bodies near the gun. When Cpl. Robert Brown and another Marine lifted Captain Elrod’s body, completely riddled and torn with machine-gun wounds, the shattered body broke in two pieces.

  The work detail laid out the bodies so they faced the sea, covered them with ponchos weighed down with gravel, and then filled in the trench so a mound two feet in height appeared. This had to suffice as the grave marker, since no other materials were available with which to fashion a cross.

  A handful of Japanese admired the valiant effort the Wake Island military and civilians had displayed over the past two weeks and wished them well. WO Nemeto Kumesaka wrote on December 24, “Tomorrow is Christmas Day for foreigners, the hearts of the defenders of Wake and their families who have been defeated just before the day must be full of deep emotion. I feel sympathetic despite the fact that they are our enemy…. I hope the best thought will be given to the defeated officers and allow them to spend their last Christmas night in comfort. Pity your enemy, but hate his deeds.”27

  On Christmas Day, Lieutenant Hanna’s third wedding anniversary, the Japanese moved the Wake Islanders into more permanent housing, the enlisted men occupying the barracks at Camp 2 and the officers and a few high-ranking civilians the cottages nearby. Barbed wire surrounded each building, but otherwise the men were left largely to their own in the shelters. Commander Cunningham resided in one cottage with civilian John Rogge, Captain Platt, Captain Wilson, and the hapless auditor, Herman Hevenor, while Devereux, Teters, and a few others moved into a second cottage.

  The Japanese posted as many as 150 servicemen and civilians to each barracks, which had been designed for far fewer. An additional barracks served as a sick bay into which all the seriously wounded or ill were placed so Lieutenant Kahn and Dr. Shank could provide the most efficient care. However, since the Japanese appropriated most of the American medical supplies to treat their own men, Kahn and Shank had to make do with little.

  Living conditions improved in the newer quarters, although men still did not receive enough to eat and the wounded failed to enjoy proper medical treatment. A bit of stew augmented canned food, and men generally relaxed inside the confines of their quarters.

  A Japanese guard whose parents lived in Hawaii befriended the Americans in Cunningham’s cottage. He kept asking Cunningham if he thought his parents would be safe in Hawaii, and often told the captives, “Pretty soon war over—everybody shake hands.”28

  “A Debt of Deep Gratitude”

  The human cost of the strug
gle for Wake reflected the high price the American defenders exacted for yielding their atoll. When you add the loss of lives on December 11, when Wake’s batteries and aircraft sent two ships and their crews to the ocean’s bottom, to the tally for December 23, which most probably cost the Japanese another five hundred men killed, as many as one thousand enemy soldiers perished trying to wrest tiny Wake from the outnumbered garrison.

  Against this enormous loss of life, 124 Americans died at Wake, including 49 military and 75 nonmilitary personnel. The men of VMF-211, the Guamanian workers, and Morrison-Knudsen’s construction crews suffered the highest casualty rates—more than half of Putnam’s aviation squadron died, while 10 Guamanian and 65 civilians fell during the battle.

  When one measures contributions to the fighting at Wake according to casualties suffered, the final tally indicates that the workers from Morrison-Knudsen played a significant role, despite the fact that so many chose to remain in the brush. It is hard to absolve every man who fled into hiding, but most can be forgiven for avoiding something about which they had little prior knowledge and for which they were ill suited.

  Through the years the Marine who contributed as much as anyone to Wake’s defense, Lieutenant Hanna, softened his attitude toward those civilians who did nothing. “I didn’t have a thought about it until after the action was all over, and then I thought, ‘God damn it, you could have done something!’ Where were they when we needed them? I don’t feel that way now,” he said in 2002. “What training did they have? They had no rifles, no pistols. If we had had too many civilians, they may even have gotten in the way.”29

  The official Japanese reaction disregarded the losses and focused on the result, which on the surface showed a victory for Japan. A report concluded that “the enemy forces are, after all, easily beaten. Although they had forces equal to the invasion force and were in a fortified position, they were defeated in a half day’s fighting.” However, more balanced Japanese observers concluded differently. Sub-Lieutenant Ozeki said that when he realized the Americans had surrendered, he felt he had been granted a reprieve from death. Correspondent Ibushi visited various points around the atoll and described seeing “mountains of dead and rivers of blood,” and a naval officer asserted the battle to seize Wake was “one which would have made the gods weep.”30

  Weeping was not in the picture for the Americans. They may have been overwhelmed in the end, but by then the impact of their struggle had already left its mark. In addition to the tremendous boost given to morale at home, the Japanese timetable for expansion in the Pacific had been stalled for two weeks, which gave the United States sorely needed time to recover from Pearl Harbor and assemble men and matériel for a counteroffensive. Since the Japanese had to delay their advance toward Midway, the U.S. had an opportunity to reinforce the island, rebuild damaged ships, and rush other vessels from the West Coast to the front lines in time to hand the Japanese a resounding defeat in June 1942 off Midway.

  “Wake may have fallen at last,” stated the Washington Post on December 24, “but the extraordinary fight made by the Marine defenders has served a two-fold purpose. It has kept a considerable portion of Japanese forces diverted and thus aided the defense of our other possessions in the Pacific. And it has been a thrilling inspiration to all other defenders of freedom, with corollary repercussions at busy recruiting stations. The Nation, indeed the entire Allied world, owes a debt of deep gratitude to the heroes of Wake Island.”31

  “Semper Fidelis”

  When news of Wake’s fall first arrived in Washington, D.C., top naval officials realized how crushed the president would be at receiving the information. Already beset by problems throughout the Pacific, President Roosevelt at least had Wake to brighten his day. He knew that hopes for their survival were slim, but each day he awakened with the thought that at one spot, a group of isolated individuals showed the world how the American military fought.

  The Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. Harold R. Stark, refused to be the one to break the news to the president, so Secretary of the Navy Knox headed to the White House. After listening to Knox’s report, a devastated Roosevelt called the news “worse than Pearl Harbor.”32 Roosevelt castigated the Navy for its failure to save the Marines and other men serving on Wake and demanded that the military soon find a way to strike back at the Japanese.

  British Prime Minister Winston Churchill happened to be in Washington when Wake fell. Secretary Knox later asked him what he would do to some of the Navy’s top officers for recalling the relief force. Churchill, sensing the emotions of the moment and also not wanting to become involved in an American affair, answered that “it is dangerous to meddle with Admirals when they say they can’t do things. They have always got the weather or fuel or something to argue about.”33

  Other public figures lambasted Admiral Pye and the Navy for bungling the relief force. Adm. William F. Halsey, soon to become a national hero, said that the relief expedition could have caused severe damage to the Japanese had it continued toward Wake. Respected journalist Clark Lee wrote that the Navy, feeling the effects of its Pearl Harbor debacle, seemed more intent on not losing ships than with saving Marines.

  By the time of his State of the Union address on January 6, 1942, Roosevelt had replaced anger with determination. The day before, he signed a Presidential Unit Citation, an award that recognized the achievements of the First Defense Battalion, VMF-211, and their commanders, Major Devereux and Major Putnam, for inspiring the nation and the democratic world.

  The next day, in typically powerful fashion, Roosevelt moved the American people with stirring words, including comments about the heroic stand at Wake Island. After declaring the bitterness he felt at not being able to save Wake, Roosevelt stated that the atoll’s loss would only make the United States more determined to once again have the possession under its wings. He continued that “There were only some four hundred United States Marines who in the heroic and historic defense of Wake Island inflicted such great losses on the enemy. Some of these men were killed in action and others are now prisoners of war. When the survivors of that great fight are liberated and restored to their homes, they will learn that a hundred and thirty million of their fellow citizens have been inspired to render their own full share of service and sacrifice.”34

  Ironically, rather than demoralize the nation, the fall of Wake magnified the impact the atoll’s defense had already made on the home front. In its December 24 issue, the Washington Post admitted that the Japanese had landed on Wake, and since then “there has been only silence from the island’s defenders.” The nation reacted tensely to the ominous quiet, but considered the siege as an indication that the men had provided evidence of how Americans fight when their backs are to the wall. Six days later, the New York Times asserted that “An island or two may be lost, in spite of all that brave men can do. But the issue of this war will never be in doubt if freedom’s side is truly represented by Major Devereux, and his Marines, and his civilian mechanics.”35

  Newspapers, again focusing on only the Marine role to the detriment of the other contributors, splashed Devereux’s image across their front pages. In its Christmas issue, the New York Times spread the Marine motto, semper fidelis, across a photograph of Devereux, while other publications ran a picture of a concerned Mrs. Devereux in New York, their son Paddy on her lap, waiting for word of her husband. Other newspapers continued the comparisons to the Alamo, Thermopylae, and the 1879 struggle at Rorke’s Drift in Africa, where a small band of British soldiers nobly repelled a numerically superior force of Zulu warriors. They elevated Wake to the model of how the nation should react—resolute, tough in body and spirit, motivated by sacrifice. Time wrote of a grateful nation praising the men at Wake, who added another glorious chapter to match the feats performed at Trenton, Belleau Wood, and other Marine victories. Other publications pointed out that if one rotated an image of the atoll 45 degrees to the left, the V for Victory sign appeared.

  In San Antonio, Texas, t
he home of the Alamo, a recruiting office began forming an all-Texan one-thousand-man “Avengers of Wake Island” group and announced plans to swear them in as a unit at the historic Alamo. Family Circle urged its readers to forget Pearl Harbor and instead remember Wake. Poets flooded newspapers and magazines with their verses, most forgettable, but a few memorable.

  A radio broadcast on January 12, 1942, shortly after Wake’s fall, trying to bolster enlistments with the Marines, claimed that because of Wake Island, the nation had “a new rallying cry, a new war motto that rings from one end of America to the other and across our far-flung possessions—that cry is ‘REMEMBER WAKE ISLAND.’” Later in the year Look magazine made heroes out of Devereux, Putnam, Kinney, and a handful of other Marines in a stirring article, and Ray Krank spread the story to youth with a popular comic book version of the battle, complete with colorful images of Marines battling as “the little brown hordes swarmed ashore,” air and naval clashes, and Devereux sending his mythical “Send us more Japs” message. The saga even entered the music field when Patrick Andrew Crorkin wrote the song, “Wake Island,” in 1942.36

  While the rest of the nation celebrated Wake’s feats, the relatives of the men on the atoll worried about the fates of their sons, husbands, and brothers. They had no way of knowing if their loved ones were alive, dead, or harmed, and they were not likely to receive information soon. All they could do was wait and hope.

  The first contact from the government arrived in early January. The Navy Department sent letters notifying families that their husband, son, brother, or father had been on Wake at the time of its capitulation and was most likely a prisoner of war, but that they knew little more. Additional information arrived in May 1942. Some families received word that their relative’s name had been found on a list of prisoners, “which definitely confirms the fact that he has been captured by the enemy and is still alive.”37 The two-paragraph notes mentioned that the American Red Cross would furnish them with the best manner of sending packages to their relative. The mother of Private First Class Pearsall had even less information—her December 4 letter to her son returned unopened, with capital letters stamped on the envelope stating the reason as MISSING IN ACTION.