Pacific Alamo

by John Wukovits

  The families of civilians heard less than military families. Morrison-Knudsen attempted to find out all it could about the men, but for a time had nothing to pass on to families. Like the Pearsall family, some parents or spouses received letters they had mailed before Christmas, unopened and marked RETURN TO WRITER, since the mail could not be delivered. For many, this disturbing news was all they had for many months.

  In the meantime, the Wake Island legend machine churned out fresh material almost weekly. Authors transformed Major Devereux into a titanic figure who ranked with George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant, and other prominent figures of American history. One author claimed that the Japanese expected light resistance at Wake, but “They did not know Major James P. S. Devereux. They had never even imagined him…. This small, supple man proved under stress to be a fighter and a phrase-maker to equal John Paul Jones.”38

  The single most influential medium in promoting the Wake saga proved to be Hollywood. On December 22, 1941, before the battle had ended, screenwriters finished the initial script for the Paramount Pictures planned release about the atoll, called Wake Island. Producers shot the movie, the first World War II combat film to be produced in the United States, off California with Marine Corps cooperation. The movie opened in the fall of 1942 to critical acclaim. Audiences responded to its warm portrayal of the Marines, epitomized in the playfulness of Robert Preston and William Bendix—the comic relief—and they reacted tearfully at movie’s end, which depicted the Japanese closing in on a pair of Marines—supposedly the final two on the island—in imitation of the Alamo.

  Starring Brian Donlevy, Preston, Bendix, and others, the movie glorified the Marines. Critics, however, loved what Newsweek called its “intelligent, honest, and completely successful attempt to dramatize the deeds of an American force on a fighting front.” Theaters advertised the movie, which eventually garnered four Oscar nominations, with huge posters bearing the slogan, TODAY! WITH GUNS AND GRIT AND GLORY! WAKE ISLAND, while a movie ad in The Saturday Evening Post carried a color picture about the movie showing bandaged, nearly surrounded Marines behind sandbags, shooting Japanese soldiers mere feet from their position. Calling the battle “those fourteen days that will live forever,” the ad urged patrons to “Avenge Wake Island” by purchasing war bonds. The Earle Theater in Washington, D.C., announced that it was shifting the screening of another film to free the theater for Wake Island. Few customers complained that the establishment bumped the movie Are Husbands Necessary? to a later date.39

  “When Old Glory Did Not Fly, There Is No Freedom”

  While the United States elevated Wake to legendary status, back on the atoll the Japanese targeted the top commanders, aviators, and civilian foremen for interrogation. The Japanese seemed concerned that the Americans had so severely punished Kajioka’s ships with nothing stronger than the 5-inch guns and even organized search parties to scour the atoll in hopes of finding larger weapons that fired monstrous projectiles. They argued that more powerful batteries had to exist and demanded that American officers explain what happened to them. They questioned Major Putnam for three straight days about aviation matters, but he evaded their queries by answering that they now possessed whatever remained of his aircraft and could learn whatever they needed by examining the planes.

  When Devereux sat down with an interrogator, the Japanese officer inquired about radar equipment and other electrical apparatus. Devereux attempted to explain that he knew only generalities about these topics, since that was not his field of specialty. At that comment the officer checked a list of American names and duties and nodded in the affirmative. To Devereux’s astonishment, the Japanese possessed the background on him and many of the other officers.

  One Japanese interrogator asked Commander Cunningham whether he had actually sent the famous “Send us more Japs” message. When Cunningham explained that no one had been foolish enough to request additional enemy soldiers, the officer replied, “Anyhow, it was damned good propaganda.”40

  Until the first group of prisoners left Wake on January 12, the Japanese had some of the enlisted and civilians clean rifles, locate food and ammunition supplies, string barbed wire around positions, and rebuild some of the defenses in case the United States mounted a counterstrike. Most of the men, looking more like a group of hoboes since they had not shaved in over two weeks, worked haphazardly, or surreptitiously ruined weapons by pouring sand down barrels and removing key parts that had not already been tossed away. Others smuggled canned food and cigarettes into the barracks from the caches they uncovered and shared it with the other prisoners.

  Joe Goicoechea stumbled across a small fortune in American money when the Japanese assigned him to sort through the undelivered mail from the Clipper. He and a few other Americans slit holes in their pants, stuffed the money inside, and then shared it with the men in their barracks. They had no idea of what lay ahead, but they figured that money might one day help them. Goicoechea and the group handed out about fifty dollars to each man in their barracks.

  On his way to a work detail one day, J. O. Young glanced over at a building being used by the Japanese as an office and noticed a crumpled American flag that had been stuffed into a fish net and wedged into the door’s bottom as a stopper. Young and the other men bristled at the offensive sight, but they could do nothing as they marched by but stifle their tears and corral their emotions. Accustomed to freedom all their lives, the men suddenly faced a world in which their every move would be dictated and their fates determined by someone else. “One can not imagine what a horrible and helpless feeling that was to see our flag so desecrated,” Young wrote after the war. “One thing we found out at once was that when Old Glory did not fly, there is no freedom.”41

  Dr. Shank, whose optimistic outlook raised morale among the patients, did his best along with Lieutenant Kahn to ease the conditions for the wounded men in the makeshift hospital, but they could do little since they worked without sufficient medical supplies. Corporal Holewinski, hobbled by the multiple wounds suffered around Hanna’s gun, required extensive treatment, but the Japanese only permitted his bandages to be changed each day. Holewinski had to lie in bed with maggot-infested wounds and rely on inner strength to carry him through the ordeal.

  Despite having to yield the atoll, most Americans on Wake still believed the United States would rush to their rescue. They expected to awaken any day to see the U.S. Navy ringing the atoll. At worst, some of the men guessed the war would end within six months and they could return to the United States. Corporal Johnson, unimpressed by the dismal Japanese performance in the December 23 battle, bet one man fifty dollars that the war would be over by July 4, 1942. Some men taunted their captors by claiming an American landing force would sweep in and destroy them.

  Commander Cunningham, depressed over the loss of Wake, figured that if an American squadron appeared, it could handily destroy the Japanese cargo ships moored to buoys. “At any moment, I kept telling myself during those first days, American submarines or aircraft would come in for the attack. All of us in the cottage were sure it would happen, and soon.”42

  John Rogge, the civilian construction worker from Idaho, served as Cunningham’s orderly after the surrender and lived in the cottage with him. Cunningham and the other officers spent hours discussing the recent operation and what they should or should not have done. Rogge heard Captain Platt blame himself for not somehow sending word to Devereux of his success on Wilkes. Platt believed that if he could have done so, he could have shifted his men to Wake, where the combined forces might have eliminated the rest of the opposition. According to Rogge, Cunningham hated yielding the atoll but did not place all the blame on himself. Cunningham and Platt agreed that the relief force “turned chicken.”43

  The interlude between the battle on December 23 and the departure of most of the atoll’s defenders on January 12 passed peacefully. Some officers tried to lift spirits on January 1 by shouting, “Jappy New Year.”44 Lieutenant Kinney found a broken
portable radio in one of the barracks and repaired it so that the men obtained some news from the outside, including Roosevelt’s promise to build fifty thousand aircraft in 1942, a vow that cheered everyone.

  When he was not tinkering with the radio, Lieutenant Kinney tried to determine a way he could escape. He believed that as an officer, he had a duty to flee at the first opportunity, and along with Captain Tharin, Kinney laid plans to steal a Japanese seaplane floating in the lagoon and set course for Midway. Kinney realized the escape was a long shot, but the preparation kept him busy and helped to pass the time.

  In another barracks, each day after Corporal Johnson ate his morning ration, he walked outside barefoot, covered his scarred and blistered feet in the sand, and hoped the sun and sand would help heal them. Since he had not been able to remove his shoes or socks during the fifteen-day battle, his feet had given him many problems.

  As he sat with his feet in the sand one day, one of the two Japanese soldiers he helped capture on Wilkes entered the barracks area and began inspecting each man’s face. Johnson recognized him and hoped the soldier would not walk over to him, for, says Johnson, “I thought he was going to cut my head off.”

  When he located Johnson, the soldier slowly walked over, took a good look into Johnson’s face, then pulled up his own shirt to show the dressing on his back that covered his wounds. He motioned for Johnson to follow, but instead of taking the Marine to his execution, the Japanese led him to a building packed with personal belongings, such as clothing and suitcases, and beckoned for Johnson to help himself. “I guess he was trying to tell me it was cold where we were going, and he gave me this suit and a shirt. I guess he thought I had saved him from being bayoneted at the gun on Wilkes, when I was only telling some men to take him to Captain Platt for questioning.”45

  On January 11, the most prominent question on every American’s mind was answered when the Japanese notified them that most of the men would board a transport the following day for shipment across the Pacific. An interpreter read the names of three hundred men who were to remain on Wake as laborers to finish the construction projects already under way, but promised they would receive good food and good treatment. As soon as the work was completed, including repairing and repaving the airfield, the interpreter claimed the Japanese government would release the three hundred and allow them to return to their homes in America.

  Herman Hevenor, the government auditor, encouraged John Rogge to claim he was Hevenor’s secretary. As a civilian government employee, Hevenor would most likely be repatriated in the coming months, while the military and civilian workers faced lengthy incarcerations. Had Rogge gone along with the ruse, he stood a decent chance of returning to Idaho long before his coworkers. Rogge, however, hesitated to leave his friends and declined the offer, an act he later regretted when the Japanese in fact included Hevenor in a group of repatriated diplomats a few months later. “I didn’t have the brains to say all right. I probably could have gone home to the United States when he did in 1942, but I was twenty-one years old and scared shitless. That was one of the greatest mistakes of my life, and every time I thought about it in prison camp, I wanted to beat myself over the head. But you never know what might have happened. I could have gone home, been drafted, and ended up being killed somewhere else.”46

  Most Wake Islanders considered the order to pack for an unknown destination a bad omen. The move negated any chance of rescue by the U.S. Navy, and since they would be steaming west toward Japan, they would be even farther from their loved ones and everything they knew. A stark sense of isolation gripped the men, who had to somehow pull together their remaining strength to face the ordeals that lay ahead. It would prove to be almost as difficult a task as fighting their recent battle.

  “I Was Torn from Everything I Knew”

  “When the Brutality Started”

  The period of uncertainty about whether the men would remain on Wake ended January 12, 1942, when the first of three groups embarked on the Nitta Maru for a voyage to parts unknown. Two groups remained behind—one all-civilian unit to complete construction of military positions, and the other consisting of those military and civilian personnel still too severely wounded to move.

  For men who endured the fifteen days of combat on Wake and then had to deal with what many saw as the humiliation of surrender, the journey represented another step wrenching them from what was familiar. Every mile away from Wake meant one mile farther from home.

  Some even had to contend with being separated from the men they had known since childhood. Joe Goicoechea and George Rosandick headed to the Nitta Maru with the 1,187 men on January 12, but their friend, Murray Kidd, had to stay behind since he was one of the few who could operate the tug going from Wake to Wilkes. Saying good-bye to lifelong chums, men with whom he’d shared so many laughs and escapades, proved one of the most difficult moments of his life.

  “I saw Joe on the lighter and waved to him,” said Kidd. “I wanted to go with them so bad. Seeing them steam away made me feel like I was torn from everything I knew.”1

  A few men, like Major Devereux, were allowed to pack a handful of items into small bags. He chose a pair of shoes, a toothbrush, some underwear, and a pack of cards. The rest of the men assigned to the Nitta Maru, including Goicoechea, Hanna, and Rosandick, headed to the lighter with nothing but the clothes on their backs. After Kidd transported his mates through heavy seas to the ship, the prisoners boarded in one of three ways—through a hatch on the port side, by climbing a heavy rope net onto the deck, or hauled aboard by means of a cargo net.

  A different world waited for them once they stepped on the transport’s deck—they had to run a forty-foot gauntlet of angry, armed Japanese as their rude initiation into what would be a life of hell. “We were put on a lighter and taken out by these tugs operated by civilians,” said Corporal Johnson. “That’s when the brutality started. It was planned brutality. I sheltered my head as best I could. The worst part was when you had to go down into the hold, because then you had to use both your hands and your feet, and you were totally exposed. No blood was on me, but I sure had some sore shoulders and I had a big knot on the right side of my head. They used bamboo sticks.” Explaining this part of his incarceration sixty years after the event, Johnson added, “It’s going to take me a long time to forget what happened on the Nitta Maru.”2

  “As soon as we stepped on the boat, these Japs are in a line,” recalled Private Laporte, “and one of ’em knocked the hell out of me. We had to run the line, and they hit us from behind, on the head, with rifles and clubs.”3 Lieutenant Hanna, wearing only a pair of lightweight trousers, shirt, and shoes designed for duty on a tropical isle, was smacked about the body and head with covered bayonets. If he or anyone else slumped to the deck, the Japanese beat him until he rose and continued forward.

  The civilians fared no better. Ill from indigestion or nerves, Joe Goicoechea spent most of the trip out to the transport vomiting, his condition aggravated by the rough seas and churning craft. Weakened and demoralized, both by this and by being separated from Murray Kidd, Goicoechea tried to climb up the net but slipped. For a second he feared either being crushed between the barge and the Nitta Maru or falling into the shark-infested water, but a man behind him gave Goicoechea a helpful push onto the deck.

  Japanese soldiers searched Hans Whitney’s group for valuables when it stepped aboard. The Japanese burst out in laughter when they found a set of false teeth in one man’s pocket. They casually tossed them to the deck, and when the American tried to retrieve the teeth, they kicked him in the face. Marine Cpl. Robert M. Brown was punched in the stomach and ribs, then handed over to a line of Japanese armed with broom handles, pieces of pipe, belts, and clubs.

  The Nitta Maru had been a luxury liner before the war, but only misery and a foretaste of hell greeted these unfortunate men. The Japanese shoved Cunningham, Devereux, and twenty-eight other officers into the ship’s tiny mail room directly over the engine room, spacious qu
arters compared with what lay ahead for the rest of the military and civilian prisoners in the ship’s sweaty confines of the cargo spaces in the forward portion of the vessel.

  Every man received a typed list of rules governing their conduct during the trip. The first sentence made clear that “The prisoners disobeying the following orders will be punished with immediate death.” Hanna, Goicoechea, and the others scanned a list of twelve such punishable offenses, including trying to obtain more food than given, attempting to leave the room, “showing a motion of antagonism,” and “disordering the regulations by individualism, egoism, thinking only about yourself, rushing for your own goods.” In classic understatement, the notice warned, “Since the boat is not well equiped [sic] and inside being narrow, food being scarce and poor you’ll feel uncomfortable during the time on the boat.” The sheet ended with the ominous statement that the Empire of Japan “will not try to punish you all with death.”4 Each American wondered what the rules meant and how strictly the Japanese would enforce them, especially the one about egoism. They lived not only with the specter of being taken farther from loved ones, but also with the uncertainty of knowing which action, whether intentional or not, might bring about their deaths.

  “We Must Never Give In”

  Conditions for the officers differed slightly from those faced by the enlisted and civilian personnel. For Lieutenant Hanna and each of the other officers, what turned out to be “home” for the next ten days was approximately six square feet of living space in the mail room, which the Japanese kept illuminated around the clock. A single five-gallon bucket, emptied once a day, served as the bathroom facility, and each man had to stand or sit in complete silence all day.