Pacific Alamo

by John Wukovits

  The first shipment arrived a few days before Christmas 1942. This reminder that someone outside camp had not forgotten them breathed new life into the weary Wake Islanders. Lieutenant Kinney saw it as evidence that people in the United States cared about them and were doing what they could to make a harsh situation easier, while the event confirmed Hans Whitney’s faith in ultimately being rescued. Most men formed groups of four or five, pooled their contents, and slowly dished out the delicacies.

  The men enjoyed a pleasant surprise that first Christmas from an American who lived in Shanghai and operated a successful restaurant that catered to Americans. Jimmy James, a retired American sailor, had not yet been placed in detention by the Japanese, and somehow he persuaded the authorities to let him send in a Christmas meal of turkey, sweet potatoes, coffee, and cigars. The men worshiped Jimmy James for what they considered a miracle, and counted that meal as one of the few highlights of their time in camp.

  Death and Disease

  Relatively few men in China and Japan died from beatings or torture. Improper diet and the diseases that accompanied it contributed the most to camp fatalities. Of the 1,593 men captured on Wake Island, 244 perished. A handful of men died from harsh treatment or electrocution, but the vast majority succumbed to illnesses they may have beaten had they been healthier.

  The winter’s bitter cold joined with the summer’s sweltering temperatures and swarms of flies to produce a year-round life-threatening environment. Mosquitoes buzzed all around the men outside and in their screenless barracks, causing malaria, dysentery, and other debilitating illnesses. The situation so concerned the Japanese commander, Colonel Yuse, that he ordered each man to kill ten flies per day. When the Americans ignored the order, Yuse obtained their cooperation by offering one cigarette for every ten flies brought in. That incentive plan proved so successful that Yuse upped the quota to one cigarette for every one hundred flies killed, at which time the results again plummeted. One man, most likely caught in the throes of nicotine agony, fashioned a huge twelve-by-twelve-inch flyswatter and commenced a solitary killing spree.

  With the flies, mosquitoes, and inadequate diet, a succession of ailing prisoners headed to the camp hospital felled by malaria, dysentery, fever, or beriberi, which the men feared because of the hideous swelling and subsequent scars it produced. Camp doctors, for instance, removed six quarts of water from Hans Whitney’s body and an additional amount from his lungs because of beriberi. Other prisoners fell ill from consuming rats or other creatures that populated the camp. Few men, if any, escaped being sick at one time or another. Lieutenant Kahn designated the most serious with a red tag, indicating the man was to remain in bed all day, or a blue tag, allowing the prisoner to work at lighter chores around the camp.

  Despite Lieutenant Kahn’s efforts, some Wake Islanders inevitably succumbed in the harsh conditions. Mark Staten, a civilian employee, died on February 18, 1942, of beriberi, and S1c. Joseph Comers passed away the following August from tuberculosis. Sgt. Alton J. Bertels, the Marine who barely missed going home when his discharge from the service was delayed by the December 8 attack, never again saw the United States. He died in March 1945 from tuberculosis. More men died as the war unfolded, some to disease and some to accidents, but the work of Lieutenant Kahn and his staff prevented the tally from growing to inordinate numbers.

  Lieutenant Kahn earned everyone’s praise for his tireless efforts in treating ailments. With few medicines at hand, he administered bits of charcoal in water to ease dysentery and stomach troubles, sulfur for rashes and skin problems, and—as the men loved to joke—aspirin for everything else. When necessary, Lieutenant Kahn performed surgery without anesthetics.

  Lieutenant Kahn’s diagnoses often proved to be his most effective treatment. Whenever he feared that a weakened man would die from working, Lieutenant Kahn, frequently backed by a sympathetic Dr. Shindo, argued with Japanese officials that the man was too ill to work. He frequently had to be creative in his choice of maladies, for most camp commanders stipulated that no prisoner could be excused from work detail unless seriously injured or suffering from a temperature over 103 degrees.

  “Lieutenant Kahn invented more diseases than anyone had ever heard of, and the Japanese had a fear of catching diseases,” claimed Corporal Johnson. “When a man got too weak to work and looked like he might die, he invented a disease to get him on light duty.”50

  A few men perished accidentally. One Marine died when, in passing vegetables through to a friend, he touched the electrified fence. Joe Goicoechea and another civilian attempted to give him artificial respiration, but nothing revived the Marine. After surviving the fifteen-day battle at Wake, after enduring the hell that was the Nitta Maru, after coping with hunger and weariness and pain in camp, Navy S2c. Raymond K. Hodgkins Jr. died when he reached across the electric fence, not for food or in a vain attempt to escape, but because he participated in that all-American activity—baseball. When the ball rolled through the fence, Hodgkins accidentally touched the fence and died.

  No one knows if another death was accidental or deliberate. One day a young Japanese guard and a young civilian teased one another. The American pretended to be heading toward the fence to escape, and the Japanese soldier raised his rifle as if pretending to fire. This went on for ten minutes, when suddenly the guard’s rifle discharged and killed the American. Other prisoners rushed to the scene, but since the bullet severed the youth’s jugular vein, they could do nothing. Some claim the death was a tragic accident, while others swear the guard intended to kill the American.

  The deaths, as well as the squalor and misery, affected a few men’s minds. After witnessing the killing described above, one prisoner walked around the camp muttering the phrase, “Blood, blood, blood.” Another could only pass through the gate of the electric fence to his outside work with his eyes covered, head down, helped by friends.

  The Japanese gave a wide berth to these and other men they considered mentally ill. One man subject to sudden fits of anger once picked up a stick and began swinging it at a group of Japanese soldiers. The guards hurried away instead of confronting the man. During an inspection by the camp commander, another ill individual drew concentric circles on the floor with chalk and stood inside. When the commander walked up to him the man shouted, “You yellow bastard, you can come in the first circle but don’t you come in the second one.”51 The officer quietly shuffled by to inspect other Americans.

  As the war wound into its third and fourth years, conditions changed for the men in Chinese camps. Most headed to new camps inside Japan, and some moved to other locations in China, but all took heart that their lengthy ordeal might soon cease. Signs indicated that their nation, once so energized by the Wake Island defenders, was coming to their rescue.

  “You Go Home Soon”

  “You People Are Supposed to Be Dead”

  The worst psychological and emotional battle the Wake Island prisoners waged was the desire to learn something of home, first of their families and friends, and second of the war’s progress. The men felt isolated and distant, for they could do little but wait by day or lie awake on their planks at night and hope all was well back home. Nothing was more frustrating for a father than the inability to be with his wife and children, or for a son to be far from parents.

  In the absence, letters filled the void, but information from home was sporadic. One contact came in June 1942 when the Japanese repatriated a group of embassy personnel and guards to the United States in an exchange of diplomatic personnel. The freed Americans telephoned or telegraphed many of the men’s families to let them know their relatives were alive.

  That did not help the men stuck in Kiangwan or other prison camps, however, since only a trickle of letters from the United States reached their hands. Lieutenant Hanna sent a letter to Vera whenever the Japanese allowed him to, which was no more than once or twice each year, but he never received a note in return from his wife, even though she wrote many. He later learned tha
t Vera received only two of his notes.

  This lack of communication bothered Lieutenant Hanna, whose thoughts always seemed to be of Vera and Erlyne. “Not being able to know for sure what kind of shape Vera was in and hearing nothing about my daughter wore on my mind a lot. It is just something you had to get through like everything else.”1 Lieutenant Hanna had no way of knowing that Vera volunteered her services to the United Service Organizations (USO), providing a touch of comfort and friendliness to other servicemen far from home, or that Erlyne now spoke in complete sentences and tucked baby teeth under her pillow. He did not even have any photographs of his family—they had been destroyed during the bombing of Wake.

  In 1942, the Japanese allowed some men to record radio messages to their families, which ham operators back in the United States relayed to the appropriate locations. Lieutenant Hanna, realizing the Japanese permitted the recordings as a propaganda move, said very little other than to let Vera know he was thinking of them and to give Vera power of attorney in his absence. Dan Teters informed Florence he was well, while other men inserted hidden messages to fool the Japanese. One civilian said that he weighed the same as Jimmie as a way of letting his parents know his weight had dropped to the same as his sister, Jimmie Sue, lighter by sixty pounds. Other men mentioned they loved the Japanese just as much as so-and-so back home, then named a person they despised.

  In September 1942, the parents of Marine Pfc. Robert B. Murphy received a short note from Mrs. E. C. Coxon of Burlingame, California, that their son was alive. Mrs. Coxon heard his name among a list of prisoners broadcast by Tokyo and forwarded the information in case the Murphys had been unaware of the information. A second woman, Esther Culver, listened to the same broadcast and wrote the Murphys, “So many times the only notice from the Govt. is ‘Missing in Action,’ and that can mean so many things. Suspense is hard to bear, I know.”2

  Later in the war, a Tokyo radio station broadcast a new group of messages, including a greeting from Corporal Marvin to his parents which the local newspaper printed. “I am in good health and hope you are all in good health,” stated Marvin. “I am praying for an early reunion so that I may see you again soon. Don’t worry about me. Pray I will return in good mind and body.”3 In these ways, the Wake Islanders registered little triumphs that made life more bearable.

  Mail provided the other main contact with home, but no one could count on that as a steady source of information since mail arrived so infrequently. The initial letters did not trickle in until the fall of 1942, almost one year after Wake’s fall. Those fortunate few to obtain a letter read and reread the notes until the creased pages threatened to fall apart, passed them around to other men to read, and pinned them to the walls near their platform.

  “My dear dear Boy,” started a letter written to John Rogge from his mother in October 1942. “You can never know what a tremendous relief and thrill it was to get your first letter written June 2 but received Sept. 21. I read it out loud to grandpa [sic] and Charles and oh how happy they were!”4 The letters, though sporadically delivered via embassies from neutral countries, brought a touch of home to the war-weary Wake Islanders.

  Those who received no correspondence, such as Lieutenant Hanna, faced almost unendurable misery and anxiety. Major Devereux wrote that “Men who were brave in battle have cried in the dark because they didn’t get a letter. Exhausted men have lain all night staring at the raw ceiling, trying to stop wondering what’s happening at home.”5

  No matter the information, good or bad, civilian and military alike would have given their last rice bowl for letters from home. Cpl. Robert M. Brown had heard nothing from home until the spring of 1944, when his name finally appeared on a camp list to receive a letter. Ecstatic over the sudden good news, Brown could not figure out why the interpreter, Ishihara, wanted to see him and a few other men. When the group entered his office, Ishihara held several letters in his hand. After glaring at the Marines, Ishihara shouted, “You leave your cheap, common women at home and they dare to write you here. Your whores dare to speak of love. This is not a time for love; this is a time for war! Maybe you Marines think first of love and then of fighting. Maybe that’s why you now live in this camp.”

  Ishihara slowly smiled after the tirade, then one by one ripped up the letters and threw the shreds at Brown and the others. “Here, take them and be ashamed.” The Marines retrieved what they could, but they could never forgive the insult they felt at what Ishihara had done. “I doubt that I will ever recover from the hatred I felt and feel for Mr. Ishihara,” Brown wrote in 2002. “He still lives on in my nightmares.”6

  The most painful news from home entailed either a sweetheart breaking off the relationship with her incarcerated boyfriend, or the shocking revelation concerning the death of a loved one. A handful of Marines and civilians received the dreaded “Dear John” letters from girlfriends who had found someone else or grown weary of waiting. The news usually plunged the prisoner into an emotional tailspin from which he escaped only through the encouragement and support of camp mates.

  Death of a loved one offered its own form of cruel punishment, for the prisoner had to bear the loss alone while the rest of his family suffered thousands of miles outside his reach. Major Devereux’s wife, Mary, succumbed to diabetes in the summer of 1942. The International Red Cross notified Devereux in August, but it was not until April 1943 that the Japanese permitted Devereux to write his nine-year-old son, Paddy. For eight months, Devereux not only had to grieve for the wife he no longer had, but also deal with the frustration of being unable to console his young son, thousands of miles away with his grandparents in California.

  The emotional distress was evident from Devereux’s opening words to his son. “Our loss must have indeed been a shock to you; it was to me. We both loved her so very much. I only wish that I could be with you, but you are indeed fortunate to have your grandparents to watch over you.”

  The rest of Devereux’s letter offered advice any father might give a son: Do well in school, keep active in sports, write whenever possible. He urged Paddy not to boast too much about his father and the Marines. “Your mother wrote that you were ‘throwing your weight around’ the post on account of the Wake Island Marines. They did quite well and I am proud of them, but remember that it just so happened that we were there. Anyone else would have done the same. You must remember that the work done behind the lines is often more vital than that at the front.”7

  The letter moved not only Paddy and family, but the entire nation, as copies of the missive appeared in newspapers and magazines. A HERO WRITES TO HIS SON,8 proclaimed the headlines in the Washington Post for December 30, 1943. Though Devereux attempted to downplay Marine heroics at Wake, his letter only solidified public opinion that the men on Wake Island deserved noble status.

  Devereux’s letter was not typical of those sent from prison camp. Most men could use only one sheet, or a postcard, often restricted to no more than twenty-five words, which severely restricted the amount of information they could include. For instance, Edgar N. Langley wrote two letters home, one in 1943 and the other in 1944. Each consisted of one paragraph, mainly filled with words designed to comfort the parents. His October 22, 1944, letter mentioned his surprise that they had moved to a new home. “I am sure anxious to get back and see how I like my new home. I know I shall be happy as long as both of you are well and happy. I am so glad you have chickens and stock too.” For some inexplicable reason, a Japanese censor clipped out the next sentence, leaving only the closing. “I am well and getting along fine so don’t worry.”9

  J. O. Young proved to be one of the more fortunate men when three of his letters reached their Boise destination. “Hunting season is in full swing, sure would like to be out hunting those ducks and pheasants with you,” he wrote in one letter to his parents. “With God’s help and will we’ll all be together soon enjoying those good times we use [sic] to have.” A card to Pearl Ann, whom he called “Pear-l,” told her he was “well and doi
ng fine,” and advised her that if she needed any money, she was to borrow it from his father. In another letter he referred to “that home I’m planning for us.”10

  A few officers tried to sneak military information by the Japanese. In late 1942, Devereux conveyed material to the Marine commandant explaining the defensive successes and failures at Wake via Lt. D. E. Kermode, Royal Naval Reserve, who had been in Woosung before being repatriated to England.

  Lieutenant Kessler instituted a plan he established with his wife before leaving for Wake. He told her that in a crisis, if he could get a letter to her, he would include a secret message using the first letter of the second word in each line. In February 1942, Kessler noticed that the Japanese interrogated any Marine who had ever been stationed on Midway. Correctly figuring the Japanese planned an offensive at that location—the June naval battle of Midway proved to be a decisive action of the war—Kessler arranged his next note to spell out “WATCH MIDWAY.” He never knew if this information helped anyone, but at the time he felt that he had contributed to the war in some small way.

  Besides letters from home, the men had other ways of acquiring information of world events. Early in the captivity, the Japanese handed out one radio to each barracks, set to a Japanese-approved station in Shanghai that broadcast news with a pro-Japanese slant. Before long, though, Wake’s mechanics and aviators adapted the radios so they picked up other stations that carried a more balanced assessment of the war news.

  The Japanese learned what a few men had done, but did not bother to do anything as long as the war news remained positive for their nation. By late 1943, however, with the United States military gaining momentum and the fortunes of war reversing at Midway and Guadalcanal, camp officials removed the radios. Even that step did not prevent experienced mechanics, especially Lieutenant Kinney, from fashioning his own radio out of spare parts.