After a brief period during which they regained their strength, the men returned to jobs and more normal living. Lieutenant Hanna remained in the Marine Corps until 1958 when, after spending most of his life in the military, he retired with the rank of colonel, attended trade school, and opened an electronics repair shop. Joe Goicoechea, Murray Kidd, and George Rosandick continued to perform construction work around the world, including stops in Africa and Afghanistan, until their retirements in the 1980s. Corporal Holewinski returned to Gaylord, Michigan, and entered a long career in law enforcement.
Some, six years after leaving prison camp, received orders back to the Far East when war erupted in Korea. Private First Class Gatewood, Captain Godbold, Lieutenant Kessler, and Captain Platt were a few of those who saw action during the conflict. While inspecting the front lines on September 27, 1951, Captain Platt, the courageous leader who rallied his men at Wilkes Island, died when a mortar shell exploded near him. Private Laporte not only fought in Korea for over a year, but the career Marine also served with an infantry company in Vietnam, his third war in less than twenty-five years.
Gatewood’s family had been promised that no man from Wake would ever have to serve in Asia again, but when he received orders sending him back, they unsuccessfully lobbied to have the destination changed. Gatewood subsequently suffered wounds in battle, from which he recovered enough to be sent back to the front lines, but an officer in the hospital that treated Gatewood checked the Wake Marine’s record and instead ordered him home. “He’s had enough of this crap in World War II,”19 the officer concluded.
Commander Cunningham retired a rear admiral from the Navy in 1950 and lived in Memphis, Tennessee, until his death on March 3, 1986. Major Devereux remained on active duty with the Marine Corps until 1948, rising to the rank of general. He subsequently served as a Republican member in the House of Representatives from Maryland (1951 to 1959) and lived in Ruxton, Maryland, until his death in Baltimore on August 5, 1988. Devereux is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
The military showered honors on the servicemen from Wake. A total of sixty-six decorations for bravery went to the Wake defenders, including a posthumous Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest award for valor, to Capt. Henry T. Elrod, in 1946. Nine men received Navy Crosses, the second-highest medal for courage under fire, including Lieutenant Hanna, Major Putnam, Commander Cunningham, Major Devereux, and the civilian physician, Dr. Lawton E. Shank. In addition, six Silver Stars, four Gold Stars, thirty-four Bronze Stars, four Air Medals, and seven Legion of Merit awards were given to various men. Gunner McKinstry, Lieutenant Poindexter, Sgt. Johnalson Wright, the civilian father-son duo of Fred and George Gibbons, and Dan Teters all received one or more honors.
While these men resumed their lives, authorities brought to justice the Japanese war criminals involved with Wake. The main tormentor of the Wake Islanders, Ishihara, the Beast of the East, received a twenty-year sentence for torturing prisoners. The Japanese soldiers who beheaded the five Americans aboard the Nitta Maru received life sentences, while their commander, Lt. Toshio Saito, committed suicide before his trial ended. Admiral Sakaibara, the man responsible for ordering the executions of ninety-eight civilians on Wake, walked to the gallows on June 18, 1947, after being found guilty of war crimes, while two subordinates received life sentences for their roles in the massacre.
Other Japanese involved in the Wake Islanders’ incarcerations, such as junior officers and guards, either disappeared into Japanese society and avoided retribution, or received relatively minor sentences. Other than a handful of high-ranking officers sentenced to death, like Admiral Sakaibara, no Japanese soldier or official who supervised the Americans from Wake spent more than thirteen years in prison. Many rejoined their families long before that. Seishi Katsumi, for instance, received an initial sentence of five years in prison for his role in the beheading of Babe Hoffmiester on Wake in May 1942, but served only three years and one month before being set free.
While the returning ex-prisoners entered what in many cases proved to be awkward readjustment periods back home, most of their captors quickly resumed their former lives. While Wake servicemen and civilians battled nightmares, contended with the effects of malaria and malnutrition, and endured constant pain from repeated beatings, the Japanese officials responsible for those torments moved on to new futures and fresh challenges.
The final insult, as far as Wake Islanders were concerned, occurred in December 1958, when U.S. authorities freed the last group of war criminals a scant thirteen years after the war. The effects of what the captors inflicted on the men from Wake lingered far beyond that date—in some cases to the present day—but the culpable Japanese had their debt marked, “Paid in Full,” long before.
“I Had Japs Stickin’ a Bayonet in My Chest”
While the defenders gained their greatest glory engaging in the totally adult action of fighting in combat, they afterwards suffered, in many cases for years, from an ailment commonly associated with childhood. “You damn right I had nightmares!” stated Private Laporte in 2001. “I’d wake up at night and I had Japs stickin’ a bayonet in my chest. They lasted several months. They slacked off for so long, then about nine years ago I had another nightmare, and I woke up and I was kicking my wife. There were these hand grenades flying at me and I was kicking them down into a hole.”20
Until about ten years ago, Lieutenant Hanna experienced horrendous nightmares in which he relived the fight around his gun, and Corporal Johnson dreamed that Japanese planes flew through the driveway to his home. For the first few years, in his sleep Pvt. William Buckie kept reenlisting in the military and reliving the entire Wake experience. Finally, the night terrors eased, until his son grew old enough to join the service, at which time Buckie’s nightmares returned. One of Johnson’s friends in the Marines still screams in his sleep every night, and Private First Class Gatewood has such vivid dreams about a group of Japanese soldiers slowly closing in on him that his wife has to wake him to stop the squirming and shouting. “He starts jerking a little bit, and his feet start going,” explained Mrs. Grace Gatewood. “He doesn’t need to go through all that again.”21
Franklin Gross experienced the same: “My God, for twenty-five years I had nightmares. I was dreaming of killing Japs. Nobody could go through that and come out the same. We’re all a little jumpy, a little more nervous than most people. Most all our guys—and you could probably get a better answer from our wives—most all of us are damn hard to get along with.”22 Dreams hound Joe Goicoechea, who claims that maybe if he did not have such a clear memory of the war years, he could sleep better at night.
The nightmares are only one way in which Wake Island has affected the men. After four years of near-starvation in prison camp, most of the men make sure that food is always nearby. Corporal Marvin and Murray Kidd both wanted a full refrigerator at home, and for years following the war, Lieutenant Kessler hoarded food, candy, soap, crackers, and other items. When his wife asked him what he was doing, he always replied, “Just in case.”23
Physical maladies affect the men. Lieutenant Hanna and his wife were unable to have any additional children, a fact Hanna attributes to the beatings and ordeals of prison camp. On one of Corporal Johnson’s first visits to a military hospital, a physician checked his feet, which were knotted and hardened by wearing the same boots and socks during the battle, and wondered how Johnson ever made it into the Marine Corps. Johnson replied that first he entered the Corps, then got the poor feet.
In a sworn statement after the war, Sgt. Jesse L. Stewart attempted to explain the difficulties he faced each day of his life as a result of his war experiences:
Our health was ruined, we were suffering from various diseases, prominent amoung [sic] them was malnutrition and Beri-Beri. We have this cleared up to a certain extent but it may return at any time. Many of [us] have sicknesses that may snatch us from this world at any time, others are faced with years of suffering and worrying, not knowing when we w
ill be stricken with something resulting from this hell we went through.
In my own case I have been unable to gain my weight back even though I have been given the best food that money can buy and have been given the best medical attention available, I do not have any strength nor endurance; I am in a run-down condition and have frequent stomack [sic] spells during which times it is hard for me to eat the best of food…. Although I am still a young man, I have not the strength and endurance of a man twice my age.24
Private First Class Gatewood has had both knees replaced, has suffered two strokes, and is bothered by sleep deprivation, all caused by the conditions of prison camp. Lung problems that developed in Japanese foundries afflict Corporal Marvin, and many men still have shrapnel lodged somewhere in their bodies—Marvin in his head, Hanna in his leg. Hanna contended that the harshness of prison camp so weakened him that he became more susceptible to a stroke about five years ago, and his eyesight has drastically deteriorated. John Valov lost twenty-two teeth to nutritional deficiencies and took so much medication for various war-related ailments that he claimed his dresser looked like a drugstore.
From his brutal beatings in prison camp, Joe Goicoechea still suffers from such intense headaches that he constructed his own room in the basement of his house to which he can retreat. “Two, three times a week I get headaches. Bad headaches. I go downstairs. I don’t bother nobody down there. If I got a headache, I lie down there and I sleep down there at night. Hell, if I slept with my wife I’d drive her crazy! I might get up at two A.M. and walk around.” If Goicoechea has to go somewhere or be at his best, he takes medication to combat the headaches. Despite the malady, Goicoechea refuses to slow down because of a few medical problems he may have acquired along the way. “Guys tell me they can’t do this and they can’t do that. I just go and do it. The heck with it.”25
John Rogge’s wife, Virginia, said her husband and many other Wake Islanders have trouble curbing their anger. The men lost control of their lives for four years, and now when anyone poses an obstacle, they resent it. “I don’t take orders very well,” said Virginia, “and that’s frustrating because he likes to be in charge. That’s typical of the men on Wake Island. From being out of control for so many years, they have to feel they’re in control for the rest of their lives.”
Mrs. Rogge claimed another group of people have been affected by Wake—the wives. She once mentioned to another that she did not deserve as much in disability as other Wake wives because she had not been married to John that long. The woman replied, “Oh, we’ve all been through a lot. You deserve anything you get.”26
Cece Schneider, the wife of Marine Pfc. LeRoy Schneider, claimed that since her husband’s return in 1945, Wake Island has never been far from their lives. In those early years, she frequently caught LeRoy staring into space, lost in his own thoughts. Whenever she asked him what he was thinking about, LeRoy dropped his head toward the floor and shook his head, as if to tell her not to probe too deeply. As a result, Cece felt estranged from her husband at a time he most needed her.
Then his nightmares grew more intense, causing Schneider to groan so loudly that the sounds awakened the children in another room. They sat in their beds, afraid to move but hoping that something could help their father. Schneider gradually overcame the worst of the nightmares, but the thoughts still linger.
The filthy conditions in which the men lived and worked caused Harry Jeffries, a civilian worker, to insist on a spotless apartment after returning to the United States. He hired a cleaning crew to come in once each week to meticulously dust, sweep, and polish every inch. Jeffries also stockpiled a year’s supply of essential items, such as toilet paper, canned goods, and soap, and he slept with a gun under his pillow because of the graphic nightmares that assailed him about Japanese chasing after him.
Corporal Marvin remembers the weather. “I’ve been cold ever since, or it sure seems like it. It doesn’t bother me now, the cold. You forget about it—well, you don’t really forget about it.”27
On the other hand, some of the defenders point to their years as a character-fashioning era, a time from which they emerged stronger and more resolute. Corporal Holewinski, for instance, believes he successfully ran for county sheriff in part because of the war. “I had a different outlook on things,” he says. “I like people who work at things instead of expecting things to be handed to them.”28
All groups at Wake experienced the effects of the war, but the Morrison-Knudsen workers faced additional woes. They not only endured the same conditions as the military, but they also suffered from a lack of recognition and, at first, few government benefits. Their company provided help in the form of monetary advances, free physical examinations, and a ticket home, but for a time that was about all the men received. The government did not grant them veterans’ benefits because, even though they were on Wake, they had not been in the military.
For a man like Joe Goicoechea, who stood side by side with the Marines, suffered wounds, and was prepared to die for his nation, being ignored by the government hurt. “Them bombs don’t know friends from foe when they come down,” said Goicoechea, who believes he contributed just as much as any serviceman on the atoll. “You bet I did! I did everything they asked me to do and told me to do. And sometimes I did it on my own without them knowing about it. I’d go and get stuff, like food, and bring it back. I had night watches.”29
John Valov wrote a 1946 letter to then Colonel Devereux expressing his astonishment over the shabby treatment he felt the civilians received. He stated the Marine Corps hardly seemed to care about their plight. “I could certainly cry for shame,” he movingly informed Devereux. “The self respect which comes from participation in a vital task, the opertunity [sic] to receive the thanks of a grateful nation, which all G.I.’s are receiving is not for us.”30 Valov explained that he knew veterans who had never been near the front lines who enjoyed full benefits, yet he, who had actually been in the fray, helping the military repel the enemy, had none.
The government finally granted veterans’ benefits to the construction workers in January 1981. Once they completed the paperwork showing evidence of injuries that were connected to the defense of Wake, which in some cases took months or even years because of lack of documentation, they enjoyed equal benefits with the military.
The civilians, however, were not the only ones finding it difficult to gain compensation from the government. At first the government only granted Corporal Holewinski a 10 percent disability, despite his being wounded four times. Over the years, with help from friends who knew how to use the system, Holewinski earned a 100 percent disability.
Private First Class Gatewood labored until 2001 to receive full disability. Doctors repeatedly rejected his requests, and a bureaucrat once told him he should be happy with the 10 percent benefit he did enjoy. Now, after a grueling fight which gained him the proper compensation, Gatewood states that “Anyone who was on Wake should receive 100 percent just for being in prison camp.”31
“Never Have They Apologized for What They Did to Us”
A current issue that has once again brought Wake Islanders together is that of obtaining compensation from the Japanese government for the flagrant wartime abuses, including being used as slave labor. Germany has awarded compensation to Holocaust victims, the United States government has granted money to Japanese-Americans harmed by the forced relocations during the war, and American dollars rebuilt the nation’s former enemies, Germany and Japan. After all they endured, the men feel justified in seeking remuneration.
So far, none of the large Japanese companies that utilized the men in their wartime factories, mines, and shipyards has paid the former prisoners a single penny, even though the companies constructed a profitable business during that time. Any American can drive the highways of the country today and see evidence of Japanese corporate successes. Mitsubishi, which produces automobiles, built the Nitta Maru that transported the Americans across the Pacific. The company emerged
relatively healthy from World War II, in part because of slave labor. Kawasaki, Nippon Steel, and Mitsui all registered profits from the sweat of the Wake defenders.
It galls men like Colonel Hanna, Joe Goicoechea, and Corporal Holewinski that Mitsubishi-made vehicles dot the American countryside, or that Kawasaki produced some of New York City’s subway cars. The men do not hate the Japanese. They only want fair retribution from companies who survived a horrible war on the backs of prisoners.
“Never have they apologized for what they did to us,” exclaimed Corporal Gross. “We lived with them for four years. There’s not a barbarian who lived—Attila the Hun, Ghengis Khan, or anyone—who was any worse than our captors. I don’t hate the Japanese. I have Japanese friends today. It’s the ones who captured us.”32
The War Claims Acts of 1948 and 1952 provided some compensation. Funded by Japanese assets frozen by the Roosevelt administration at the start of the war, prisoners of war received about $2.50 per day for their captivity, hardly fair recompense for the suffering involved. Critics of the paltry amount claim the United States government did not want to antagonize Japan at a time when both the Soviet Union and North Korea threatened Asia’s stability. A democratic, economically sound Japan served as a buttress against communism, and thus bolstered United States interests in the area.
Ex-prisoners, buoyed by a 1999 California Superior Court ruling that any foreign-based company doing business in California could be held responsible for claims dating back to the war, have begun to sue Japanese industries. They are often assisted by the Center for Internee Rights, Inc., a nonprofit organization established to help former prisoners and to obtain an apology from the Japanese government. More than thirty Japanese companies that used slave labor have been sued in recent years, although no decision has yet been reached.
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