Pacific Alamo
Page 38
By 2002, Pfc. James King had a class action lawsuit against Nippon Steel. “They profited off us,” explained King. “It bothers me to see they are still making money when we may have saved them during the war.”33 King and his attorneys are determined to pursue the matter for as long as it takes, despite any legal obstacles they may face.
Though the efforts continue, Joe Goicoechea is also not holding his breath for any large settlement. “Aw, I don’t think they’ll ever get anything. They [the U.S. government] sold us down the river in 1948 and 1952. They were scared the Russians would take over Japan.”34
“I Don’t Feel Like a Hero”
When people learn what Colonel Hanna, Corporal Holewinski, and the others did at Wake, they invariably label the men heroes. The facts certainly justify that appellation, but it is one word you will never hear the Wake Islanders use. They believe they did nothing more than what any other group of Americans would have done—their duty. “I was doing what I was trained to do and trying to stay alive while I done it,”35 explained Corporal Johnson.
Corporal Gross expressed what most of the military will tell you, that being considered a hero exaggerates their importance. “People always say you’re a hero, and to most Wake Islanders it’s embarrassing. You know, any other group of Marines with the same amount of experience would have done the same thing. It’s no small thing what we did, because we probably delayed the Japanese going to Midway about thirty days. They had to go back and regroup, and it took them sixteen days to take Wake, so it slowed their timetable. It was quite a feat, but any other bunch of experienced Marines would have done the same.”36
Colonel Hanna is more emphatic about the topic. He remained at his gun, despite the belief that he would soon die, because that was what he was supposed to do, but the label of hero fits uncomfortably. “That day [at the gun],” he said as tears welled in his eyes, “I didn’t think any more about it [killing men], but I have since. It’s bothered me a lot. I killed four men myself with my .45. I don’t know how many I killed shooting at the ship. You see their faces, their expressions when they get hit. I think about it even up to now. I don’t feel like a hero.”37
Instead of being labeled supermen, Wake Islanders hope that people simply do not forget what happened at Wake. They fear that elementary and secondary schools fail to teach World War II, or that the nation cares little for what unfolded so many years ago. If they are correct and that tendency persists, they contend it would negate everything they accomplished. Civilian John Rogge claims that the men of Wake Island are already “like the line of the ‘Whiffenpoof Song’ that says, ‘And we shall pass and be forgotten with the rest.’ All of us.”38
That is why many of the men have, in slowly increasing numbers, returned to Wake. They walk the atoll, retrace their wartime steps, visit their gun positions, and reminisce about events that so altered their lives—drawn to a location as if a continuing sense of duty so compelled them. In reconnecting with the atoll, the men gain a sense of satisfaction, a completion that had been missing.
Murray Kidd, George Rosandick, and Joe Goicoechea remained close friends all their lives. They saw each other almost every day in Boise, sharing a cup of coffee at a local doughnut shop or helping one another with chores. Each August 6, the day the United States dropped the first atom bomb in 1945, the three gather in a restaurant to hoist a few drinks and celebrate over dinner. Ironically, the waitress who usually serves them and with whom they have developed a friendship is a Japanese woman whose family came to the country after the war.
In the summer of 2002, shortly after he was interviewed for this book, Murray Kidd passed away from heart complications. Goicoechea and Rosandick still reside near Boise, enjoying family and life, but they sense they are a part of a rapidly dwindling group. The youngest of the men, military and civilian, have reached their early eighties, so news of another death, though difficult, hardly surprises them anymore. With each passing, another link to a remarkable epic has disappeared.
After a happy marriage that lasted almost sixty-two years, Colonel Hanna’s wife, Vera, died in November 1999. His love for her has never abated, even though he can no longer talk to her or hand her the little gifts he used to bring home. A stroke has slowed the Marine, but neighbors and a group of retired Marines who live close by check in every day. Colonel Hanna does not have to wander far from home, anyway, for he maintains a wide correspondence with people through e-mail.
He would not want to stray, for his residence contains every reminder of the two things he most loved in his life—Vera and the Marine Corps. Mementos of their life together, and pictures of Vera, rest in most rooms. Hanna’s cleaning lady knows that she can move every item in the home except two magnetized photographs of Vera on the kitchen refrigerator near where Hanna reads and works. The colonel never wants Vera out of his sight.
Every day he wears one of the Marine shirts he proudly owns—the T-shirt he wore for our interview bore the inscription, MARINES NEVER DIE, THEY JUST GO TO HELL TO REGROUP—and Corps memorabilia adorn his walls, next to the medals and awards he has received. He states that his being a part of the Wake Island story was the highlight of his career and has “made me special to other Marines.” When informed of the incident where other military personnel stood and saluted the Wake Island Marine who entered the lounge during a conference, Hanna allows a few more tears to course down his cheek. “I would rejoin the Marines in an instant if I could,” he asserts without bravado. “It’s sort of hard to explain, but it’s a feeling you have about the Marines—once a Marine, always a Marine. I know they wouldn’t take me now, but if I had a chance to go back in, I would.”39
Colonel Hanna appreciates the manner in which the Marine Corps has honored the Wake Island Marines. The unit has received invitations to the commandant’s house, and most current Marines are familiar with the epic defense. “Everyone learned about the Wake Island story during training,” explains Mark Cruz of Michigan, a former Marine who still holds Colonel Hanna and the other defenders in high esteem. “They told us about all the big World War Two Marine battles—Wake, Tarawa, Iwo Jima. You admired those guys and what they did.”40
Were Colonel Hanna to fly out to Wake, he would undoubtedly experience another emotional moment. The atoll holds a memorial to the Wake Island Marines that includes bronze plaques informing the reader of the heroic battle. The monument’s cleanliness impressed one Wake Island Marine who visited the spot, Charles A. Holmes—the plaques sparkled as if new. When he later asked a government worker stationed on the atoll who took care of the memorial, the worker replied that every time a group of Marines lands at Wake—which is often, as Wake is still used as a refueling stop for transpacific flights—someone from the group heads out to the site and polishes the plaques.
The simple action is fitting. Wake’s defenders want no big fuss, no wild celebrations. They want to be remembered. They could ask for no better way than by having fellow Marines polishing small plaques on a tiny plot of Pacific coral sand.
Notes
INTRODUCTION—“Wake Island Marine on Deck!”
1. Author’s interview with Commander Michael P. O’Connor, March 22, 1997.
CHAPTER 1—“An Ordinary Group of Americans”
1. Grace Tully, F.D.R.: My Boss (Chicago: Peoples Book Club, 1949), p. 262.
2. Tully, F.D.R., p. 255.
3. Joseph P. Lash, Roosevelt and Churchill, 1939–1941 (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1976), p. 488.
4. Gordon W. Prange, At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor (New York: Penguin Books, 1981), p. 559.
5. “Tragedy at Honolulu,” Time, December 15, 1941, p. 19.
6. James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1970), p. 165.
7. Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1948), p. 436.
8. Burns, Roosevelt, p. 172.
9. Author’s interview with F
ranklin Gross, March 13, 2001.
10. Author’s interview with Ewing Laporte, March 14, 2001.
11. Author’s interview with Joseph Goicoechea, April 12, 2002.
12. Goicoechea interview, April 12, 2002.
13. Goicoechea interview, April 12, 2002.
14. Goicoechea interview, April 12, 2002.
15. Author’s interview with Murray Kidd, April 13, 2002.
16. Author’s interview with J. O. Young, June 11, 2002.
17. Author’s interview with Pearl Ann Young, June 11, 2002.
18. J. O. Young, Reminiscences, privately published, undated, the J. O. Young Collection, p. 1.
19. Pearl Ann Young interview, June 11, 2002.
20. Hans Whitney, Guest of the Fallen Sun (New York: Exposition Press, 1951), p. 15.
21. James P. S. Devereux, The Story of Wake Island (New York: J. B. Lippincott, 1947), p. 20.
22. Goicoechea interview, April 12, 2002.
23. Whitney, Guest of the Fallen Sun, p. 15.
24. L. A. Magnino, Jim’s Journey: A Wake Island Civilian POW’s Story (Central Point, Oregon: Hellgate Press, 2001), p. 32.
25. Whitney, Guest of the Fallen Sun, p. 16; Reba Wilkerson, “Wake’s Forgotten Survivors,” American History Illustrated, December 1987, p. 41.
26. Gregory J. W. Urwin, Facing Fearful Odds: The Siege of Wake Island (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), pp. 71–72.
27. Laporte interview, March 13, 2001.
28. Author’s interview with John S. Johnson, March 19, 2002.
29. Brig. Gen. Woodrow M. Kessler, USMC (Ret.), To Wake Island and Beyond: Reminiscences (Washington, D.C.: History and Museums Division, 1988), p. 19.
30. Gross interview, March 5, 2001.
31. Laporte interview, March 14, 2001.
CHAPTER 2—“It Would Be Nice to Have Six Months More”
1. Author’s interview with John Rogge, April 11, 2002.
2. John Rogge interview, April 11, 2002.
3. Magnino, Jim’s Journey, p. 35.
4. Joseph Goicoechea, Memoir, p. 2.
5. Laporte interview, March 14, 2001.
6. Gross interview, March 13, 2001.
7. Author’s interview with Kenneth Marvin, February 5, 2002.
8. Author’s interview with John S. Johnson, March 26, 2002.
9. Kessler, To Wake Island and Beyond, p. 21.
10. Kessler, To Wake Island and Beyond, p. 24.
11. Marvin interview, February 5, 2002.
12. Devereux, The Story of Wake Island, p. 39.
13. Devereux, The Story of Wake Island, p. 41.
14. Devereux, The Story of Wake Island, p. 28.
15. Duane Schultz, Wake Island: The Heroic, Gallant Fight (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1978), p. 26.
16. Gross interview, March 13, 2001.
17. Gross interview, March 13, 2001.
18. Robert J. Cressman, “A Magnificent Fight”: The Battle for Wake Island (Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1995), p. 34.
19. Goicoechea interview, April 12, 2002.
20. Devereux, The Story of Wake Island, pp. 28–29.
21. Urwin, Facing Fearful Odds, pp. 164–165.
22. W. Scott Cunningham with Lydel Sims, Wake Island Command (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1961), p. 20.
23. Cressman, “A Magnificent Fight,” p. 62.
24. Maj. Paul A. Putnam File, Putnam personal biography, Marine Historical Center.
25. Maj. Paul A. Putnam File, letter to Col. Claude A. Larkin, December 3, 1941, Marine Historical Center.
26. Cressman, “A Magnificent Fight,” p. 68.
27. Author’s interview with Brig. Gen. John F. Kinney, USMC (Ret.), October 30, 2002.
28. Col. Arthur Poindexter, “The Battle of Wake Island,” in 1942: “Issue in Doubt” (Austin, Texas: Eakin Press, 1994), p. 110
29. Brig. Gen. John F. Kinney, USMC (Ret.), with James M. McCaffrey, Wake Island Pilot: A World War II Memoir (Washington: Brassey’s, 1995), p. 53.
30. Marvin interview, February 5, 2002.
31. Author’s interview with Ralph Holewinski, June 28, 2002.
32. Ted Morgan, FDR: A Biography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985), pp. 614–615.
33. Kinney and McCaffrey, Wake Island Pilot, p. 54.
34. Marvin interview, February 5, 2002.
35. “Navy Is Superior to Any, Says Knox,” New York Times, December 7, 1941, p. 1.
36. Kinney and McCaffrey, Wake Island Pilot, p. 49.
37. Goicoechea interviews, March 5, 2002; April 12, 2002.
38. Devereux, The Story of Wake Island, p. 31.
CHAPTER 3—“The Marines Will Show Them a Thing or Two”
1. Urwin, Facing Fearful Odds, p. 227.
2. Devereux, The Story of Wake Island, p. 43.
3. Marvin interview, February 5, 2002
4. Author’s interview with Martin Gatewood, February 20, 2002.
5. Cressman, “A Magnificent Fight,” p. 85.
6. Whitney, Guest of the Fallen Sun, p. 18.
7. Devereux, The Story of Wake Island, p. 45.
8. Whitney, Guest of the Fallen Sun, p. 20.
9. Devereux, The Story of Wake Island, p. 50.
10. Forrest Read, Reminiscences, in the Forrest Read Collection, privately published, undated, p. 1.
11. Martin Gatewood interview, March 20, 2002.
12. Whitney, Guest of the Fallen Sun, p. 20.
13. Author’s interview with James O. King, March 21, 2002.
14. Laporte interview, March 14, 2001.
15. Gross interview, March 13, 2001.
16. John Toland, But Not in Shame: The Six Months After Pearl Harbor (New York: Random House, 1961), pp. 40–41.
17. Cressman, “A Magnificent Fight,” p. 88.
18. Author’s interview with Col. Robert M. Hanna, USMC (Ret.), February 6, 2002.
19. Urwin, Facing Fearful Odds, p. 248.
20. John F. Wukovits, “The Fight for Wake,” WWII History, May 2002, p. 40.
21. Kinney and McCaffrey, Wake Island Pilot, p. 57.
22. Kinney and McCaffrey, Wake Island Pilot, p. 57.
23. Kinney and McCaffrey, Wake Island Pilot, p. 59.
24. John Costello, The Pacific War, 1941–1945 (New York: Quill Books, 1982), p. 144.
25. Cunningham and Sims, Wake Island Command, p. 72.
26. Cunningham and Sims, Wake Island Command, p. 60.
27. Urwin, Facing Fearful Odds, p. 265.
28. Murray Kidd interview, April 13, 2002.
29. Cunningham and Sims, Wake Island Command, p. 63.
30. Young, Reminiscences, pp. 3–4.
31. King interview, March 21, 2002.
32. Kessler, To Wake Island and Beyond, p. 47.
33. Richard Wheeler, A Special Valor: The U.S. Marines and the Pacific War (New York: New American Library, 1983), p. 8.
CHAPTER 4—“I Used to Hear a Lot of Guys Pray”
1. Major C. A. Barninger to Lt. Colonel James P. S. Devereux, informal report, October 8, 1945, National Archives.
2. Read, Reminiscences, p. 3.
3. Goicoechea interview, April 12, 2002.
4. Devereux, The Story of Wake Island, p. 69.
5. Murray Kidd interview, April 13, 2002.
6. Cressman, “A Magnificent Fight,” p. 289.
7. Johnson interview, March 26, 2002.
8. Urwin, Facing Fearful Odds, p. 304.
9. Goicoechea interview, April 12, 2002.
10. Goicoechea interview, April 10, 2002.
11. Goicoechea interview, March 5, 2002.
12. Goicoechea interview, April 12, 2002.
13. Goicoechea interview, April 12, 2002.
14. Read, Reminiscences, p. 2.
15. Robert J. Casey, Torpedo Junction: With the Pacific Fleet from Pearl Harbor to Midway (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1942), p. 25.
16. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, p. 436.
17. “U.S. Radio
at War,” Time, December 15, 1941, p. 48.
18. “Full Blast,” Time, December 22, 1941, p. 9.
CHAPTER 5—“The Island Was to Be a Cake Walk”
1. Interview of Sub-Lt. Shigeyoshi Ozeki, in the Dan King Collection, Marine Corps Research Center, Quantico, Virginia (hereafter cited as Ozeki interview).
2. Ozeki interview.
3. Ozeki reminiscence in Gregory J. W. Urwin Web site, astro.temple.edu/~gurwin/ffoozeki.htm.
4. Devereux, The Story of Wake Island, p. 81.
5. John R. Burroughs, “The Siege of Wake Island,” American Heritage, June 1959, p. 69.
6. Ozeki interview.
7. Whitney, Guest of the Fallen Sun, p. 22.
8. Toland, But Not in Shame, p. 82.
9. Johnson interview, March 19, 2002.
10. Martin Gatewood interview, February 20, 2002.
11. Holewinski interview, June 28, 2002.
12. King interview, March 21, 2002.
13. Burroughs, “The Siege of Wake Island,” p. 70.
14. Ozeki interview.
15. Urwin, Facing Fearful Odds, p. 328
16. King interview, March 21, 2002.
17. Hanna interview, February 6, 2002.
18. Wheeler, A Special Valor, p. 14.
19. Kessler, To Wake Island and Beyond: Reminiscences, p. 53.
20. Toland, But Not in Shame, p. 83.
21. Ozeki interview.
22. Devereux, The Story of Wake Island, p. 90.
23. Samuel Eliot Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Volume III: The Rising Sun in the Pacific, 1931–April 1942 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1965), p. 234.
24. Blaine Taylor, “Fight Left Unfinished,” Military History, December 1987, p. 37.
25. Urwin, Facing Fearful Odds, p. 334.
26. King interview, March 21, 2002.
27. Cunningham and Sims, Wake Island Command, p. 92.
28. Cunningham and Sims, Wake Island Command, p. 93.