The fall of Wake Island

On the night of 22–23 December 1941, in torrential rain and heavy surf, Japanese naval infantry attacked Wake atoll for the second time. This time they came in much greater strength, supported by aircraft carriers and heavy cruisers. Two ships carrying the landing force were deliberately run onto the reef and put their troops straight ashore. The defenders, who had been bombed for two weeks and were left with no aircraft and no hope of relief, fought for several hours. At around eight in the morning Commander Winfield Scott Cunningham, the island commander, ordered a surrender. More than 400 servicemen and over a thousand civilian workers were taken prisoner.

The second attempt

The repulse of the landing on 11 December took the Japanese navy by surprise. The commander of the 4th Fleet, Vice Admiral Shigeyoshi Inoue, concluded that unless the last American fighters were destroyed a second landing might end the same way, and the land-based aircraft in the Marshalls were unable to do it. At his staff’s request, Combined Fleet headquarters diverted to Wake part of Vice Admiral Chūichi Nagumo’s force, which was returning from the attack on Pearl Harbor: Rear Admiral Tamon Yamaguchi’s 2nd Carrier Division with the carriers Sōryū and Hiryū, and two heavy cruisers under Rear Admiral Hiroaki Abe. Four heavy cruisers of the 6th Division came from the area of Guam, and two destroyers from the Gilbert Islands.

Rear Admiral Sadamichi Kajioka, who had commanded the first attempt, was given a third company of naval infantry. In all he carried about a thousand men of the Special Naval Landing Forces – up to 1,500 according to some studies – with a reserve aboard the ships. He also laid down that if the sea again made it impossible to lower the landing craft, two patrol boats converted from old destroyers would be run aground and land their troops directly on the beach. On 21 December the force sailed from Roi in Kwajalein atoll.

That same day carrier aircraft appeared over Wake for the first time: almost fifty bombers and fighters took off from the two carriers. On 22 December a second wave came in. The last two serviceable Wildcats of squadron VMF-211 rose to meet it and shot down two torpedo bombers before they themselves were shot down by Zero fighters. Lieutenant Carl Davidson was killed; Captain Herbert Freuler, wounded, managed to bring his wrecked aircraft down on the airfield. Wake no longer had a single aircraft. The squadron’s airmen, about twenty men, were given rifles and became infantry.

The night of 23 December

Shortly after 2 a.m. on 23 December patrol boats No. 32 and No. 33 ran onto the reef on the south shore of the main islet, near the airfield. Landing craft from other ships put troops ashore by the construction workers’ camp in the west of the islet and on Wilkes islet. At around 2.45 a.m. a searchlight on Wilkes lit up the beach and the defenders saw that the landing was already under way. Lieutenant Robert Hanna and a handful of men ran to the only 3-inch (76 mm) gun sited above the beach and, from a range of a few hundred metres, pumped more than a dozen shells into No. 33. The ship caught fire and lit up the whole battlefield, and Hanna switched his fire to the other wreck. Around the gun, Major Paul Putnam and his airmen fought on. It was there too, just before dawn, that Captain Henry Elrod was killed – the man who on 11 December had sunk the destroyer Kisaragi. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.

The Japanese did not try to take every position. They bypassed strongpoints and infiltrated into the interior of the island, cutting telephone wires as they went. At around three, Major James Devereux, the Marine commander, lost contact with most of the positions on the south shore and from then on received only fragments of reports. At five, Cunningham sent a signal to Pearl Harbor: “Enemy on island, issue in doubt.”

The defenders did best on Wilkes. Captain Wesley Platt gathered a dozen or so men from the gun and machine-gun crews and at dawn led a counter-attack against the Japanese who had overrun an anti-aircraft gun position. The landing party that had come ashore on Wilkes was almost completely wiped out. On the main islet, Second Lieutenant Arthur Poindexter, with a mixed group of Marines, sailors and civilians, threw back the men landed from the boats near the construction camp. But there the successes ended. At dawn carrier aircraft appeared over the island, and cruisers shelled it from the sea. The Japanese controlled the airfield and the south shore, while the defenders were scattered and cut off from one another.

The surrender

Early in the morning word reached Cunningham that no relief would come. Vice Admiral William Pye, who on 17 December had temporarily replaced the recalled Admiral Husband Kimmel, had wavered all night. He even considered sending the supply ship on its own and launching fighters from a carrier at maximum range. On the morning of 22 December Hawaiian time, when it was already 23 December on Wake, he ordered Rear Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher’s Task Force 14 to turn back. Saratoga was then about 700 kilometres from Wake. Pye did not want to risk the fleet’s only carriers against Japanese carriers of unknown strength. According to some studies, his superiors in Washington, Admirals Harold Stark and Ernest King, had also concluded that Wake should be evacuated rather than reinforced. On Fletcher’s ships the order was received with fury and shame. Some officers urged the admiral to ignore it.

Cunningham and Devereux knew that further fighting would not save the island and might cost the lives of hundreds of civilians crowded in the shelters. At around 7.30 a.m. Cunningham decided to surrender. Devereux, carrying a white flag, went from position to position with a Japanese officer and a few men, ordering the defenders to lay down their arms. Some refused until they saw their commander. On Wilkes, cut off from the rest of the atoll, fighting went on for some time before news of the surrender reached Platt. The Japanese stripped the prisoners, bound their hands with wire and held them on the airfield. According to the prisoners’ accounts, in the first hours there was a real danger that they would be shot.

Losses

According to American tallies, over the whole defence, from 8 to 23 December, 49 Marines and three sailors were killed and two went missing. Several dozen were wounded. At least 70 civilians were killed, including ten Chamorros from the Pan Am base. A total of 433 servicemen and about 1,150 civilians were taken prisoner, around 1,600 people in all. The Americans lost all twelve of their fighters.

Japanese losses are disputed. Japanese documents give about 140 killed and wounded for the landing of 23 December. Together with the two destroyers sunk on 11 December, a submarine lost in a collision and several dozen aircraft destroyed or damaged, the whole operation cost Japan at least several hundred dead. American studies give figures ranging from about 600 to over 800 killed.

Significance

Wake fell on the same day that the Japanese landed at Lingayen Gulf in the Philippines, and two days before the surrender of Hong Kong. The atoll became a Japanese outpost named Ōtori-shima, Great Bird Island. For Japan this marked the end of the first stage of the offensive in the central Pacific: the American islands west of Midway had been taken within two weeks.

In the United States the fall of Wake was received with bitterness. The resistance of the garrison, which had held out for sixteen days and repulsed the first landing, became a legend, and Pye’s decision to call off the relief is still both criticised and defended. On 31 December Admiral Chester Nimitz took command of the Pacific Fleet, and the American carriers, preserved at Wake, began raiding Japanese bases in the following months – including Wake itself in February 1942.

The prisoners’ fate was hard. On 12 January 1942 most of them, about 1,200 people, were shipped aboard the Nitta Maru to Yokohama and from there to the Woosung camp near Shanghai. On the way the guards beheaded five prisoners. The Japanese later explained this as punishment for attempted mutiny; the survivors maintained that the victims had been chosen at random. About 350 civilians were kept on Wake to build fortifications. Most of them were later shipped out, but 98 remained on the island. On 7 October 1943, after an American air raid, they were shot beside an anti-tank ditch on the orders of the island commander, Rear Admiral Shigematsu Sakaibara. One of them managed to escape and carved the inscription “98 US PW 5-10-43” on a coral rock; when he was recaptured, Sakaibara killed him personally. Sakaibara was sentenced by an American tribunal and hanged on Guam in 1947. The Japanese garrison of Wake, cut off from supplies, with many of its men dead from hunger and disease, surrendered on 4 September 1945. Devereux, after years in captivity, became a congressman, and his men received a special commendation for the defence of the island.