The Story of Wake Island

Brigadier General James P.S. Devereux

(USMC Ret.)

THE STORY OF WAKE ISLAND

Preface by Robert E. Sherwood

Copyright © James P.S. Devereux

The Story Of Wake Island

(1947)

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

COVER

TITLE

COPYRIGHT

THE STORY OF WAKE ISLAND

AUTHOR’S NOTE

PREFACE

1 - MISSION TO WAKE

2 - THE ATTACK

3 - AFTERNOON, DECEMBER 8

4 - THE SECOND ROUND

5 - TASK FORCE

6 - ALL JAPS ARE LIARS

7 - WHEN TIME STOOD STILL

8 - THE MISFORTUNES OF SERGEANT GRAGG

9 - THE LUCKY DOLLAR

10 - DECEMBER 22

11 - DECEMBER 23

12 - THE MEN FROM MARS

13 - THE SAGA OF WILKES

14 - …AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR

15 - PRISON CAMP

16 - THE MOUNT FUJI PROJECT

17 - POSTSCRIPT TO WAKE

THE STORY OF WAKE ISLAND

To the men who served in the defense

of Wake Island

Army, Navy, Marines and civilians

AUTHOR’S NOTE

This account of the defense of Wake Island was written after five years without benefit of notes and records, which were destroyed by the Japanese or by us to prevent capture. This account is as accurate as the author could make it from his own recollection, available records and the recollection of other Wake Island veterans, both officers and men. The Navy Department is in no way responsible for any points of view expressed nor for the factual accuracy of statements made.

PREFACE

by Robert E. Sherwood

This book is written by an American fighting man. It makes no pretensions to literary style or significance. It is not based on hearsay or latrine gossip. It reveals no secrets as to what really went on at the highest levels — indeed, Colonel Devereux makes it entirely clear that he never had the faintest idea of what was happening at the highest levels.

All he knew was that he was in command of the garrison on Wake Island when war broke out in the Pacific, and that he was to hold this island for as long as was humanly possible. He did so.

His story of this memorable fight is enormously exciting and stimulating and important.

In the first two weeks of American participation in the Second World War, many people were extremely uncertain of our ability to fight against the known and (up to then) all-conquering power of the Nazis and the surprising power suddenly revealed by the Japanese.

It had been a long time since any American forces had been compelled to raise the white flag of surrender, and the big question was: could we take it? The British had proved that they could take it; so had the Russians and the Chinese. But — our enemies were saying that we were so gorged with success that we had become soft and flabby and complacent and there were some among our own people who feared that this was true.

Two days after Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, over the radio, The reports from Guam and Wake and Midway are still confused, but we must be prepared for the announcement that all these three outposts have been seized.

Defenseless Guam was doomed because the Congress had been unable to understand that an island eight thousand miles from Washington could be of vital importance to the security of the Western Hemisphere, so the Japanese took it and it eventually cost us greatly to take it back.

At Midway, the enemy chose not to attack until, in early June 1942, he felt ready to move on to much greater prizes.

The Japanese attacked little Wake the day of Pearl Harbor, first with devastating bombing and subsequently with substantial naval and ground forces. Immediately, this obscure atoll became a symbol of national tragedy and individual glory. The pathetically small garrison, by holding out for fourteen historic days and inflicting tremendous losses on the enemy, gave to the American spirit the kick that it needed. Our people gained the will to fight and the confidence in our ability to fight, and this was done, literally, with the help of God and a few Marines.

What was important about the garrison of Wake — and Colonel Devereux emphasizes this in this book — is that they were not exceptional, they were no supermen from the comic strips. Had they not been on Wake another outfit would have been there and Colonel Devereux is certain that it would have behaved in much the same creditable manner as his own. But it was Devereux’s detachment which was there and the officers and men of that shockingly ill-equipped outfit proved to their countrymen and to the whole world that Americans of 1941 could take it and could also dish it out.

As long as I live, I can never forget the emotional upheaval that I experienced when I looked at the front page of the New York Times on the morning of December 25, 1941. The remnants of the garrison had surrendered. There was a photograph of Major (as he was then) Devereux — a thin, sensitive face, very unlike the rugged What Price Glory? Marine as impersonated by Louis Wolheim or Victor McLaglen.

Over this photograph the Times printed two great words: Semper Fidelis — the motto of the United States Marine Corps to which the men of Wake had been so conspicuously faithful.

A little over three years later (February 15, 1945) I had the privilege and pleasure of being on board an aircraft carrier approaching Tokyo. It was USS Bennington (CV-20), a unit of the powerful fleet known as Task Force 58. This was the first time in the war that the U.S. Navy reached the Japanese home islands and struck.

I was in the Ready Room of a group of USMC flyers who used F4U fighter planes (Corsairs). This group was being briefed on their forthcoming mission — the first they knew that the target was Tokyo. Only a few of them had ever been in combat before. All of them looked excited and many of them looked scared.

The officer conducting the briefing talked in the usual cold, impersonal manner of the problems involved. But when the routine was completed, the speaker became less impersonal.

He said, There are some prisoner-of-war camps in this target area. In these camps are members of the Marine Corps, including undoubtedly some of the survivors of the garrison of Wake Island. They have been prisoners of the Japs for more than three years. When these men look up and see us we must be sure to be flying at a low enough altitude so that they will know who we are.

The reinforcements which never came to the men on Wake were now coming to them on the Japanese homeland itself. They were coming in a fleet more powerful than all of the prewar navies of the world put together.

Our Navy by then was ranging all over the Western Pacific, our Air Forces were in the skies over East Asia and Europe, our ground forces were fighting in Burma and northern Italy and on the Rhine. The production of arms was gigantic beyond belief. And the scientists, in Oak Ridge and Los Alamos, were coming to the end of their long, secret labors to perfect the weapon of ultimate extinction.

In the realization of the overwhelming power which was finally achieved, we must forever remember that no part of it would have been possible had it not been for the demonstrations of basic guts that were given us in the beginning at Dunkirk and Leningrad and Wake Island.

Colonel Devereux served his country well then. He has served it well again by writing this book. He reminds us how perilously close we were to disaster. He reminds us that no matter how large or rich or proud a nation may be, it cannot win a war if it lacks the essential quality of courage — and that goes also for the winning of a peace.

The White House Washington

5 January 1942

Citation by

THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

of

The Wake detachment of the 1st Defense Battalion, U S. Marine Corps, under command of Major James P. S. Devereux, U. S. Marines

and

Marine Fighting Squadron 211 of Marine Aircraft Group 21, under command of Major Paul A. Putnam, U. S. Marines

The courageous conduct of the officers and men of these units, who defended Wake Island against an overwhelming superiority of enemy air, sea, and land attacks from December 8 to 22, 1941, has been noted with admiration by their fellow countrymen and the civilized world, and will not be forgotten so long as gallantry and heroism are respected and honored. These units are commended for their devotion to duty and splendid conduct at their battle stations under most adverse conditions. With limited defensive means against attacks in great force, they manned their shore installations and flew their aircraft so well that five enemy warships were either sunk or severely damaged, many hostile planes shot down, and an unknown number of land troops destroyed.

1

MISSION TO WAKE

Wake Island is a spit-kit of sand and coral without any reason for being except the birds and rats which were its only native inhabitants. Then an accident of geography made it a military blue chip. The battle of Wake lasted sixteen days and more than five thousand men were killed, but it would never have been fought except for that accident. So you must understand the geography of Wake and you must know a few unpleasant facts if you would understand the battle for the island. I will try to keep this background brief, but I will put it down at the start because I think the story of Wake Island, the full story, should be told at last.

Wake is so small, so remote and so barren that more than a hundred years of its history can be told in three sentences. It was discovered by the British in 1796, visited by the American explorer Charles Wilkes in 1841 and claimed as an American possession in 1899 by Captain E. D. Taussig, USN. It was worthless except as a bird sanctuary. It remained uninhabited until Pan-American Airways established a station there for refueling its trans-Pacific Clippers in 1935.

Japan — and that accident of geography — changed all that. The crisis in the Pacific made Wake a valuable piece of real estate. It ceased to be merely a microscopic atoll of useless coral and scrubby brush. It became valuable as an outpost of our Sea Frontier, a link in the chain of widely separated American islands that stretched from Dutch Harbor in the Aleutians almost to the Equator. These outposts were our first line of defense. They were intended to form a screen against Japan much as blockhouses strung across the western plains formed a screen against hostile tribes in the days of our Indian wars.

Pearl Harbor was the core of this frontier defense. Nearest to Hawaii, guarding its western approaches, were Midway, Johnston and Palmyra. From Pearl Harbor, Midway was less than twelve hundred miles to the northwest, Johnston seven hundred miles to the southwest, Palmyra about nine hundred miles to the south.

Far westward, two thousand miles from Pearl Harbor, lay lonely Wake. It was nearer to the mainland of Japan than to Hawaii. It lay almost on the boundary line of the Japanese mandate. The powerful Japanese bases in the Marshalls, almost due south of Wake, were hardly six hundred miles away. The nearest Jap base was Taongi, three hundred twenty-five miles to the south. The nearest American bases were more than three times as far from Wake — Midway about a thousand miles to the east, Guam twelve hundred miles to the west. Of all the American outposts, Wake was the nearest to Japan and the nearest, except Guam, to Japanese island bases.

Though its isolation made Wake one of our most vulnerable outposts, the same geographical factor made it a more serious potential threat to the Japanese. Wake lay almost athwart the most direct route between the Japanese homeland and Tarawa, Jaluit, Kwajalein and the other Jap bases in the Gilberts and the Marshalls. If properly developed, and if the Americans could hold Wake, bombers based there would be able to strike at Japan’s precious bases to the south. Wake would be able to give land-based air support to any task force we might send to attack the Pacific area Japan had acquired by mandate after World War I. Patrol planes based on Wake would be able to keep under surveillance — and bombers to attack — hundreds of miles of sea lanes the Japanese Navy regarded as its own.

Our strategists realized the importance of these frontier outposts and pushed a construction program to turn these far-flung island bases into naval air stations, potential springboards for offensive blows as well as defense. The work was being done by civilian contractors under the supervision of Navy engineers. Airfields were being built and shipping facilities created or improved. Barracks, fuel storage tanks, warehouses, all the installations for living and defense were being put in. It was an elaborate program, little Wake alone being a $20,000,000 project. When the program was finished, scouting by long-range patrol planes would make Pearl Harbor at least theoretically invulnerable to surprise attack. This patrol network would enable our Navy, at least theoretically, to intercept and engage at a position of our choosing any Jap task force attempting to strike at Hawaii. The only question in 1941 was whether the construction program could be completed before the start of the war we all expected sooner or later.

Wake is really three islands — Wake proper, Wilkes and Peale — forming a roughly U-shaped atoll. If the atoll were a horseshoe, Peacock Point on Wake would be the toe while Wilkes and Peale would be the calks on the ends of the two heels.

Wake proper has an area of less than two square miles; Wilkes and Peale together are considerably less than one square mile in area. The distance from Toki Point on Peale Island to Peacock Point on Wake and hack along the other prong of the horseshoe to Kuku Point on Wilkes is only ten miles. The highest point on the island is twenty-one feet above the sea. The larger part of the sand and coral atoll was covered with thick brush and scrub hardwood, a few of the tallest trees being perhaps twenty feet high.

The atoll is entirely surrounded by ragged coral reefs which made it impossible to use the lagoon as a harbor even if it had not been so thickly studded with dangerous coral heads. Ships had to anchor off the southern shore, discharging both passengers and cargo by lightering them to shore. The only entrance to the lagoon even for small craft was the channel between Wake and Wilkes, and that could be used only at high tide. The principal points on the atoll were connected by road, and a bridge joined Wake and Peale, hut contact between Wake and Wilkes depended on a small boat ferry.

The island has no natural water supply. The garrison on Wake depended on a sea-water distillation plant and a catchment system which enabled them to store rain water that fell in the short but frequent squalls.

The only wild life on the atoll were the thousands of birds and a strange breed of rats. In addition to the myriad teal, frigate birds, bosun birds, gooneys and all the rest that flocked to the island, there was one weird bird I believe is peculiar to Wake. It was the flightless rail, which looked to me like a tiny cousin of the New Zealand kiwi. I do not know how he ever got to Wake because he can’t fly.

The Wake Island rats were no ordinary rodents. They were Polynesian rats — with forelegs very much shorter than their hind legs — and they were the smartest rats I ever expect to see. As Wake was a bird sanctuary, dogs and cats were banned. So the rats flourished. We tried to keep them in check by poison, but they soon learned to ignore the poisoned grain that was scattered for them. They made life miserable for the civilians who set out flower beds around some of the buildings. Even when charged electric wires were strung around the beds, the rats seemed able to figure out ways of getting to the flowers.,

When I was ordered from the States to Pearl Harbor early in 1941, I had no reason to suspect that Wake would ever be my personal problem. I was then a major, executive officer in the First Defense Battalion, Lieutenant Colonel Bertram Bone commanding.

At that time, a Marine defense battalion at full training strength consisted of 850 men. Our heaviest weapons were 5-inch guns, the old.51’s, formerly used as broadside guns on our battleships. These were for use against surface targets, and we also had batteries of 3-inch antiaircraft guns (AA), as well as machine guns for both AA fire and ground defense.

Though organized primarily as a defense unit, we were more than our name might imply. We were trained in landing operations — in getting guns and heavy gear through the surf — so that we could follow an assault force in a landing and set up artillery defense against air and surface attack. Because of the scarcity of units with such specialized training at that time, the plan was that we should be held back with the striking force while the Army was to garrison the frontier islands.

The plan was changed, however, before we left the States, and we were informed that we would be used for outpost defense. The Navy’s district operations officer told me the original plan had been abandoned because the Army wants the whole place bristling with guns and the islands were just too small for all the stuff the Army wants to put on them.

Even then, I still had no reason to think Wake might some day be my worry. The Sixth Defense Battalion was scheduled for Wake while our battalion was to be divided between Johnston and Palmyra. Then it was decided that the Sixth should have more training before being sent to the Sea Frontier. So we were ordered to put a small detachment on Wake until the Sixth should be considered ready to take over. Otherwise, I would not have been on Wake Island.

We garrisoned Wake in August 1941, and on October fifteenth I arrived there to take command. The garrison consisted of some 180 Marines plus Navy small boat crews. The Navy had a small group on the island — engineer officers and radio station personnel. There were some twelve hundred civilians on the island. Except for about fifty employees of Pan-American Airways, most of them Chamoros from Guam, the civilians were all employed by the company which had the construction contract.

The Marines were quartered in the old camp which the contractor’s