A Magnificent Fight:The Battle for Wake Island [Archive] - Marine Corps

thedrifter

01-20-04, 08:04 AM

On Wilkes island :
At 02:45 hours, the Japanese Company with approximately 100 men came ashore under heavy fire coming from two .50-caliber machine-guns above the landing area. The tiny garrison of the Marines on whole Wilkes numbered only approximately 70 men. The Japanese soon overrun the positions of the nearly battery, and also commenced movement to the west, toward the next battery. That was all what the Japanese had accomplished on Wilkes Island. Further advance was not possible, as good camouflaged machine-guns nets pinned down the Japanese to the ground.

By 04:00 hours, the situation on Wilkes Island have stabilized. The Japanese were in firm possession of the first battery position, but surrounded by the Marines, which prevented them any expansion of the beachhead. Then, the Marine combat groups joined their forces, and then proceeded to sweep the entire position.

After the successful attack, the Japanese casualties were horrible: they lost four officers and at least 90 men. American's losses were 9 Marines and 2 civilian workers killed, and five wounded. But the communication line with Devereux's command post was dead and this has later probably misled Major Devereux into belief that Wilkes Island already had fallen into Japanese hands. Around 8am, after their forces being pushed from the island, the Japanese continued with aerial and sea bombardment of the Wilkes Island, and finally managed to silence the island's coastal battery.

On Wake island :
In the meantime, on the south coast of wake Island, east of Wilkes Island, the patrol boats No. 32 and No. 33 (two old destroyers) run ashore off the west end of the airstrip. When the two japanese Companies swarmed down the sides into the water, Lieutenant Hanna and his crew fired 3-inch rounds into the hull of patrol craft No. 33, which immediately burst into flame. Helped by the light of the burning ship, Hanna and his men shifted his fire onto the other beached vessel, patrol craft No.32, which was then also considerably damaged.

Despite the defense of the Marines, two other large landing crafts managed to ground on the reef about 30 yards off shore, east of Wilkes Channel entrance : the Japanese landing party (app. 100 men) landed on shore, and was soon infiltrating the brushy area. Soon after, another Japanese landing party commenced landing near beached destroyers.

South of the airfield, the Marines detachment still held its position, but it was by now surrounded by reinforced Japanese troops, who made several attacks. Then, Soryu and Hiryu launched their planes in support of the fighting troops. At 07:15 hours, carrier-based dive bombers arrived over the island, hammering remaining defense positions. With his command post under attack, convinced of the fall of Wilkes Island, and with enemy air superiority above his head, Major James P.S. Devereux, bearing a white flag, moved southward down the shore road to surrender the island with its scattered and exhausted garrison to the Japanese.

Epilogue

Eighty-one Marines, eight sailors and 82 civilian construction workers had been killed or wounded during the battle. The Japanese, however, paid a heavy price for their victory. Fragmentary information of varying reliability is to be found in various sources, however, the following estimated enemy losses are tabulated: 21 planes shooted down and 51 aircrafts damaged, 2 ships sunk and eight damaged, about 1.000 men killed or missing. Considering the power accumulated for the invasion and the meager forces of the defenders, it was one of the most humiliating battle the Japanese Navy ever suffered. And the Battle of Wake upset the timetable for the Japanese campaign of conquest in the Pacific.

Enraged by their losses, the Japanese treated the American soldiers brutally. Some were stripped naked, others to their underwear. Most had their hands tied behind their backs with telephone wire. And five of Wake's defenders were beheaded by the Japanese on board Nitta Maru. With the exception of nearly 100 contractors who remained on Wake Island, all the rest of the civilians joined Wake's Marines, sailors, and soldiers in prisoner of war camps.

Air raids on Wake occurred throughout the war, the first occurring in February 1942. Raids in October 1943, however, had grave repercussions for the contractors who had been left behind. The atoll commander, who feared that the raids portended a major landing, had them all executed. For that offense, he was hanged as a war criminal.

Wake was not recaptured by American forces during the war. There was no bloody American amphibious invasion to recapture the island, because air superiority and control of the sea made it possible to bypass Wake. The U.S. recovered Wake Island after the Japanese surrender in 1945.

http://images4.fotki.com/v50/photos/1/133612/550911/h96813-vi.jpg

Raising the U.S. flag over Wake Island on 4 September 1945, as a U.S. Marine Corps bugler plays "Colors". This was the first time the Stars and Stripes had flown over Wake since its capture by the Japanese on 23 December 1941.

Sempers,

Roger
:marine: