Posted on 12/03/2005 2:47:26 PM PST by Poundstone
After years and years of reading about WWII in the Pacific, two days ago I was finally able to visit a place I've always wanted to see but figured I'd never be able to: Wake Island.
I was a passenger on a C-20G (Gulfstream IV) on a flight from MCAS Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii, to Okinawa, Japan. This is a long flight, about 12 hours total flight time, not including the refueling stop. But my spirits soared when the pilots told me the refueling location would be Wake Island!
After a five hour flight from Hawaii, we descended toward Wake, at midday local time. The weather was excellent and we got a great view of the island, or rather islands, since Wake is made up of three separate islets: Wake (the largest, and site of the airstrip), Peale, and Wilkes. We got out of the plane and were met by the commander of the installation, a young Air Force captain. During the hour or so we were on the ground, he took us on a tour of Wake in a van. We didn't visit Peale or Wilkes, which are normally off-limits; they contain equipment and installations used by the Missile Defense Agency to track missiles during tests of missile defense systems.
The captain said that currently there are about 250 persons on Wake, most of them civilian contractors -- most of the latter are Thai nationals. Their main jobs are refueling and supporting transient aircraft (on average, about three a week), maintaining the installation, and improving roads. They get a supply barge about every six months; they produce all the water they need from a desalinization plant and rainwater catchment. There's a doctor resident. They get TV from a satellite dish and have a comm link so that Honolulu is a local call. All the billets are unaccompanied. The captain said life on Wake is very peaceful, so much so that some of the contractors really like it; he said one of the American civilians has been on Wake for 31 years!
We saw no signs of the December 1941 battle in which the Marines fought so valiantly. However, we did see several concrete bunkers and aircraft revetments built during the time Wake was occupied by the Japanese. Most of these were built by American civilian construction workers captured when the island fell. 98 of these workers were kept on Wake after all the other Americans were evacuated to Japan in 1942. In October 1943, fearing the Americans were about to invade, the island commander (a Japanese admiral) had the 98 men murdered by machine-gun fire. The site were they were killed is marked by a large rock and bronze plaque. The admiral was hanged on Guam after the war.
Wake was also the site of the hugely consequential meeting between President Truman and General MacArthur in October 1950. At that point, the US forces in Korea had destroyed the North Korean army after the Inchon landing and were sweeping across the 38th parallel into North Korea. Truman had MacArthur meet him at Wake to discuss next steps. Key on everyone's mind was whether the US should reunify Korea -- and what China might do. MacArthur was confident China wouldn't intervene. And if it did, he said, his forces would destroy the Chinese if they tried to get across the Yalu. Based on this assurance, Truman approved a general advance to the Yalu. We all know what happened the following month: China intervened massively, pushed the UN forces south of Seoul, and set the stage for the bloody stalemate that ensued. The site of the Truman-MacArthur meeting is marked on Wake with a plaque on the side of a building.
Before getting back on the plane we mailed postcards from the terminal building, bought lots of Wake Island t-shirts, and had our passports stamped with a special Wake Island stamp. On the terminal building is the legend "Wake Island: Where America's Day Really Begins." This is because Wake is the closest US territory to the west of the international date line.
All in all, it was a fascinating hour we spent on Wake, both beautiful and eerie, considering the battle from WWII.
Several years ago I visited Wake Island on the KMCAS to Okie flight. We spent two hours refueling and I walked down to the beach. I vaguely remember traps for landing craft still on the beach. Although, they are probably there to still secure that island.
Neat post. There is a maintenance guy who visits the island on a regular basis that is a ham, I worked him a couple of times, pretty cool.
BTW
On the terminal building is the legend "Wake Island: Where America's Day Really Begins." This is because Wake is the closest US territory to the west of the international date line. - they forgot to add "except Alaska".
Time, it appears, has a way of standing still on an island, yet time on the mainland seems to go by twice as fast...
Good link to a informative website about the Wake Islands:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake_Island
Thanks for the explanation.
I'll never forget flying into Wake Island in May of 1965. The weather was beautiful with a many scattered popcorn clouds. From the air the island is a beautiful sight. Driving from the airstrip to the mess hall we passed a few WWII aircraft mostly buried in the sand and a concrete bunker or two. There were a few other well rusted vehicles half buried in the sand but it was impossible to tell what kind of vehicle they had been.
Thanks for bringing back one of my favorite memories.
Please FReepmail me if you come across a "Joe Keller"..he was a civilian, captured at Wake who survived the war.
I ran across him in the early 1970's in Los Angeles, when he was the 'short haul' driver for a local trucker who frequented my warehouse.....he hated the Nippers with a vengeance.
He was a quite old guy then, of course....mostly ran the in-city van.
Yep, we stopped for refueling at Wake Island on one of my trips to Vietnam during that conflict. We also had lunch in the mess hall. I wish I could have had the time to look around more. At least I can say I was there.
Very interesting post. Thank you... :o)
ping
Being a loadmaster on a c-125 from 65 to 71 I had many short term stopovers on Wake. Always enjoyed it for some reason. The worst thing the military did there was when they replaced the Drifters Reef.
This was a very quaint, enjoyable place to wet your whistle, sit in the shade during the day or just kick back and watch the waves lap up on the beach at night. After it was damaged by a typhoon the military in all its wisdom, tore it down and replaced it with a concrete block and glass joint. Went there once, never went back. Sad
For an account of the people on Wake in 1942, see the excellent book by Bill Sloan, Given Up for Dead (New York: Bantam-Dell, 2004), ISBN 0-553-38194-6. Sloan accounted for almost all of the men on Wake when the Japanese landed. He followed their stories through the war and afterward.
I have landed at Wake several times while I was a Navy long range patrol plane pilot. Fortunately, the weather has always been beautiful. The island is gorgeous as a place to rest between twelve hour flights. However, it is not a place to stay.
On December 8, 1941 the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor (Wake being on the opposite side of the International Date Line), 16 Japanese medium bombers flown from bases on the Marshall Islands attacked Wake Island, destroying eight of the twelve F4F Wildcat fighter aircraft belonging to Marine Corps fighter squadron VMF-211 on the ground. All of the Marine garrison's defensive emplacements were left intact by the raid, which primarily targeted the Naval aircraft.
Early on the morning of December 11, the garrison, with the support of the four remaining Wildcats, repulsed the first Japanese landing attempt by the South Seas Force, which included the light cruisers Yubari, Tenryu, and Tatsuta; the destroyers Yayoi, Mutski, Kisaragi, Hayate, Oite, and Asanagi; two old destroyers which had been redesignated as patrol boats (Patrol Boat No. 32 and Patrol Boat No. 33), and two troop transport ships containing 450 Japanese marines. The U.S. Marines fired at the invasion fleet with their six 5 inch (127 mm) coastal artillery guns, sinking the Hayate and damaging most of the other ships. The four Wildcats also succeeded in sinking another destroyer, the Kisaragi. Hayate was the first Japanese warship sunk during World War II. The Japanese force withdrew before landing. The first battle of Wake Island also marked the only occasion in all of World War II when an amphibious assault was defeated by shore-based guns.
The continuing siege and frequent Japanese air attacks on the Wake garrison continued, without resupply for the Americans. The initial resistance offered by the garrison prompted the Japanese Navy to detach two aircraft carriers (Soryu and Hiryu) from the force which attacked Pearl Harbor to support the second landing attempt.
The second Japanese invasion force, on December 23, composed most of the same ships from the first attempt with some new additions, plus 1,500 Japanese marines. The landings began at 02:35 hours where, after a preliminary bombardment, the ex-destroyers Patrol Boat No. 32 and Patrol Boat No. 33 were beached and burned in their attempts to land the invasion force. After a full night and morning of fighting, the Wake garrison surrendered to the Japanese by mid-afternoon.
The U.S. Marines lost only 49 killed during the entire 15-day siege while three U.S. Navy personnel and at least 70 civilians were killed. The Japanese losses were recorded at between 700 to 900 killed with at least 1,000 more wounded, in addition to the two destroyers lost in the first invasion attempt, as well as at least 20 land-based and carrier aircraft. The Japanese captured all of the men remaining on the island, of whom the majority were civilian contractors employed with Morrison-Knudsen Company.
Captain Henry T. Elrod, one of the pilots from VMF-211, was awarded the United States Medal of Honor posthumously for his action on the Island during the Japanese landings on the 23rd for shooting down two Japanese Zero fighters. A special military decoration, the Wake Island Device was also created to honor those who had fought in the defense of the island
Which is why it is so peaceful.
no wives allowed.
I used to work with a woman whose husband was a nineteen year old civilian contractor on Wake when captured by the japs and placed in captivity.
Once she started to go on about how UNFAIR it was that he was not paid back pay by the government while a P.O.W. like the MARINES and SAILORS that were captured.
I told her the 19 year old Marines and Sailors were making $21 a month while her husband was making a couple of hundred when they were on Wake. I told her my former neighbor was making nine thousand dollars a month tax free in Viet Nam while I was making two hundred a month plus sixty five extra dollars to get shot at. I had no sympathy for her husband not getting back pay.
I do have some digital photos I made on Wake. I don't know how to post them on FR, however. If someone wants to tell me how to do it, I'll post the images. I must say they're pretty interesting!
Sorry I don't have any personal names. It is sort of a mystery as to where the Japanese sent them (the civilians) and what happened to all of them. Glad to hear one survived.
Thanks for an interesting post, good reading.
To post pictures, go to photobucket.com and sign up for a free account. Once logged in, select "browse" to upload pics from your computer. Once those are uploaded, you can copy and paste the coding they provide beneath each photo. Here on FR, you'll need to select the coding option with < > around it. Hope this helps!
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