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.
I remember the movie starring William Bendix. They staved off 2 landing attempts and knew it was only a matter of time.
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