Posted on 06/17/2005 10:24:32 PM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
At the outset of World War II, 1,600 American marines and civilians were living on Wake Island, a remote Pacific outpost that was a vital link in the supply route between Hawaii and the Philippines. Just hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Wake was targeted by the forces of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Incredibly, the tiny, undermanned outpost managed to defeat the initial invasion attempt, and their heroic stand helped encourage a nation reeling from its introduction to the war.
WAKE ISLAND: THE ALAMO OF THE PACIFIC tells the remarkable tale of the 16-day resistance through the recollections of six veterans of the siege who returned to the island 50 years later for the final reunion of the Wake Island Survivors. As they revisit the site of their desperate stand, we'll see how they managed to destroy two Japanese ships and 7 aircraft despite being woefully under-armed and facing overwhelming odds.
The most amazing thing was seeing the country, the press and Hollywood rally behind our efforts to defeat the mortal threats from Germany and Japan. We face the same mortal threats today, but now the press, Hollywood and even our own Senators and Congresscritters are aligned with the enemy. How far we have fallen in 60 short years.
It doesn't look like the History Channel has the show in its schedule, but if it comes around again, I highly recommend it.
A very good show. Stirring, as you said. It replays every so often...I've seen it maybe four times on the H channel.
Read a book about Wake Island when I was in JHS (early 60s). Very clever tactics. Using palm trees to look like AA guns so the Japs wasted bombs on them, while the real AA guns were in hiding.
Can you imagine the MSM reporting on them now?
WILDCATF4F3!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Haven't seen it but I hope to. Actually about 100 POWs were executed on Wake later on in the war.
Yes they did talk about them and the results.
I saw it. Very good. I was surprised that they found five survivors who were in good enough health to travel...extrapolating from the ages of the guys and when they enlisted, I surmised that it was filmed in 2002 or thereabouts. There was a minor historical nitpick or two, but nothing worth metioning. Well done overall.
The saga of Bill Taylor, the civilian construction worker who escaped and made his way across China, is worth a movie itself. I googled his name and there's very little about him. Somebody needs to write his story.
The Civilians were slaughtered, the ones who stayed.
They killed them all after using them to rebuild the Island.
Have you seen Breaking Vegas on History Channel yet? Quite a good show about human ingenuity.
I've been trying to find a copy of this poster "The Defence of Wake Island" by Arbin Henning for years.
http://www.cv6.org/noumea/default.asp?uri=detail/nara-img-44pa1907
When I was a kid in the 60s in the NY area all the movies where we are losing were shown around Pearl Harbor day,
Bataan, They Were Expendable, Wake Island.
I used to have nightmares about them, especially the scene in Bataan where the Robert Walker character is firing at the Japs camoflaged as bushes with his machine gun. The fact that he dug his foxhole to be his grave was the creepiest.
Anyway, Wake Island was the only one that made the heroics trump the actual defeat. From a kid's perspective it was just like John Wayne's Alamo.
PACIFIC ALAMO by John Wukovits is an excellant read.
Fwiw, the National Archives have a copy. I'm not sure if reproductions are available.
Here's a link to page.
There's some contact info on the page.
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