Who won the Battle of Wake Island?
Japan won. The American garrison repulsed the first landing on 11 December 1941 and sank two destroyers, but a reinforced Japanese force with carrier air support landed on 23 December, and Commander Winfield Cunningham surrendered the atoll that morning.1
From 8 to 23 December 1941 a few hundred US Marines, sailors and soldiers, helped by civilian construction workers, held the remote Pacific atoll of Wake against the Imperial Japanese Navy. The fighting began within hours of the attack on Pearl Harbor.2
Background: a stepping stone across the Pacific
Wake is a small atoll of three low islets, Wake, Wilkes and Peale, some 2,000 to 2,300 miles west of Hawaii. In 1935 Pan American Airways made it a stop on its transpacific route, and its Clipper flying boats refueled there between Hawaii and Guam. A Navy board under Admiral Arthur Hepburn recommended turning it into an air and submarine base, and during 1941 civilian contractors built an airstrip, seaplane facilities and roads. By December there were 1,146 of them by the Navy's count, or about 1,200 in other accounts.3
Forces and commanders
The garrison counted 449 Marines: the Wake Detachment of the 1st Defense Battalion under Major James Devereux and Marine Fighting Squadron 211 (VMF-211) under Major Paul Putnam, whose 12 Grumman F4F-3 Wildcats had flown in from the carrier Enterprise on 4 December. With them were 68 Navy personnel and a handful of Army radiomen. Since 28 November the senior officer was Commander Winfield Scott Cunningham, in charge of the new naval air station. The Marines had six 5-inch coast guns and twelve 3-inch anti-aircraft guns but no radar, and, the National WWII Museum notes, only about a third of the men needed to man them all.4
The attack belonged to Japan's Fourth Fleet under Vice Admiral Shigeyoshi Inoue. Rear Admiral Sadamichi Kajioka led the invasion force from the light cruiser Yubari, with two more light cruisers, six destroyers, two destroyers converted to landing ships and 450 troops of the Special Naval Landing Force.5
8 December: across the date line
Wake lies west of the International Date Line, so the Sunday morning of 7 December in Hawaii was already Monday 8 December on the atoll. News of the Pearl Harbor attack arrived shortly before seven. Around noon Japanese twin-engined bombers from the Marshall Islands, 27 to 36 by different counts, came in unseen under cloud. They wrecked most of the eight Wildcats parked on the airstrip and killed or wounded about half of the squadron's men.6
11 December: the landing that failed
Kajioka approached the south shore before dawn on 11 December. The Marine gunners held fire until the ships were close; then the Yubari was hit repeatedly and the destroyer Hayate, struck by Battery L on Wilkes, blew up and sank within minutes. It was the first Japanese surface warship sunk by US forces in the war. Kajioka withdrew without landing a man. The four remaining Wildcats chased his ships, and bombs dropped by Captain Henry Elrod set off the destroyer Kisaragi, which exploded and sank. It was the only amphibious assault of the Pacific War driven off by coastal guns.7
The relief force that turned back
At Pearl Harbor Admiral Husband Kimmel prepared a relief. Task Force 14 under Rear Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher, built around the carrier Saratoga, was to fly a squadron of Marine fighters onto the atoll and cover the seaplane tender Tangier, which carried reinforcements, ammunition and radar and was to take off civilians and wounded. Fletcher was slowed by refueling his ships. On 17 December Kimmel was relieved and Vice Admiral William Pye took temporary command. When Japanese carrier aircraft appeared over Wake, Pye judged the risk to his only three carriers too great and recalled the relief force on 22 December, Hawaii time. Fletcher was then about 430 miles from Wake according to Robert Cressman; the 1947 Marine Corps monograph puts the relief force 425 miles away at its closest, on the morning of 23 December.8
23 December: the second landing
Admiral Yamamoto detached the carriers Soryu and Hiryu, veterans of Pearl Harbor, under Rear Admiral Hiroaki Abe, along with heavy cruisers, and the Maizuru 2nd Special Naval Landing Force joined Kajioka. From 21 December carrier planes struck the atoll, and on the 22nd they shot down the last two Wildcats.9
This time Kajioka kept his ships out of gun range and landed at night without a preliminary bombardment. About 0230 on 23 December his two destroyer transports were run aground near the airstrip, and landing barges made for Wake and Wilkes. Marine gunners and airmen without aircraft fought as infantry; Elrod was among the dead. On Wilkes, Captain Wesley Platt's Marines counterattacked and wiped out the landing party there.10
Turning point: the decision to surrender
Japanese troops cut the field telephone lines, and Devereux, isolated in his command post, believed most of his positions had fallen. Cunningham had radioed Pearl Harbor "Enemy on island. Issue in doubt." and had been told that no friendly ships were near. Early that morning the two officers spoke by telephone and Cunningham authorized surrender. The last Marines on Wilkes laid down their arms around 11 hours after the landing began.11
How many died at Wake Island?
Navy and Marine Corps historians count 49 Marines, 3 sailors and 70 civilians killed; the National WWII Museum, 46 Marines and 3 sailors. Japanese dead number at least 381 by Cressman's and NHHC's count, and 900 to 1,000 by the museum's. Japan lost two destroyers and over 20 aircraft; the 1947 monograph also counts the two patrol boats run aground on 23 December.12
Prisoners and the 98 civilians
Most of the Marines, sailors and civilians were shipped to prison camps in China and Japan. The 1947 monograph counts 368 Marines, 60 sailors, 5 soldiers and 1,104 civilians taken prisoner. Like the defenders of Bataan a few months later, they faced years of hunger and forced labor.13
Nearly 100 contractors were kept on Wake to work. In October 1943, after American air raids, the atoll commander, Rear Admiral Shigematsu Sakaibara, fearing a landing, had 98 of them executed; the US Fish and Wildlife Service dates the killings to 5 October. Sakaibara was tried and hanged after the war.14
The Japanese view
For the Imperial Navy the failure of 11 December was a rare setback in a month of victories. In words Cressman quotes, Kajioka's force withdrew "humbled by sizeable casualties", and the Fourth Fleet commander warned that his forces were insufficient; the Combined Fleet answered by diverting two fleet carriers. Japan held Wake to the end of the war, though the island was raided from the air from 1942. The 65th Guard Unit surrendered on 4 September 1945, and Japan's archive JACAR records 1,093 army and 897 navy personnel brought home from the atoll.15
The American memory
The news of 11 December lifted American morale, and when Wake fell the press hailed it as the Alamo of the Pacific. Paramount's film Wake Island, released in 1942 and nominated for Best Picture, ends with its Marines fighting to the death, although the real garrison surrendered. Inside the Navy the recall of the relief force stayed controversial. To those who later argued that Fletcher should have pressed on regardless, Cressman answers that Fletcher could not see the enemy and had no idea what forces he might meet.16
Myths and historiography
The best-known legend is the defiant signal "Send us more Japs". Commentators repeated it at the time, but according to Cox it was cryptographic padding, nonsense words added to coded messages to confuse enemy codebreakers. A second debate is about command: both men later claimed credit for holding fire on 11 December, and Cunningham's own narrative insists he was the island commander "in every sense of the word"; both received the Navy Cross. Cox suggests the commanders arguably surrendered too early, while the 1947 monograph found it reasonable given the civilians and the lack of relief. Cox also sees Kimmel's plan as a blueprint for the trap later sprung at Midway.17
Wake Island today
US forces reoccupied Wake when its Japanese garrison surrendered on 4 September 1945. The atoll's Second World War sites were designated a National Historic Landmark on 16 September 1985. The islands are an active US Air Force installation, and a coral boulder near the mass grave still bears the inscription "98 US PW 5-10-43", according to the Fish and Wildlife Service.18
