On 8 December 1941, within hours of the raid on Pearl Harbor but already a day later by the local calendar west of the International Date Line, Japan attacked two isolated outposts. Japanese bombers hit Kai Tak airfield at Hong Kong as troops crossed into the New Territories, and at noon bombers caught the Marine fighters on the ground on Wake Island. Wake held out until 23 December, Hong Kong until Christmas Day.
Hong Kong
In the early hours of 8 December Lieutenant General Sakai Takashi, commanding the Japanese 23rd Army, ordered air strikes on Hong Kong, and the bombers hit Kai Tak airfield, Victoria Barracks and the Taikoo Dockyard. The Canadian official history records that the few Royal Air Force machines at Kai Tak were all damaged or destroyed, while Japanese ground forces were crossing the frontier into the New Territories from an early hour.1
The garrison, including two Canadian battalions, numbered some 14,000 men of all ranks by the Canadian count; Hong Kong Memory gives 13,000 against more than 40,000 Japanese troops. On 11 December the British commander, General Maltby, ordered the mainland troops back to the island. The Japanese landed on the island's north shore on the night of 18 December, and on 25 December Governor Mark Young surrendered the colony. Hong Kong Memory puts the defenders killed or missing at close to 2,700; the Canadian history counts 290 Canadians killed or dead of wounds and 493 wounded. The siege is told in full in our article on the Battle of Hong Kong.2
Wake Island
On the remote atoll of Wake, some 2,000 miles west of Hawaii, the Japanese struck at about noon local time. Gregory J. W. Urwin, writing for the National WWII Museum, describes 27 medium bombers that the defenders at first took for expected American B-17s; he says seven of the eight Wildcat fighters of Marine squadron VMF-211 were destroyed on the ground, while Britannica gives eight. The garrison counted 449 Marines, 69 sailors and six Army radiomen, and 186 civilian construction workers volunteered to serve with the gun crews.3
On 11 December the defenders beat off a landing and sank two Japanese destroyers. A larger force came back, and about 900 Japanese troops stormed ashore before dawn on 23 December; after hours of close fighting Commander Winfield Cunningham surrendered the atoll. Urwin gives fewer than 100 American dead and Japanese losses of two destroyers, a submarine, 21 aircraft and 900 to 1,000 men; Britannica counts just over 100 Americans and Guamanians dead. The siege is told in full in our article on the Battle of Wake Island.4
Also on this day
- 1914: Battle of the Falkland Islands. A British squadron with two battlecruisers caught Admiral von Spee's German East Asia Squadron as it tried to raid Stanley in the Falklands during the First World War.
