The Defense Of Wake (July/August 1987 | Volume: 38, Issue: 5)

The Defense Of Wake

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Authors: Peter Andrews

Historic Era: Era 8: The Great Depression and World War II (1929-1945)

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July/August 1987 | Volume 38, Issue 5

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, was only one blow in an offensive without parallel in warfare. Within hours after the first bombs had crashed into Battleship Row, Japanese forces struck at twenty-nine targets along a three-thousand-mile front that stretched from the central Pacific to the South China Sea. Destroyers shelled American installations on Midway Island, and airplanes spilled their bombs over Clark and Iba airfields in the Philippines, wiping out half the American air forces there in a single raid.

On December 8 the Japanese army seized the international settlement in Shanghai, invaded Malaya in a drive toward Singapore, and marched into Thailand. Bangkok fell without opposition on the following day just as Japanese troops were landing on Tarawa and Makin in the Gilbert Islands. The operational plans of the Japanese High Command called for the swift occupation of the Philippines, Guam, Hong Kong, Malaya, Burma, the Bismarck Archipelago, Java, Sumatra, Borneo, Celebes, and Timor as its first major conquests.

A poster created by the Office of War Information shows Marines defending Wake from a Japanese attack. National Archives
A poster created by the Office of War Information shows Marines defending Wake from a Japanese attack. National Archives

Well down on the list of secondary objectives was Wake, a scruffy atoll in the central Pacific that the Japanese planned to use as an advanced base for patrol planes to support their thrust at Midway. In allotting forces to the task, the Japanese assigned 450 assault and garrison troops under the command of Rear Adm. Sadamichi Kajioka. If the force was small, it was considered adequate. Wake’s three square miles were known to be manned by a scattering of inexperienced Marines. And throughout the Far East the Americans were not putting up much of a fight. The Marine detachments at Peking and Tientsin in China had already been herded off to detention camps without firing a shot.

Until the development of the long-range airplane, remote Wake Island held little interest for major powers. 

The 153 Marines on Guam, having nothing heavier with which to defend themselves than four .30-caliber machine guns, had surrendered after a few hours of disorganized scuffling. On the same day that Guam had toppled into the Japanese harvest basket, two landings on Luzon in the Philippines had been virtually unopposed. The Japanese naval command, which had not suffered a reversal or lost a ship of the line since the Russo-Japanese War, expected the reduction of Wake to be little more than a brisk afternoon’s work.

Until the development of the long-range airplane, Wake was a desolate point of land in the central Pacific that held scant interest for a major, internationally minded power. Formed by the rim of a submerged volcano, Wake consists of three tiny atolls: the main island, shaped like a ragged V, with two smaller spits trailing a