A Magnificent Fight: The Battle for Wake Island

By Robert J Cressman

Soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese land-based bombers pounded Wake Island, the American advanced base that was key to the U.S. Navy’s strategy in the Pacific. Throughout the next two weeks, the Wake Island garrison survived nearly daily bombings and repulsed the first Japanese attempt to take the atoll. The determined defenders provided a badly needed lift to American morale. Cressman was the first to make extensive use of Japanese materials to identify the enemy order of battle and the roles each unit played in the drama to provide a moving account of the heroism of the defenders in the face if tremendous odds.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Naval Institute Press
• Release date: Sep 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9781612512303

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A MAGNIFICENT FIGHT

NAVAL INSTITUTE PRESS ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND

This electronic book has been brought to publication with the generous assistance of The United States Naval Academy Class of 1945

Naval Institute Press

291 Wood Road

Annapolis, MD 21402

© 1995 by the United States Naval Institute

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

First Naval Institute Press paperback edition published in 2013.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows: Cressman, Robert J.

A magnificent fight : the battle for Wake Island / Robert J. Cressman.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-61251-230-3

1. Wake Island, Battle of, 1941.I. Title.

D767.99.W3C741994

940.54’26—dc2094-32013

CIP

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO z39.48-1992

(Permanence of Paper).

212019181716151413987654321

First printing

To the Defenders of Wake Island

CONTENTS

Preface

Acknowledgments

Special Notes

CHAPTER ONE

A Land Reserved to Those Who Fly

CHAPTER TWO

An Uninviting Low-Lying Atoll

CHAPTER THREE

Like the Fatted Calf

CHAPTER FOUR

I’ll See That You Get a Medal as Big as a Pie

CHAPTER FIVE

Humbled by Sizeable Casualties

CHAPTER SIX

Still No Help

CHAPTER SEVEN

Very Secret to Everyone Except the Japs

CHAPTER EIGHT

This Is as Far as We Go

CHAPTER NINE

A Difficult Thing to Do

APPENDIX ONE

The Cunningham-Devereux Controversy

APPENDIX TWO

Decorations for Valor Awarded to Wake Defenders

APPENDIX THREE

Wake Island’s Wildcats

APPENDIX FOUR

Wake Island, the Movie

Notes

Bibliography

Index

PREFACE

The first battle for Wake Island occurred not on the triangular atoll itself but in the United States Congress, which at times appeared to be very reluctant to provide money for that advanced base in the mid-Pacific. Fiscal austerity, however, ultimately gave way to a desperate race against time to fortify the atoll while diplomatic relations between the United States and Japan deteriorated.

The second, more famous battle—the one around which this work centers—occurred between 8 and 23 December 1941, in the aftermath of one of the most devastating defeats in American military history, the Japanese air raid on Pearl Harbor. Soon after Vice Admiral Nagumo Chuichi’s carrier-based planes attacked the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl, on the other side of the International Date Line, Japanese land-based bombers pounded Wake Island. Over the next two weeks, Wake was bombed almost daily either by land-based medium bombers or flying boats.

Wake’s determined defenders held out and in so doing provided a badly needed lift to American morale, a ray of hope in the midst of dark clouds of despair. Wake proved such a tough nut to crack (its seacoast batteries and aggressively handled Wildcat fighters drove off one landing attempt) that Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku, commander in chief of the Combined Fleet, had to order the First Air Fleet, whose planes had ravaged Admiral Husband E. Kimmel’s battle line, to detach forces to soften it up for a second try.

In 1994, when the concept of jointness seems to dominate the thinking of the modern American military in the aftermath of Desert Shield/Desert Storm, it is an interesting parallel to note that Wake’s defense force in 1941 reflected a true multiservice effort born of desperate improvisation: an understrength marine defense battalion detachment and a composite aviation unit equipped with a dwindling number of fighter planes, augmented by sailors and volunteer civilians. An army signal corps radio unit was the garrison’s only contact with the outside world. The defense was commanded and coordinated by a naval aviator.

Much that has been written suggests that the defense of Wake was a magnificent improvisation born on 8 December 1941 (west longitude date), in the tradition of Americans spontaneously uniting to face a common adversary. War planners, however, contemplated such an improvisation—and planned for it—as early as the summer of 1941, long before the first bombs fell.

A Magnificent Fight is the first Western study of Wake’s defense to rely on extensive Japanese materials—many never before used by or unavailable to historians—to document the oft-neglected enemy perspective, identifying the enemy order of battle and the roles each unit played. This book also details the activities of those brave American civilians who volunteered to serve alongside the marines—and thus share the same privations—and those who carried out vital support duties.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many people assisted in the preparation of this book. Unfortunately, a mere recitation of names reflects neither the contribution of each person nor the indebtedness I feel.

I thank my friends and colleagues at the Naval Historical Center, including John C. Reilly, Jr., Raymond A. Mann, and James L. Mooney of the Ships’ Histories Branch; John E. Vajda and Tonya T. Montgomery of the Navy Department Library; Edward J. Marolda, Gary E. Weir (who had to listen to Wake Island tales in the carpool), Robert J. Schneller, Richard A. Russell, and Curtis A. Utz of the Contemporary History Branch; Edwin C. Finney, Jr., of the Curator Branch; Roy Grossnick and Steven D. Hill of the Aviation History Branch; and especially Bernard F. Cavalcante’s magnificent research staff in the Operational Archives: Kathleen M. Lloyd, Richard M. Walker, John L. Hodges, Ariana A. Jacob, and Regina T. Akers.

At the Marine Corps Historical Center, I thank Brigadier General Edwin H. Simmons, USMC (Ret.), Richard A. Long, Robert E. Struder, Catherine A. Kerns, Steve Hill, Danny J. Crawford, Robert V. Aquilina, Anne Ferrante, Benis M. Frank, Evelyn A. Englander, and Amy Cantin, as well as those formerly associated with the Center, Joyce E. Bonnett, Lance Corporal Tom Clarkston, Gunnery Sergeant Bill Judge, J. Michael Miller, and the late Regina Strother.

Former Wake Islanders who proved most helpful include Brigadier Generals Woodrow M. Kessler and John F. Kinney, Colonel Arthur A. Poindexter and Major Robert O. Arthur, Sergeant Major Robert E. Winslow, Master Sergeant Walter A. Bowsher, Gunnery Sergeant Walter T. Kennedy, Lieutenant Commander George H. Henshaw, Clifford E. Hotchkiss, and Charles R. Loveland. Brigadier General Robert E. Galer and Colonel Milo G. Haines provided recollections of life in VMF-211 in 1941. I extend special thanks to family members of Wake Islanders, especially Henry Elrod Ramsey, nephew of the late Captain Henry T. Elrod; Mrs. Virginia Putnam (who allowed me use of her husband’s papers); Mrs. Hilda Hesson; Mrs. Marylee Fish; and George Halstead, whose late brother’s letters from Wake, arriving when I was recovering at home from a heart attack, inspired me to press on and tell the Wake Island story as it had not been told before.

Also of great assistance were Major John Elliott, USMC (Ret.); Technical Sergeant Barry Spink, USAF, of the Air Force Historical Research Agency, Maxwell Field, Alabama; R. E. G. Davies of the Aeronautics Branch of the National Air and Space Museum, Washington, D.C.; Ann Whyte of Pan American Airways; Barry Zerby and Richard von Doenhoff at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.; Kathleen O’Connor at the National Archives Pacific-Sierra region facility in San Bruno, California; Margaret Goostray of the Boston University Library; David W. Lucabaugh, a tireless researcher in the subject of naval aviation and the one who first provided me with material on the Wake Island Wildcats; Stan Cohen, who shared the information he had gathered on the civilian contractors; the late Captain Roger Pineau, USNR (Ret.), who proved very helpful concerning the Imperial Japanese Navy; and John DeVirgilio, who provided me with anecdotes concerning Japanese carrier operations against Wake. Invaluable for helping me to acquire material in Japan were Captain Chiyaha Masataka and Kageyama Kōichirō. D. Y. Louie provided superb assistance in translating some of the Japanese documents.

Special friends, who are owed much gratitude for their contributions, which ranged from translations of Japanese documents to detailed critiques of the narrative at various stages in its life, include J. Michael Wenger, James C. Sawruk, John B. Lundstrom, Charles R. Haberlein, Jr., and Jeffrey G. Barlow.

I also owe a large debt of gratitude to my parents, Lieutenant Commander and Mrs. Wilmer H. Cressman, who not only provided a loving and nurturing home but who supported my academic pursuits for so long, giving me the pleasure and privilege of working under the late Gordon W. Prange at the University of Maryland, who instilled within me a love of researching and writing U.S. naval history.

And last, but certainly not least, I thank my family: my long-suffering wife, Linda, daughter, Christine, and son, Bobby, for their unusual patience with me when mine ran thin and for putting up with me during the lengthy process of research, writing, and rewriting.

SPECIAL NOTES

All times and dates in this book, unless otherwise specified (such as for Pearl Harbor and Washington, D.C.), are for the zone in which Wake and the Marshall Islands lie.

Japanese names are rendered with the surname first, the given name second.

Allied code names for Japanese aircraft were not adopted until November 1942, and because they are anachronistic, they have been omitted from the text.

SPECIAL JAPANESE TERMS USED IN TEXT

JAPANESE NAVAL AIRCRAFT REFERRED TO IN TEXT

(Post-November 1942 Code Names in Brackets)

A MAGNIFICENT FIGHT

CHAPTER ONE

A LAND RESERVED TO THOSE WHO FLY

A horseshoe of bright turquoise, framed in flashing white, stands sharply out against the indigo blue of encircling ocean. Wake Island! . . . Barely a mile long, less than half a mile wide, Peale Islet . . . is an exciting spot. From the cool veranda of your hotel you look across the beautiful lagoon whose lovely colors change constantly before your eyes. Beyond, the fascinating crest of the surf beats high as it dashes itself on the barrier reefs . . . Wake Island, so newly added to the world’s travel map, is already becoming a favorite vacation spot for travel-wise voyageurs. A beautiful, unspoiled land a world away from the hustle and bustle of modern life. . . . A land reserved to those who fly, where every comfort and convenience, excellent food and expert attention are as much a part of your stay as the breath-taking sunsets, the soft thundering of the sea and its magnificent thirty-foot surf. Not soon can one forget these rainbow waters, soft deep sands, the friendly sun, the cool sweet trade winds blown from across the broadest sea.¹

An affluent world traveler of 1940 might have eagerly anticipated the adventure of a transpacific aerial voyage in a well-appointed Pan American Airways Clipper and a stay at the modern and comfortable hotel there, but Wake Island had not always been regarded so romantically. Lacking potable water and inhabited only by hump-backed Polynesian brown rats, hermit crabs, and seabirds, Wake before the transpacific aviation era offered practically nothing more exotic to a prospective visitor except perhaps a scenic sunset.

Westerners most probably first saw the island that would become known as Wake when Alvaro de Mendaña, the twenty-five-year-old nephew of the governor of Peru, Lope Garcia de Castro, happened across the low and uninhabited island on 2 October 1568 while en route back to Peru from the Solomon Islands. Desperately low on water and provisions, Mendaña overruled his pilots, who saw the reefs and feared that they were too near land, and ordered his ship, the Capitana, taken close inshore. Seeing no signs of human habitation, however, only sandy places covered with bushes, Mendaña wrote off San Francisco (the name he gave it because he discovered it on the eve of the feast of St. Francis) as useless and grimly sailed on.

A little over two centuries later, a Briton, Captain Samuel Wake of the schooner Prince William Henry, modestly named the place for himself when he came across it in 1796, but he essentially agreed with Mendaña’s assessment and apparently made no effort to claim it for his sovereign. Indicative of the state of map-making and navigation of the those times, characterized by long voyages and the habit of exchanging even hearsay data, the island not only bore other names—Wake’s Island, Wakers, Weeks, Wreck, Halcyon, Helsion, and Wilson, among others—but also was placed on maps in locations at various spots in the general vicinity.

One American whaling ship reported sighting Wake’s Island when the Almira spoke three other whalers off the atoll on 24 April 1826. The U.S. Navy’s first visit occurred fourteen years later, when Lieutenant Charles Wilkes, in the sloop of war Vincennes, reached the atoll on 20 December 1840 and conducted a brief survey of the low, triangular coral formation. Over the next half-century, Wake’s Island served only as the backdrop for dramatic shipwrecks such as that of the bark Libelle on 4 March 1866 and the tea clipper Dashing Wave on 31 August 1871.

Ironically, though it had been Spaniards who had been the first Westerners to see Wake Island, it took a war with Spain to interest the United States in annexing it. Following Commodore George Dewey’s victory over a Spanish naval squadron in Manila Bay in May 1898, American expansionists pressed for the country to acquire bases to support projected operations in the Philippines. Consequently, on Independence Day 1898, the U.S. Army transport Thomas hove to off Wake en route to the Philippines, and General Francis V. Greene raised a fourteen-inch flag tied to a dead limb. By such unpretentious beginnings, however, Greene did what neither Mendaña nor Wake had done for their respective rulers—he claimed the place for his country. Acquiring Wake, along with the Hawaiian Islands and the Spanish possessions of Guam and the Philippines, meant that America no longer could isolate itself geographically, protected by an oceanic barrier. Subsequently, in keeping with growing interest in an American transpacific cable route, Secretary of the Navy John D. Long sent the Bennington (Gunboat No. 4) to the atoll, where on 17 January 1899, Commander Edward D. Taussig, the warship’s captain, took possession of Wake for the United States.

Although Midway was ultimately chosen as the point through which the cable would pass, when the United States became concerned with Japanese aims in the Pacific, American naval strategists conceived plans to cover contingencies. Those who formulated strategy were aware that Wake occupied a place on the map, yet they dismissed its usefulness. In 1911, for example, war planners noted only that the Japanese (who had been assigned the color code ORANGE) might establish an outpost there. Three years later, they recorded Wake’s proximity to the American fleet’s hypothetical line of advance to the Philippines.

Wake Island, 30 March 1939. The small Pan American Airways settlement on Peale (top, center) is barely visible in this picture.

Wake Island, 30 March 1939. The small Pan American Airways settlement on Peale (top, center) is barely visible in this picture. Wilkes lies at upper left, separated from Wake (foreground) by a narrow channel. Note extensive vegetation on all three islets, that on Wake being deemed very thick, almost impenetrable. (USMC)

In 1921, however, the celebrated naval writer Hector C. Bywater rescued the place from obscurity—at least in the public eye (the navy, of course, knew Wake existed)—and accorded it great importance when he discussed a hypothetical Pacific campaign in his book Sea-Power in the Pacific: A Study of the American-Japanese Naval Problem. The conversion of Wake Island into a well-defended fuelling station, he declared, would help the United States consolidate a vital line of communication between Hawaii, Guam, and Manila. An advanced base at Wake could allow the U.S. Fleet to operate off the Japanese homeland or reach as far as Guam, but the island had limited anchorage facilities and lay only a hundred miles north of a possible submarine rendezvous in the Japanese mandates.²

Fortifying or developing Wake, however, had to remain in the realm of speculation, for Article XIX of the Washington Treaty of 6 February 1922 prohibited the United States from fortifying its possessions west of the 180th meridian (encompassing Guam and Wake). Despite that prohibition, Bywater’s description of Wake’s potential (as well as the navy’s interest in Pacific war planning over the years) had prompted not only intellectual curiosity on the U.S. Navy’s part but practical investigation.

The Pacific Ocean

The Pacific Ocean, (adapted from Heinl, The Defense of Wake)

Typical of the short visits to Wake by U.S. Navy ships in the 1920s and 1930s was that of the submarine tender Beaver (AS-5), which reached the atoll on 19 June 1922 during an eastward voyage from the Asiatic station. Wake is of interest by reason of its extreme isolation; over 300 miles from the nearest land, and that only another atoll, Lieutenant Commander Sherwood Picking, the tender’s captain, observed later, but especially because of its location on the route between Hawaii and our Asiatic Stations. Although Wake lay almost directly on the course between Honolulu and Guam, ships rarely visited let alone sighted it. Lying so low and close to that course, Wake would present a navigational hazard were it not for the almost constantly prevailing fair weather. The Beaver’s landing party found several shacks long since abandoned by Japanese poachers, as well as some sake jugs and a broken-down still. They also noted the sand and coral boulders, the dense scrub, the innumerable birds (who showed no fear and . . . were so tame that they could be handled), the large rats, and a few lizards. Having read in the sailing directions that the lagoon was well stocked with fish, the tender’s men found this to be so, and with a few rifle shots and some lively grabbing managed to net a considerable number of excellent specimens. The party then collected samples of coral, sponges, and shells before returning to the ship.³

Picking subsequently reported that use of Wake as a base for surface vessels was out of the question. Destroyers or submarines could heave to to enable members of the crew to go ashore for recreation, he speculated, but the place would be useful as a fueling base only for the sake of the slight lee it affords. It is as a base for aircraft that Wake . . . would be of use, Picking posited. A large area of the lagoon is clear of dangers to a depth of five feet and over, and its smooth water offers excellent opportunities for refueling, repairing and resting the crew. He went on to note that although natural obstacles would make landing supplies difficult, twenty men equipped with tools and dynamite could in a week open the channel to the lagoon and permit launches to enter. Such a party could subsist itself indefinitely, he declared expansively, especially as supplies could be landed from transports which pass at least once a month. If the long-heralded trans-Pacific flight ever takes place, Picking suggested, Wake should certainly be occupied and used as an intermediate resting and fueling port.⁴ War planners at that time, however, did not accord it that status in their schemes.

To follow up the Beaver’s visit to Wake, a scientific expedition—the brainchild of Herbert E. Gregory of Yale University, the director of the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum in Honolulu—transported in the minesweeper Tanager (AM-5), explored the atoll between 27 July and 5 August 1923, carrying out survey work and natural history studies. Wake Island was deemed to be three separate islets, and the two smaller ones were named Wilkes and Peale, respectively honoring Lieutenant Wilkes and Titian Peale, the latter the naturalist for the Wilkes Expedition that had called there in 1840.

On 13 November 1934, following a brief visit by the transport Chaumont (AP-5) the previous year, Admiral William H. Standley, the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), directed the ammunition ship Nitro (AE-2) to survey Wake. A little over a month later, on 29 December 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, by executive order, placed Wake under the jurisdiction of the Navy Department.

The Nitro reached Wake on the morning of 8 March 1935 and sent ashore a party of nine officers and forty-three enlisted men under Lieutenant Commander John L. Reynolds, the ammunition ship’s executive officer. The work of carrying out an airplane field investigation as part of the survey fell to Lieutenant Jesse G. Johnson of the Pearl Harbor-based Patrol Squadron (VP) 1F, who was temporarily attached to the ship. Johnson made a survey flight before returning to the ship a little afternoon. Operations were completed by the next afternoon, and the Nitro sailed for Pearl Harbor, arriving on the fifteenth. The next day, Rear Admiral Harry E. Yarnell, the commandant of the Fourteenth Naval District (ComFourteen)—in whose bailiwick Wake lay—called on Commander Henry T. Markland, the ship’s commanding officer, who showed him the fruits of the Nitro’s two-day labor.⁵

Lieutenant Johnson posited that seaplane operations could be carried out within a six-square-mile area, that the island contained no water and limited plant life, and that the steep beaches rendered the atoll vulnerable to deep-draft enemy ships. Because Wake’s highest elevation was only about twenty feet, however, an enemy would have great difficulty observing any activity on the island from an offshore vantage point.⁶

At that juncture, naval and commercial aviation joined hands in a significant, yet clandestine, partnership. On 12 March 1935, soon after Lieutenant Johnson and the Nitro had wrapped up their work, Secretary of the Navy Claude A. Swanson gave Pan American Airways (PanAir) permission to construct a facility at Wake from which its Clippers could operate on the projected mail and passenger service to the Orient. A little over two weeks later, a PanAir expedition left the west coast of the United States to start the necessary work.

The freighter North Haven, loaded with enough equipment to build two complete villages, [and] five air bases, sailed through the Golden Gate on 27 March 1935, steaming first to Honolulu, where, on 7 April, Lieutenant Willis E. Cleaves, who, like Johnson, was attached to VP-IF, joined the expedition. Stopping first at Midway (12 April to 1 May) and then rendezvousing with the transport Henderson (AP-1) en route, the North Haven reached Wake on 5 May. Finding a suitable place to anchor, however, took a week. Dropping her hook off the south beach of Wilkes, just east of the place marked as a boat landing on the charts, the North Haven began disembarking the forty-four airline technicians and the seventy-four-man construction force and getting the materials ashore across the steep, sloping, rocky beach swept continuously by the surging surf. The North Haven sailed for Guam on 29 May, and two days later a Japanese passenger liner passed close by but did not respond to signals. The North Haven returned to Wake on the morning of 3 July but lingered only until the afternoon of the following day, when she sailed for Midway, en route to Honolulu, where Lieutenant Cleaves disembarked on 18 July.

Those who arrived at Wake in the spring of 1935 to begin the development of an airport there found an atoll lying midway between Hawaii and Guam and consisting of three islets, Wilkes, Wake, and Peale, that nearly surrounded a lagoon opening to the northwest, its apex pointing to the southeast. Situated in the Pacific at latitude 19 degrees, 18 minutes north, and longitude 166 degrees, 35 minutes east, four and one-half miles long and two and a quarter miles wide, Wake had a total land area of about three square miles. A practically submerged barrier reef of rough, solid coral, ranging from twenty-five to thirteen hundred yards beyond the shoreline and narrowest along the southwestern side of Wilkes and Wake, surrounded the group, pounded constantly by a roaring, booming surf whose waves normally reached only two to three feet but sometimes reached heights of fifteen. The only natural break in the reef—to permit boats to pass through from the open sea to the beach or to sheltered waters to land troops, equipment, and supplies—occurred near the channel between Wilkes and Wake.

Located on the same latitude as Hawaii, Wake generally enjoyed the same agreeably monotonous strong northeasterly trade winds, warm sunny days, and cool nights common to that territory. Humidity, however, was high, rainfall averaged about forty inches a year, and visitors to the atoll between July and November could expect typhoons during the nearly coincidental stormy and rainy seasons.

Along the southwestern side of Wilkes and Wake, the beach sloped gently from the sea to a line of vegetation, except at one place adjacent to the boat landing near Wilkes Channel, where it rose steeply. In contrast, the beaches on the northern and northeastern sides of the atoll rose sharply from sea level to a height of ten feet. An area devoid of undergrowth and brush then extended inland, varying from fifty to two hundred feet wide. Almost without exception, Wake’s seaward beaches were flat at low water, extending some twenty-five feet back from the water’s edge, covered with boulders—some weighing several thousand pounds and rounded smooth by the action of the ocean—and coral rock. The size and location of the boulders bore mute testimony to the fury of the sea that had moved them.

The average elevation on Wake was almost twelve feet, the highest elevation on Wilkes twenty-one feet, on Wake twenty-one, and on Peale eighteen. Just beyond the reef, the bottom dropped sharply, the sides of the ancient volcano (of which the atoll is only the tip) virtually perpendicular, rising in coral splendor from the two-thousand-fathom depths. At one point, where a shelf projected from the steep slope, a ship’s anchor could be dropped onto it, though the ship was in deep water. As one sailor would later remark, you could spit from your bridge into the surf.

Dense dark green shrubs, some growing closely together to a height of seven to ten feet and practically impenetrable in places, covered the interior of each islet—no coconut palms waved languidly in the trade winds. Thick brush, together with some umbrella and hardwood trees, covered the higher elevations (a maximum of twenty-one feet above sea level) of each islet. Some scrub trees, larger than the variety found on Midway, had trunks up to a foot in diameter but were of soft wood; another variety of tree that produced small dark green leaves and white flowers had a harder, more substantial wood.

Under Frank McKenzie, PanAir’s airport maintenance engineer (a good, capable [man], Lieutenant Cleaves noted, who overcame obstacles ingeniously), the construction crew surmounted numerous problems, starting with the discovery that Peale, rather than Wake, would be ideal for the location of the airport. Only after building a freight dock on Wilkes and hacking their way through the tangled brush on that islet to enable them to construct a narrow-gauge railroad across it from steel strips and wheels meant for another purpose could the North Haven’s crew, the construction workers, and the airline technicians unload the cargo.⁷ They lightered it ashore to the freight dock and then took it across Wilkes on the railway to the shore of the lagoon, at which point it was loaded onto another lighter and towed across to Peale. In five months, the workmen exhausted the five tons of dynamite allocated for clearing the myriad coral heads in the emerald-green lagoon. Because the wells dug on Wake yielded only brackish water and the distillation plant brought out in the North Haven proved inadequate, McKenzie’s engineers designed and built a catchment system to collect and store rainwater. Wake’s unproductive soil, meanwhile, led to hydroponic gardening.

PanAir Settlement, 5 March 1940.

PanAir Settlement, 5 March 1940. The Y-shaped hotel at upper left would not only host notables such as publisher Henry Luce and his wife, Clare Boothe Luce, author Ernest Hemingway, Soviet diplomat Maxim Litvinov, and Japanese envoy Kurusu Saburo but also navy pilots ferrying Catalina flying boats and Army Air Force pilots ferrying B-17S; Wake proper lies across the lagoon at top. Pagoda at far right lies at the landward end of the pier that extended out into the lagoon. (NA, 80-G-411112)

The work crews installed seaplane landing pontoons initially developed for PanAir’s Caribbean installations, which allowed a seaplane or flying boat to taxi to a dock that had permanent fuel and fresh water connections, electrical contacts for power poles and lights for night operation connected to the shore. The pontoons could double as a work platform, permitting an engine change if required. PanAir had pioneered night landing techniques for commercial seaplanes, and it equipped Wake to carry out nocturnal as well as daytime flight operations. Lieutenant Cleaves’s subsequent report of what he had observed at the end of July 1935 not only detailed the particulars of PanAir’s ambitious building program but noted the feasibility of establishing a landplane field on either Peale or Wake. The latter was the site ultimately chosen for such development.⁸

Between July and October 1935, U.S. Navy war planners mapped out a thrust into the Japanese-controlled Marshall Islands; flying boats based at Wake were to play a major role in covering that advance. Although Wake seemed finally to have secured a role in the navy’s plans, at that point it was only a theoretical one: no naval facilities existed there.

In the meantime, PanAir employed a specially equipped Sikorsky S-42 flying boat to carry out aerial surveys of its projected avenue to Asia. Its investigators completed work on the Midway-Wake route in August 1935 and on the Wake-Guam route in October. Subsequently, between 22 November and 5 December 1935, the four-engined, high-winged flying boat, the Martin M-130 China Clipper, pioneered PanAir’s transpacific air mail-carrying service to Manila and back in a 16,420-mile round trip.⁹

The widening political and diplomatic gulf between the United States and Japan over their respective policies concerning the Far East and western Pacific, however, as well as the increasing reach of air power, accentuated the military—not just commercial—importance of Wake to the United States. The imperial ambitions of Japan caused the U.S. Navy to scrutinize anew the role the little atoll would play in a potential Pacific campaign, lying as it did 2,004 miles from Honolulu, 2,772 from Manila, 1,034 from Midway, but only 597 from Roi in the Marshalls.

Within six months of Lieutenant Cleaves’s report, Rear Admiral William S. Pye, director of war plans, was suggesting to the CNO that although the Washington Treaty forbade military development of Pacific atolls such as Wake, it said nothing about the navy’s encouraging private commercial development. On 12 December 1935, Pye, who was thought to possess one of the navy’s finest tactical minds, suggested reexamining the place of Wake and Midway in a future Pacific campaign in light of PanAir’s recent pioneer work. He urged that PanAir’s efforts be guided to meet naval requirements, and, if not within the limitations of current development, assisted by Government funds in the same manner as would any other harbor projects undertaken to aid commerce. Pye urged notifying PanAir confidentially as to the items [required by the navy] so that their [PanAir’s] own development . . . may be guided from the beginning. He thought it was unnecessary to develop Wake and Midway as full-fledged naval bases. If the channel and anchorages were modified, Wake and Midway could be useful as auxiliary seaplane bases or as limited bases from which submarines and light forces could operate. By extending the navy’s reconnaissance line from the Hawaiian area, Pye posited, Wake (and Midway) could be valuable to war plans. Their possession in a Pacific campaign, he observed, must be denied [the enemy] from the very beginning, lest an enemy base submarines and seaplanes of its own there. Pye accorded Midway priority, but Wake, too, needed to be controlled by our own forces. We must, he declared, get there first.¹⁰

The acting CNO, Rear Admiral Joseph K. Taussig (whose father had annexed the atoll for the United States in 1899) agreed with Pye. He believed, though, that until they learned the outcome of the arms limitation talks in London, it seems that there is nothing we can do except to support everything actually needed for the successful operation of the commercial planes which are using these islands.¹¹

Japan’s abrogation of the treaties she had signed, however, and her imperialistic stance in China (threatening to shut the Open Door), coupled with her suspected development of the Marshalls, spurred naval interest in Wake and other Pacific bases. Subsequently, with Japan’s undeclared war against China not quite a year old, Congress, on 17 May 1938, directed Secretary of the Navy Swanson to appoint an investigating board to look into possible naval base sites on the coasts of the United States, its territories, and possessions. Acting Secretary of the Navy Charles Edison accordingly appointed that committee and placed it under Rear Admiral Arthur J. Hepburn, a former commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet and then commandant of the Twelfth Naval District.

The Hepburn Board’s report, submitted shortly before Christmas of 1938 and published on 3 January 1939, ranked Wake next in strategic importance to Midway, which the panel viewed as second only to Pearl Harbor in the mid-Pacific. The board recommended that facilities be constructed there at the earliest possible time, to permit the operation of one patrol plane squadron, and that a pier be built and a channel and a turning basin be dredged out of the lagoon to accommodate a tanker or a large seaplane tender. With these improvements, the board believed, Wake would be admirably suited to operate tender-based aircraft. The immediate continuous operation of patrol planes from Wake, the board declared, would be vital at the outbreak of war in the Pacific.¹² To that end, the navy needed to stockpile an adequate supply of fuel and to build and maintain an air base there.

The defense of such an advanced base, however, would fall to the marines, to whom such missions had been formally entrusted shortly after the turn of the century. In the autumn of 1938, paralleling the work of the Hepburn Board, Major General Thomas Holcomb, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, ordered an inspection of Wake to determine the necessary requirements. He enjoined those to whom he entrusted the task to note carefully fields of fire, possible gun positions, and the number of men required to man the works.

Hearings in the House of Representatives Naval Affairs Committee ensued. On 25 January 1939, the first day of those congressional deliberations, the CNO, Admiral William D. Leahy, declared the immediate expansion of the navy’s shore establishment—including within its scope installations at Guam, Midway, and Wake, among other places—to be sound and conservative requirements for peacetime operations, and for measures of preparedness upon which to base wartime expansion. Although most of Leahy’s testimony concerned Guam, the CNO did emphasize Wake’s importance in the chain of bases sought in the Pacific.¹³

The following day, Admiral Hepburn appeared before the committee to answer questions, and the next, Rear Admiral Arthur B. Cook, chief of the bureau of Aeronautics (BuAer), did likewise, reiterating the Hepburn Board’s suggestions for Wake and explaining to the assembled congressmen the navy’s plans for the atoll. The money asked for, Cook explained, would allow Wake to be used as a base for patrol planes—there would be no permanent facilities (plans called at one point for only a four-man caretaker force)—that could gather information on any enemy’s movements toward the Hawaiian Islands. Another navy witness who testified on the projects sought for Pacific island bases was Rear Admiral Ben Moreell, the chief of the Bureau of Yards and Docks. Before the hearings concluded on the authorization to allow the navy to construct certain public works and only a little over a month after the publication of the Hepburn Board’s findings, on 16 February 1939 Admiral Leahy announced plans for organizing four defense battalions to garrison Wake, Midway, Unalaska, and Guantanamo.

Colonel Harry K. Pickett, seen here ca. 1940, accepted his commission in 1913 and served in France during World War I. Pickett surveyed Wake in 1939.

Colonel Harry K. Pickett, seen here ca. 1940, accepted his commission in 1913 and served in France during World War I. Pickett surveyed Wake in 1939. His predictions of how Japanese forces could attack the atoll proved perceptive. (Harry K. Pickett Biographical File, MCHC Reference Section)

Recommendations about Wake’s significance notwithstanding, the right circumstances were needed to compel Congress to recognize the importance the navy placed on it. President Roosevelt approved the legislation that included it among the urgent projects for fiscal year 1940 on 25 April 1939, and Congress parceled out $2 million of the total $65 million appropriation package for Wake, but the tardy submission of the supplemental estimates for the regular naval appropriation bill prompted the Appropriations Committee of the House of Representatives, which claimed it needed more time to scrutinize the details, to disallow the expenditure of funds for Wake, along with those for Midway, Johnston, and Palmyra. Although the House reinstated the latter three island