Pacific Alamo Page 19

  “Boy, They’ve Got Us”

  News that a relief force headed toward them brightened everyone’s mood, but the men on Wake could not rest until they sighted the first American ship over the horizon and knew help had arrived before the Japanese. Until then they faced more unsettling days in the deadly race in which they unwillingly participated—would rescue and relief from home arrive first, or would the Japanese and death beat them? Would the noose that tightened ever so slightly each day finally close around their necks, or would the task force from Pearl Harbor burst through and save them?

  Reactions varied. Cunningham and Devereux maintained optimistic outlooks, primarily for the benefit of the men. They wanted to keep morale up among the military, and they did not want to alarm the civilians, who were obviously not as well disciplined. The commanders wisely understood that men with hopes of survival fight better than those who have none.

  Lieutenant Hanna, on the other hand, tried to be realistic. Rather than saying anything and falsely raising everyone’s expectations, he kept the men busy at their posts and reminded them that their first jobs as Marines was to fight.

  Corporal Johnson claimed that he, like most veteran Marines, discarded the chances of help from Pearl Harbor as early as the sixth or seventh day of the siege. He did not think the Navy wanted to risk losing any more ships, and if Pearl Harbor had been serious about sending help, it should have arrived by December 14 or December 15. “We all knew it was a wash out after the sixth or seventh day. There were 1,700 people on the atoll, and a battleship cost so much, so what are they going to risk? The consequences of trying to rescue us might be more severe than not rescuing us.”23 By December 15, Johnson had assumed that help would not be forthcoming, but he was careful not to say anything around the civilians.

  Sunday, December 21, intensified the deadly race. Only one day after receiving news of a relief force and writing letters home, the men endured another air raid, but this was ominously different from all the previous attacks. Instead of high-flying bombers, forty-nine low-level fighters, dive bombers, and torpedo bombers lambasted the atoll. Rather than staging one or two bombing runs, as had been the practice, these aircraft pounded Wake for over an hour.

  The civilians did not realize the significance of what had just occurred, but every serviceman on Wake knew their predicament had worsened. The previous raids originated from long-range bombers based out of the Marshall Islands to the south. Carrier aircraft, however, with their shorter range, meant that the Japanese prowled much closer to Wake than feared and that at least one aircraft carrier, probably supported by a mixture of cruisers and destroyers, could not be far away. That, in turn, indicated that a second landing force, this time buttressed by a more powerful naval presence, must already be at sea and headed toward the atoll. If help from Pearl Harbor was to arrive, it had better reach Wake fast, before the Japanese cut off every available water route to the besieged atoll.

  The December 21 attack by carrier aircraft extinguished any slim hopes for many Marines. “Then it was, hey, they got to be only about one hundred fifty or two hundred miles off,” said Corporal Marvin. “That’s when we said, ‘Boy, they’ve got us.’”24 Lieutenant Kessler shook his head in dismay. Less than twenty-four hours before, he and the rest of the atoll had celebrated the great news of relief, but now the Japanese Navy seemed to be moving in for the kill. Commander Cunningham, aware of the slim wire upon which he and the other Wake Islanders trod, sent an urgent dispatch informing Pearl Harbor of the new development. Aid had to arrive soon.

  Once more, the military grabbed their rifles and manned their guns. Few complained, though, for that was their job. If they did, and if they stood anywhere near Sgt. Johnalson Wright, they knew he would curtly remind them, “You ain’t paid to think, Mac. All you’re paid to do is fight where they tell you to.” Most servicemen carried the realistic attitude expressed by Corporal Marvin, who explained, “When you joined the service, they don’t guarantee you’re coming back.”25

  “Where, Oh Where, Is the United States Navy?”

  The news that Japanese carrier aircraft had entered the picture profoundly affected events in Pearl Harbor. In the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attack, Adm. Chester W. Nimitz was named to replace Admiral Kimmel as commander of the Pacific Fleet. Until Nimitz arrived from Washington, Vice Adm. William S. Pye, a man as cautious as Kimmel was daring, held the reins. Pye dreaded losing more of the battered Pacific Fleet before Nimitz assumed command and thus acted with reticence toward anything that might endanger the ships.

  As the relief force inched across the Pacific, a cautious Pye kept a wary eye out for the Japanese Navy, especially their aircraft carriers. He allowed Fletcher to head west, but was ready to recall the unit should any significant opposition suddenly appear. As the ships slowly churned toward a Wake garrison begging for help, December 21 wound to a conclusion with the relief force still six hundred miles distant.

  News from Washington increased Pye’s apprehensions when Adm. Harold R. Stark, the Chief of Naval Operations, informed Pye that the Navy Department now considered Wake a liability and that the decision to relieve the garrison rested solely in his hands. Pye understood what this message meant—he could continue the operation to save the atoll’s heroic defenders, but superiors would hold him responsible should the Pacific Fleet absorb heavy losses.

  On December 22, Fletcher further impeded the task force’s progress by ordering all ships to refuel. This lengthy operation required that every vessel slow its speed by six knots and to steam into the wind, which took the ships farther from Wake. By the end of the day, Task Force 14 stood no closer to helping the Wake Islanders than it did one day earlier.

  The progress of the task force turned out to be irrelevant. Just as the Wake Islanders and the Japanese engaged in their climactic December 23 battle, Admiral Pye, worried that he might lose the few remaining ships of the Pacific Fleet to prowling Japanese carriers and operating with the knowledge that Washington now deemed Wake as good as lost, ordered the relief expedition back to Pearl Harbor. The recall produced angry outbursts among Marine and Navy personnel aboard the ships at sea, who urged superiors to ignore the order and steam to the rescue of their fellow fighters. Henry Frietas, who served aboard the Tangier, said, “Here we were, loaded for bear with a carrier and cruisers, and we didn’t go in! Everyone was distressed.” Frietas claimed that every man on the ship would have voted to head into Wake, even though it meant placing themselves in danger. “It was wartime. We would have gone in.”26

  The language grew so inflammatory on the bridge of the Saratoga that Rear Adm. Aubrey Fitch stormed off so he would not hear possibly mutinous talk and be forced to take action. One Navy officer aboard the Enterprise dejectedly wrote, “It’s the war between two yellow races.” Even in Japan, propagandist Tokyo Rose ridiculed the Navy by sarcastically asking in a broadcast, “Where, oh where, is the United States Navy?”27 The order stood, however, and the task force reluctantly turned away from Wake.

  Should Pye have allowed the ships to continue? He properly concluded that the carriers could not be foolishly risked, but his caution blinded him to an opportunity to inflict damage to the enemy. Task Force 14 would not have arrived until after Kajioka reached the atoll, but the ships could still have disrupted the landings and possibly altered the outcome. To a nation starved for good news and seeking revenge for Pearl Harbor, this would have been a welcome development.

  Military authorities averted an outcry back home by keeping news of the recall from the public. The nation hardly needed to learn of another failure, and the Navy Department certainly preferred to gloss over the affair. By the time most Americans learned of the details after the war, domestic matters had risen to the forefront and had cast war-related affairs to the back burner.

  The episode created a controversy within the military, however, as some top officers castigated Pye’s vacillation. Adm. William F. Halsey supposedly swore for half an hour when he learned of the recall
and had to be talked out of impulsively leading his own charge into Wake. The failure to support fellow servicemen grated at the crusty warrior’s sense of duty. Admiral Nimitz commented that while no one could deny Pye’s intelligence, he sorely lacked the gumption that top commanders required.

  The incident produced no scandal or charges of cover-up similar to those fomented by the Pearl Harbor debacle, but the outcome held severe repercussions for Admiral Pye. He lingered on for ten additional months in the Pacific before spending the rest of the war in stateside positions, while Nimitz and Halsey occupied key posts in the nation’s successful wartime march across the ocean to Tokyo.

  The men on Wake did not learn about the recall until after the fight for the atoll ended. Though disappointed, they accepted their fate with few traces of bitterness. “The military did not resent the Navy, at least I didn’t hear anything,” said Corporal Johnson. “We just happened to draw a bad hand at poker, if you want to look at it that way.”28 Joe Goicoechea said that he later discussed the issue with some buddies, and they concluded that the mathematics of the situation pointed to the outcome—what would be easier for the United States to lose, a group of critically needed ships, or the men on Wake?

  “We lived on 90 percent rumors and a little bit of realism tucked in between,” mentioned Pfc. James King. “Relief was on the way. It will be here tomorrow was a rumor almost every day. Tomorrow never came for that.”29

  Though the Wake defenders did not realize it at the time, they now stood alone. After two weeks of bombardments, fear, hunger, and weariness, the beleaguered men dug in and prepared for what they knew would be the determining clash for the atoll. Not far away, Kajioka moved in for the final act.

  “Like Losing All the Best Friends”

  Three December 21 events emphasized that Wake, for all its noble labors, was running out of luck. Battery D on Peale Island provided the first indication. The man who symbolized good fortune by placing his faith in a lucky coin from Nicaragua, Sgt. Johnalson Wright, died in an early afternoon raid. Wright sat, as always, outside the dugout entrance, clutching his coin as Japanese bombs approached. Private First Class Gatewood heard him reassure the men that he would be all right, then describe the raid as if he were a play-by-play announcer broadcasting a game. Suddenly, Wright said, “The bombs are coming pretty close.”30

  Up to this point in the siege, he had miraculously avoided harm, thus building credence in his coin, but this day the talisman held no luck. A bomb explosion hurled a tree limb through Wright’s body and propelled pieces of metal that tore open his side and severed an arm. The bomb’s ferocity ripped helmets off men near the veteran Marine, but Wright was the only fatality at the gun position on that day.

  “The damn fool wouldn’t get inside the sandbags, and that’s the reason he got it,” explained Corporal Marvin. “He said the lucky dollar would save him, and he was the only one killed in that raid on our gun position. Wright thought he was invincible.”31

  As an officer spread the word that “They got Big Wright on that run,”32 other Marines buried him near the battery. The following morning another bomb explosion tossed Wright’s body out of the makeshift grave, forcing his buddies to inter him again. This time Wright’s remains stayed where they were, resting in a spit of land on Peale Island, symbolic of what had become of Wake’s luck.

  VMF-211, the mainstay of Wake’s hopes through so much, also ceased to exist that same day. The final two aircraft, piloted by Captain Freuler and Lieutenant Davidson, rose to meet the bombers attacking Wright and the others at Battery D. Lieutenant Davidson chased an enemy plane out to sea, but never returned.

  Wake’s air force now consisted of Captain Freuler and his fighter. In a furious dogfight, the outnumbered Freuler shot down one enemy plane, barely missed colliding with a second as it exploded from his bullets, then fell victim to a Japanese fighter piloted by PO3c. Isao Tahara. Tahara, who supposedly also shot down Davidson, leapt on Freuler’s tail and pumped bullets into his fuselage. After three attempts at landing his damaged craft, a bleeding Freuler finally alighted on the fourth, then slumped unconscious in a pool of blood. Freuler survived the episode, but his Wildcat could no longer fly.

  VMF-211, Wake’s gallant little air force that had withstood a massacre on December 8 and repeated aerial combat afterwards, was no more. Freuler would have taken solace had he known that in one of the two Japanese aircraft that fell to his bullets perished Noboru Kanai, the bombardier who accurately dropped the bomb that destroyed the USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor.

  The loss meant far more to the men on Wake than a single aircraft. Even though only two Wildcats could be put into the sky, they provided a semblance of an air shield for Wake. Nothing now stood between the enemy and them; the Japanese could boldly charge in at will. They had lost their tentacles, their ability to hit from a distance, which meant the Japanese enjoyed a huge tactical advantage.

  “When that last Wildcat was gone, it was like losing all the best friends one has,” said T.Sgt. Charles Holmes. “It began to give me a feeling that we were doomed…. I had this terrible feeling that I would be killed the next day. Depression became worse as the hours passed by…. I prayed and ask[ed] God to take care of the folks back home.”33

  Without an air arm with which to conduct a defense, Major Putnam collected the remaining aviators and mechanics, walked over to Devereux’s command post, and reported for combat duty. Devereux asked Putnam to join Lieutenant Poindexter as an infantry reserve.

  As VMF-211 fought its last gallant battle over Wake, on the morning of December 21 Admiral Kajioka, still licking his wounds over the December 11 thrashing, guided another fleet out of the Marshalls and steamed toward Wake. In addition to the force he commanded ten days earlier, Kajioka sported two new destroyers to replace the two he lost on December 11, four heavy cruisers, and extra Special Naval Landing Forces. He could now land three companies of Japanese soldiers instead of two—one each commanded by Lt. Kinichi Uchida, Special Duty Lt. (jg) Yakichi Itaya, and Special Duty Ens. Toyoji Takano. Kajioka, stung once by Wake’s guns, was not about to allow another fiasco to occur.

  “This May Be Your Last Night on Earth”

  Any doubt that a Japanese landing force would soon strike disappeared on December 22, when Japanese carrier aircraft pounded Wake for a second straight day. The air strike meant that the carriers had not just hit Wake on December 21 as they sped by on their way to another destination. They obviously had remained in the area with the intent to destroy as many defensive installations as possible in preparation for a landing attempt.

  Lieutenant Kessler saw the writing on the wall and ordered the men at his gun to work even harder at completing their defensive positions. Civilian John Burroughs labored right with them and noticed the Marines were “grim and silent. This sort of thing could not go on indefinitely. Everyone sensed the coming of a crisis.”34 Some, remembering the graphic scenes and reportage of Japanese atrocities in China, doubted now that they would ever leave Wake alive.

  The night of December 22 contrasted greatly with that of December 20, when energized men, buoyed by news of the relief force, wrote notes to families. Somberness replaced hope. Men resigned themselves to another fight, this time probably involving land combat.

  At their position at Battery E, bordering the lagoon just north of the airfield, Sgt. Gilson A. Tallentire ordered James Allen to break out two boxes of hand grenades and to prepare himself for close-in fighting. Not far away, Captain Elrod told a group of men, “I want you all to clean up. This may be your last night on this earth.”35

  People in the United States sensed the end, as well. An editorial in the Washington Post sent best wishes to the Wake defenders for Christmas. The newspaper wanted to express how much the men meant to the nation even though the editors knew the Americans fighting on Wake would probably never read the article. The editors stated that while it appeared the Marines and civilians would not enjoy their happiest Christmas ever, they helped make the h
olidays for millions of Americans back home better than expected.

  From what we hear by the grapevine, Santa Claus is going to give you boys on Wake Island the go-by this year…. It may be you will be too busy even to remember that it is Christmas Eve…. But some of you will remember. And some of you will think of other Christmases at home…. You may get a little tight in the stomach for a minute or two, thinking of this.

  But we want you to know that you are the best Christmas present this old U.S. ever had.

  Because of you, we all stand straighter, eyes ahead.

  Because of you, there is new hope in the faces of liberty loving people.

  Because of you, the American flag seems to give a special, prideful flirt as it snaps in the breeze these days.

  Because of you, American boys are storming recruiting offices, young soldiers in camp are on the double quick, sailors live for their ships, factories are working day and night, and the President, and Joe Doakes in the street, are busting their buttons.

  For all we know, because of you, that a Christmas will come when there will be Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men!

  Merry Christmas, Marines…and give them Hell!36

  “I Was Surprised at Some of the Younger Ones”

  “A Sort of Stubborn Pride”

  Unexpectedly stung one time by the numerically inferior Americans at Wake, a cautious Admiral Kajioka drew up plans to prevent a second occurrence. While his fellow naval and Army commanders scored stirring triumphs at Pearl Harbor, Guam, Hong Kong, and elsewhere, he alone had been humbled by the foe. Kajioka could not afford another defeat; to lose again to the Americans would mean the end of his career as a naval commander.