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  Boise, a small town, with a population of twenty thousand, could have been a model for a Norman Rockwell painting. Neighbors said hello to each other and never locked their doors at night. Winters brought skiing and ice skating, while summers provided ample opportunity for baseball and other outdoor activities. Since the town was nestled in the Rockies, hunting and fishing were year-round options. Every summer since they were kids, the three remembered racing down to the Boise River to watch workers pitch a series of circus tents for the annual county fair. The carnies, with their air of independence, travel, and mystique, fascinated the trio.

  “Boise was a perfect place to grow up in,” said the rambunctious Goicoechea. “You knew everybody. We had baseball and softball, and guys headed for the hills for fishing and hunting. We’d hunt everything—deer, elk, bear. It was a great place to be.”12

  Like most Boise youth in those days, they came from immigrant families. Born July 31, 1921, to Basque immigrants from Spain, Goicoechea was the eldest of four siblings. He worked in a grocery store to help provide money for the family, which because of financial problems moved four times before Goicoechea entered high school. “We had to stay a jump ahead of the house collectors. It was the Depression.”13

  Kidd’s family traveled to Boise because of farming and logging, the town’s two major industries. The serious-minded Kidd awoke at 3:30 A.M. each day to deliver newspapers to his huge route of two hundred customers, carefully placing each paper in a newspaper slot or setting it on the porch instead of casually tossing it anywhere on the front yard. Knowing his parents lacked the money to send him to college, Kidd studied bookkeeping in high school so he could work for a business after graduation. He eventually became the bookkeeper for a Boise stationery store.

  Of the three, George Rosandick most appealed to the girls. Good-looking and affable, Rosandick felt as comfortable in the presence of females as he did with Joe and Murray. Like the other two, Rosandick appreciated fun but also realized the value of hard work, a trait cultivated by his parents, immigrants from Croatia.

  Despite their tribulations, the three never lacked for fun. Goicoechea played baseball with such a flourish that the Cincinnati Reds sent a scout to look him over. The scrappy Kidd joined Boise High’s track and basketball teams, even though he stood only five feet tall and weighed less than one hundred pounds as a freshman.

  Sometimes their fun almost landed the boys in trouble with the Boise police, most of whom they knew by name. Joe, Murray, and George became adept at sliding lead slugs into pinball machines, which rewarded them by paying off in real nickels. The ploy, profitable for them but a financial bust for the businessmen, had its drawbacks: The trio could pull the scam only so many times before the owner caught on. “We had to be careful about going back into some of those places. We were all hell-raisers then.”14

  Fun can carry a person only so far before responsibility and maturity—and a serious need for money—wedge their way in. Boise offered few exciting job prospects to the adventurous youth, but one industry seemed promising. The giant construction firm, Morrison-Knudsen, had developed a reputation building bridges, roads, and dams all over the world, including Hoover Dam and the San Francisco Bay Bridge. In May 1941, word spread through town that they needed laborers to construct military facilities on some obscure Pacific outpost. In exchange for what was then the incredible amount of $125 a month plus expenses, workers agreed to travel to the Pacific—at company expense—and work for nine months, at which time they would receive a bonus and could either return to the mainland or accept a second nine-month hitch.

  Morrison-Knudsen was one of a group of eight huge construction firms hired by the government to develop Pacific bases. To reduce costs, the Navy merged the eight into an immense organization called the Contractors Pacific Naval Air Bases (CPNAB). Morrison-Knudsen received the contracts to complete Wake.

  The opportunity seemed tailor-made for the boys, less than one year removed from high school. They would travel to an exotic Pacific isle, accumulate some money, and learn a trade—all in the space of nine short months. If they liked what they were doing, they could always remain in the Pacific. If not, they were free to return to Boise, stocked with fresh cash and new skills. It seemed a no-lose situation.

  Obstacles quickly developed. Joe’s parents tried to talk him out of it by arguing they needed their oldest child helping out at home rather than roaming about a distant beach. George failed the physical because of flat feet, and a manager told Murray he was too young. The boys refused to give in.

  “I was only eighteen at the time, and you had to be at least nineteen, but I really wanted to go,” explained Kidd. “I went home and told my mom about it, and she could see how serious I was about it. She got on the phone and called somebody she knew at Morrison-Knudsen, and all of us were signed up. She knew the right people.”15 Barely out of high school and hardly more than kids having fun, Goicoechea, Kidd, and Rosandick signed the appropriate forms and prepared to go to Wake Island.

  More than anything, J. O. Young loved to spend time with his fiancée, Pearl Ann Sparks. For less than a dollar, the couple could attend a movie at the Majestic or the Adelaide, then get hamburgers and milk shakes at either of their two favorites on Main Street, the Blue Bird or Saxton’s. It was a perfect evening for a pair deeply in love.

  Theirs was not the wild, passionate style of affair in which some teenagers indulge. Their relationship started innocently enough—walks through town with a friend of theirs, another girl who caught Young’s eye. “She was a cute little button,” explained Young years later, “and Pearl and I would walk with her every noon. I had a bad case of puppy love for that other girl. Then she moved, and Pearl and I just kept on walking.”

  Quiet pastimes, such as trips to nearby lakes, suited the young couple. “With Pearl Ann, it was all milk shakes, movies, and walks,” said Young. “We used to get kidded a little once in a while. Pearl’s last name was Sparks, and the kids in school used to say, ‘Pearl Sparks, doesn’t she?’”16

  Pearl Ann claimed her romance with J. O. was not love at first sight, but that it developed over time. He made her laugh, he took her places, and the two fit comfortably together. “He was easy to be around and a lot of fun, always telling jokes and wisecracking. I was bashful and timid. I guess he made up for that.”17 The couple, high school sweethearts, planned to wed in October 1941.

  The nineteen-year-old Young worked as a carpenter in the Boise area, but he never passed on an opportunity to improve the prospects for Pearl and himself. One day he and another carpenter took shelter from a rainstorm in a shed, and as they idled the time, they chatted about Morrison-Knudsen’s project. Young’s uncle, Forrest Read, had been on Wake since May, and from his letters Young knew the benefits and drawbacks. The thought of earning a significant sum of money in nine months proved too strong a motivation, however. Later that day, without telling Pearl Ann, Young headed to Morrison-Knudsen’s offices and signed a contract to work at Wake Island. The move meant that when he returned they would have enough money to purchase their own home, but it also required postponing the wedding. He did not relish the thought of breaking the news to Pearl Ann.

  After work, Young drove to nearby Nampa to pick up his fiancée, nervous over what he figured could be an explosive reaction to his decision to leave. Pearl Ann climbed into the car and, as always, immediately slid closer to Young so she could snuggle up to him as he drove them into Boise.

  As the car bounded through the countryside, an apprehensive Young finally built the courage to mention what he had done earlier in the day. Not surprisingly, Pearl Ann reacted with hurt and bewilderment. Tears welled in her eyes as she unleashed a flurry of questions. Why had he not first discussed the matter with her? Did he love her any less? What about the wedding plans, now set for less than two months away?

  Young tried in vain to explain what he had done. His words met only a cold stare, even after he promised that in nine short months he would return, two t
housand dollars richer, and they would be immediately married. “The announcement was not received with enthusiasm or cheering me on,” recalled Young, “but she scooted to the far side of the seat against the passenger door and remained there for most of the evening.”18 Pearl Ann, angry and disappointed with the man she thought she would soon marry, did not want Young to board an ocean transport and head to a speck of land in the middle of the Pacific.

  “He never did persuade me that what he did was right,” explained Pearl Ann. “I guess I felt he’s already signed up, and there wasn’t much I could do about it. Even up to when he left, I was still upset, but he was going to do that, and that was it. I had no idea where Wake was.”19

  Like Ewing Laporte, the Comstocks—Iowans raised in the heartland of America—futilely scoured the Midwest and West in search of carpentry work. They briefly repaired repossessed homes for an insurance company, but they could never land a job that paid well. In early 1941, the struggling pair read an ad in an Omaha newspaper seeking construction workers for Pacific island military projects. The ad’s promise of two hundred dollars per month plus overtime enticed the Comstocks to sign a standard nine-month contract, even though it meant they would have to leave the United States.

  Hans Whitney’s path also led to Wake. Born in 1911, like Franklin Gross he hopped trains as a teenager to see the United States. He eventually married, had a son, and then signed the same nine-month contract offered to the Comstocks. He had long dreamed of controlling a business that would comfortably provide for his family, and he saw the relatively brief stint at Wake, with its attractive wages, as the vehicle for achieving his hopes.

  “I dreamed of being an independent citizen, depending on the whims of no man for a job,” claimed Whitney. “I had visions of a young businessman driving to work. Saw his wife and kids in a good home, well dressed and well fed, enjoying life to the full.”20 Wake would be his ticket to the great American dream.

  Thus Goicoechea, Whitney, and the other civilians joined Hanna, Holewinski, and the military personnel and headed toward Wake, where they would engage in one of the most gripping battles of the coming war. These men were not superheroes. They were just ordinary men—kids, really—with ordinary dreams, the kind of dreams that have long fueled progress and life in America. The men represented all that was good about the United States—family, hopes, home, loyalty, patriotism, fun, adventure. This group of young men would stand up for those ideals at Wake when the rest of the nation could not, would put aside their own dreams and families so that others could enjoy the chance to have theirs.

  A Fort in the Pacific

  It is one of the Pacific war’s ironies that such a significant military action should occur on such an insignificant plot of land. The first Westerner to sight it, Spain’s Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira in 1567, quickly sailed away because Wake, lacking both drinkable water and a viable food source, proved too desolate for his needs. A mere speck on the immense ocean, Wake is a V-shaped atoll of three islets with the open end pointing northwest. Each arm stretches about five miles in length, but channels at the tips of the arms sever the atoll into its three parts. Wake Island, the largest (“Wake” refers to the entire atoll; “Wake Island” to the islet), forms the vertex, with Peale Island to the right and Wilkes Island to the left. The atoll’s total land area equals three square miles.

  The atoll rests in the middle of the Pacific Ocean along the nineteen degrees north latitude line, equidistant between Tokyo (two thousand miles to its northwest) and Hawaii (two thousand miles to its east). The Philippine Islands stand 2,800 miles to Wake’s west. Coarse white sand thinly covers a jagged coral base, making walking a difficult maneuver, while humid, moist air suffocates the island and transforms breathing into an arduous task.

  Any man who has ever been there will tell you the sea dominates Wake. The continuous crash of waves against a coral reef surrounding the islands produces such a booming noise that people cannot be heard outside of short distances. The terrain, which supports little more than scrubby bushes and short trees, nestles so low in the water—the highest elevation on the atoll rises hardly more than twenty feet above sea level—that in the strongest typhoons the ocean completely engulfs the land.

  Surprisingly, the atoll teemed with animal life, although not always of the most desirable sort. Rats scampered about in droves, while millions of tiny crabs so heavily blanketed the beaches that when they moved around, the whole beach seemed to shift. The beautiful lagoon that nestled inside the V-shaped atoll contained such clear water that a person in a rowboat could peer down and see a variety of aquatic life, from octopuses and eels to all sorts of multicolored exotic fish. Sunrises and sunsets, unrivaled anywhere else on earth, offered breathtaking arrays of soft hues. Wake lacked only palm trees to fit the storybook image of a tropical paradise.

  After de Neira’s hasty visit, few ships from Europe or America halted at the location. In 1796, British Capt. Samuel Wake gave the atoll and islet their names when he anchored offshore. Forty-five years later, Lt. Charles Wilkes of the United States Navy stopped at Wake as part of his mission to explore and map Pacific islands. After a hasty inspection, he declared the atoll unfit for habitation, but before he departed he named one of the islets to honor a famous naturalist who accompanied the expedition, Titian Peale, and the other, with a touch of arrogance, after himself.

  The atoll lay unnoticed by any Western power until July 4, 1898, when the commanding officer of a large force of American troops headed toward the Philippines during the Spanish-American War claimed Wake for the United States. He, too, concluded the forlorn spot could be used for little beyond providing a temporary shelter for ships plying Pacific waters.

  For years this was all Wake proved to be. That changed drastically in the 1930s when two nations turned their gazes toward the placid atoll. Resting on the western side of the Pacific, Japan had long intended to join the ranks of the world’s top powers. In the eyes of many Japanese, a leading position guaranteed the nation’s survival, while to accept an inferior status would relegate her forever to the backwaters of world esteem.

  Unlike the United States, whose population enjoyed spacious land, Japan occupied a tiny mountainous area framed by water. The more her population increased, the less space became available. Approximately 80 million people lived in Japan in the 1920s. Japan’s total area equaled the state of Montana. If she were to grow, Japan, the most crowded nation on earth, had to seek land beyond her borders.

  As an island nation, Japan had to import much of her raw materials and food products. Her people could cultivate only a certain percentage of the national need, and to fill the rest the nation’s leaders had to look elsewhere. Almost 70 percent of the country’s supply of zinc and tin came from outside, as did 90 percent of its lead, and all its cotton, wool, aluminum, and rubber. When expansionists studied the nearby areas, most eyes turned west toward the Asian mainland and China.

  When they sought raw materials from Asia, however, Japanese leaders collided with European interests. She needed rubber, tin, and bauxite from Burma and Malaya, but Great Britain controlled those nations. Indochina’s vast rubber plantations contained valuable material, but France held sway in that country. The most eagerly sought product, oil, stood in bountiful amounts in the East Indies, but the Dutch maintained a stranglehold on the region. Everywhere Japan turned, a European nation blocked the path to her future.

  Japanese militants who urged immediate expansion onto the Asian mainland were held in check by more moderate forces and by the fact that the Japanese economy depended heavily on the United States for products. The stock market crash of 1929, which ushered in the Great Depression, altered the situation. Military extremists castigated moderates for aligning Japan too closely to the United States. They clamored for a new policy that emphasized conquest and expansion.

  An alarmed American ambassador to Japan, Joseph Grew, warned Washington that the Japanese militarists gained strength every day and that they intend
ed to expand to China and other areas of the Pacific. He told his superiors that the military controlled the government and that no step could be taken by civilian politicians without its approval.

  As a ten-year-old Joe Goicoechea entered the fifth grade in Boise, Idaho, and a seventeen-year-old Robert Hanna started his final year in high school, the Japanese kicked off the first in a series of events that eventually culminated in World War II. On September 18, 1931, the Japanese Army launched an invasion of China in retaliation for a bomb explosion along a railway they controlled. The United States, then led by President Herbert Hoover, condemned the invasion, but the nation was so embroiled in economic problems of its own that it could do little to affect an event unfolding halfway around the world.

  When Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933, foreign affairs assumed a more important, though still subordinate, role in government. He wanted to strengthen the military and place forces on a string of American-controlled Pacific atolls, but two concerns stopped him—the Depression and isolationism. As long as millions of United States citizens wrestled with unemployment, as long as families went hungry and children went homeless, Roosevelt could do nothing but concentrate his efforts on alleviating the economic stagnation that gripped the country.

  Even without the Depression’s demands, Roosevelt would have experienced a difficult time in pushing his concerns through an isolationist-controlled Congress: increased spending for the military and more aggressive policies toward Japan. Isolationism flourished in the aftermath of World War I, when many leading politicians and civilians contended that the United States had sent overseas too many of its youth to die on European battlefields for what they believed were European causes. A more rational policy, according to isolationists, was to shun European and Pacific affairs, allow the two oceans to provide a natural barrier against aggression, and take care of domestic matters.