TransPac
In 1987 I was privileged to participate in a trans-Pacific adventure with a group of 25 or so U.S. Navy squadron mates. It took about four weeks, entailed six stops, and totaled approximately 8,500 air miles. Our most memorable stopover was Wake Island, a coral atoll in the Western Pacific Ocean roughly halfway between Honolulu and Tokyo. The atoll is a V-shaped land mass consisting of three separate islets surrounding a shallow central lagoon, all protected by an outer ring of coral reef. I took a photo as we circled on approach. It was even more beautiful in person.
Paradise
After spending an afternoon and night on Wake, I considered then and for a long time afterward that it was the most beautiful place I had ever been. We deplaned, unloaded, and were transported to a barracks area in the northwestern part of Wake proper. I recall that we sailors had the island pretty much to ourselves, though shipmates say there was an Air Force aircrew there as well. The adjacent bar and grill was closed, but there was no shortage of food and drink. We enjoyed a long afternoon swimming in a peaceful lagoon, grilling by the beach, playing volleyball, chatting, and enjoying the scenery. As a Christian, I believe God gives us earthly glimpses of eternity, be it paradise or torment. Wake Island surely was a hint of what heaven will be like, I thought.
Peale Island and Pan Am
In between dips in the swimming hole some of us explored the northern portion of the atoll, including wandering across a causeway to Peale Island. In the late 1930s Wake Island was a stop on Pan American Airways’ “Sky Highway.” Pan Am Clipper seaplanes flew transpacific flights to and from China weekly, and, unlike our similar transpac adventure, tickets cost about $1800. The Pan Am Inn on Peale Island hosted these well-heeled travelers in style and comfort. Those flights abruptly and permanently ceased in December 1941. For the following four years, Wake Island was about as far from heaven as one could imagine.
Alamo of the Pacific
The first Marines arrived in August 1941, joining the Pan Am employees (primarily Guamanian men) and American civilian construction workers who were setting up a U.S. Navy base and airfield. It was peaceful and laid-back duty for a short time, though some Marines saw through the Edenic veneer and described it as “a spit-kit of sand and coral” and “lonely, barren, desolate, flat, and ugly” (1). The atoll had no native population except seabirds and rats and for good reason; there was no fresh water source, and no accessible harbor. It was, however, a strategic military location and as a Pacific war loomed Wake Island swarmed with military personnel, construction workers, and the handful of Pan Am employees. Preparations were far from complete when Japanese bombers arrived December 8, 1941. The Americans held out for 16 days of bombing and offshore shelling, finally succumbing to an overwhelming invasion on December 23. Most on the home front were led to believe that the entire garrison fought to the death like the Texans at the Alamo. In reality 124 were killed in action and about 48 were seriously wounded. The remaining 1,600 unwillingly surrendered, “about 3/4 of them civilians” (1), and became prisoners of war. By May 1942 nearly all these POWs had been shipped to prison camps in Japan and China, though 98 American civilians were kept on Wake Island to repair the airfield and to perform other labor tasks for the Japanese garrison.
Four Years of War and Death
Between December 1941 and the peaceful return of Wake Island to U.S. control in September 1945 tens of thousands of pieces of ordnance rained down upon the desert island from aerial bombers and ships and an untold number of machine gun and rifle rounds were expended. An estimated 1,500 Japanese died during the siege and beach landing, with as many as 600 more in subsequent Allied bombing and shelling raids. An additional 1,500 or more were tragically added through disease and malnutrition when the U.S. Navy effectively blockaded the island from resupply for the duration of the war. It was this latter reality that presaged one of the worst events to occur in Wake Island’s history. After a constant two-day bombardment in October 1943 garrison commander Adm. Shigematsu Sakaibara, who expected an amphibious landing to follow, made a drastic decision.
A Gruesome Discovery
Fewer than 200 yards north of our idyllic swimming hole lies a remote stretch of beach on Wake proper facing the ocean. Historian and former U.S. Army Major Mark E. Hubbs writes, “In March of 2011 a spring storm blew into Wake Island from the sea. …Mr. Sakchai Piemvimol, from the Wake Island Environmental Office found something extraordinary while inspecting the shoreline for erosion. A large segment of a human skull sat in shallow water on the reef flat, only a few feet from the shoreline. … A closer examination revealed more bones, over two hundred, on the reef and the coral gravel beach” (2).
Massacre Beach
Considering that thousands of men died on Wake Island, finding human bones is not necessarily noteworthy. What made these remarkable were the number of bones and the “rusted metal wire still wrapped around one of the leg bones” (2). By October 1943 Adm. Sakaibara was deeply resentful of the 97 Americans (one having been previously executed for stealing food) also trapped on the island with his starving men. The two-day bombardment gave him the pretext to carry out a desperate plan. On the evening of October 7, 1943 he ordered the Americans marched to a beach on the northwestern extremity of Wake proper where they were bound, blindfolded, shot, and dumped into an anti-tank ditch. There they lay until 1945 when in anticipation of U.S. forces “they hastily and clumsily extracted the bones from the ditch and moved [them] to the U.S. cemetery that had been established on Peacock Point after the [1941] battle” (2).
Macabre Memento?
None of this was known to me on my July 1987 visit. When one of my shipmates found an expended rifle or machine gun bullet-casing in the swimming hole it was extremely interesting to us, although casings, shrapnel, and other metal debris still abound just under the coral sand. Shipmate Mike Gamble reported a different discovery. “I don’t remember who it was that found the corroded [artillery] shell, but he found it further out on the reef. I’m pretty sure it was a Japanese 37 mm shell. I do know the guy thought it was a cool souvenir – it was! – but there was no way it was safe to bring on an airplane.” When we asked the terminal personnel about the bullet casing the next morning he mentioned the massacre, and for many years I believed the idyllic swimming hole was also the site of the terrible incident, and that the cartridge shell was a macabre memento of the massacre. It was not, but the gruesome discovery of the bones confirms where that hellish event likely did occur, a mere stone’s-throw from our heavenly swimming spot.
My great uncle William M. Grayson was a B-17 waist gunner during World War II, and he took a trans-Pacific flight similar to mine in November 1941 with stops at Hawaii, Midway, Wake, and Guam enroute to Clark Air Base in the Philippines. Most of those B-17s were destroyed on the ground, and Uncle Billy found himself fighting as infantry on Bataan before facing his own hell on the Death March and subsequent three-year POW ordeal.
God gives us glimpses of eternity. Wake Island in 1987 was surely a hint of what heaven will be like. I thought so then and still think it now. I have since learned that for four years it was a glimpse of hell that the men of Wake on both sides were forced to endure, or died in the midst of. In the light of their sacrifice and the uncertainty of tomorrow, may we humbly strive toward the joys of heaven, and to be a glimpse of that joy to everyone we encounter today.
(1) Quotes, statistics, and background primarily from Given Up For Dead: America’s Heroic Stand at Wake Island by Bill Sloan (Bantam Dell © 2003)
(2) M.E. Hubbs quoted from “Massacre on Wake Island” in Naval History Magazine, February 2001 and “Massacre Site Revealed?” August 2012 erasgone.blogspot.com
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