Call to Arms

Preface

The first surrender of United States military forces in World War II-the first time, in fact, since the Civil War that American military forces went forward under a white flag to deliver American soil over to an enemy-took place on a tiny but militarily useful dot of volcanic rock in the Pacific Ocean, Wake Island, shortly after the Japanese struck the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

In 1939, with war on the horizon, the U.S. Navy began to pay particular attention to the tiny atoll in the middle of the Pacific. This almost infinitesimal U.S. possession was 450 miles from the Bikini atoll; 620 miles from the Marshalls, which the Japanese would certainly use for military purposes; 1,023 miles from Midway Island; and 1,300 miles from Guam. The USS Nitro was ordered to Wake to make preliminary engineering studies with a view to turning the atoll into a base for land (which of course included carrier-based) aircraft and submarines, and to fortify the island against any Japanese assault.

In 1940, Congress appropriated the funds. On 19 August 1941, 6 officers and 173 enlisted then of the 1st Defense Battalion, USMC, were put ashore on Wake Island from the USS Regulus. The first of what would be about 1,200 construction workers landed a few days later, and in October, Major James P. S. Devereux, USMC, arrived from Hawaii to take command.

Devereux brought with him two five-inch Naval cannon (which had been removed from obsolescent and scrapped battleships); four three-inch antiaircraft cannon (only one of which had the required fire-control equipment); twenty-four.50-caliber machine guns; and a large number (probably about one hundred) of air- and water-cooled.30-caliber Browning machine guns. And, of course, a stock of ammunition for his ordnance.

Nine Marine officers and two hundred enlisted then from the Navy base at Pearl Harbor arrived on 2 November 1941, bringing the strength of the 1st Defense Battalion to approximately half of that provided for in the table of organization and equipment. On 28 November 1941, Commander Winfield Scott Cunningham, USN, was detached from the aircraft tender USS Wright (after the Wright Brothers) with nine Navy officers and fifty-eight sailors to Wake to take control of the air station already under construction.

As senior officer, Cunningham replaced Devereux as Commander of United States Forces, Wake Island.

A five- thousand-foot runway was completed, and U.S. Army B-17 aircraft began to use Wake Island as a refueling stop en route to Guam, although it was necessary to fill the aircraft tanks by hand-pumping avgas from fifty-five-gallon barrels.

On 3 December 1941, the USS Enterprise launched at sea twelve Grumman F4F fighters, of Marine Fighter Squadron VMF-211, under Major Paul Putnam, USMC. They landed on the Wake Island landing strip that afternoon, and steps were immediately taken to begin bulldozing revetments for the aircraft.

On Sunday, 7 December 1941 (Saturday, 6 December 1941 in Hawaii) Major Devereux gave his command the day off. His Marines swam in the surf, played Softball, and many of them- most of the young, recently recruited enlisted men-hurried to complete letters home. The letters would be carried to civilization aboard the Pan American Philippine Clipper moored in the lagoon, which would take off at first light for Guam. (Pan American had been using Wake as a refueling stop).

Reveille sounded at 0600, 8 December 1941. While the Marines had their breakfast, the Pan American crew prepared the Philippine Clipper for flight.

At 0650, the radio operator on duty at the air station communications section, attempting to establish contact with Hickam Field, Hawaii, began to receive uncoded messages, which did not follow established message-transmission procedures, to the effect that the island of Oahu was under attack. He informed the duty officer, who went to Major Devereux.

At 0655, the Philippine Clipper rose from the lagoon and gradually disappeared from sight in the bright blue morning sky.

When he was told of the "Oahu under attack" message, Major Devereux attempted to contact Commander Cunningham by telephone, but there was no answer.

When he hung up the telephone, it immediately rang again. It was the communications shack; there was an urgent message from Hawaii, now being decoded.

"Has the Clipper left?"

"Yes, sir."

"Call it back," Devereux ordered, and then sent for his field music-his bugler.

"Yes, sir?"

"Sound 'call to arms,' " Major Devereux ordered.

Admiral Husband Kimmel's Pacific Fleet, and the navy base at Pearl Harbor, had been grievously wounded by the Japanese attack on December 7, 1941, but that is not the same thing as destroyed. The battleship force of the Pacific Fleet had been essentially wiped out at its moorings ("Battleship Row") at Pearl Harbor, together with a number of other men-of-war and supply ships, and there had been great loss of aircraft and materiel.

But the Fleet was not totally lost, nor were its supplies.

There were three aircraft carriers available-the Saratoga, the Enterprise, and the Lexington-as well as a number of cruisers, plus a large number of smaller men-of-war.

On December 13, 1941, Admiral Kimmel (who expected to be relieved at any minute as the Navy, and indeed the nation, searched for somebody on whom to blame the Pearl Harbor disaster) ordered Rear Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher to reinforce Wake Island.

Fletcher put out the same day from Pearl Harbor with the aircraft carrier Saratoga; the cruisers Minneapolis, Astoria, and San Francisco; nine destroyers; a fleet oiler, and the transport Tangier.

Marine Fighter Squadron VMF-211, equipped with Grumman F4F-3 Wildcats, was aboard the Saratoga (in addition to Saratoga's own aircraft), and the 4th Defense Battalion, USMC, was aboard the Tangier. The relief force carried with it nine thousand shells for Devereux's old five-inch battleship cannon, twelve thousand three-inch shells for his antiaircraft cannon, and three million rounds of belted.50-caliber machine-gun ammunition.

The aircraft carrier Enterprise, and its accompanying cruisers and destroyers, was ordered to make a diversionary raid on the Japanese-held Marshall Islands. The carrier Lexington and its accompanying vessels put to sea to repel, should it come, a second Japanese attack on the Hawaiian Islands.

At 2100 hours, 22 December 1941, a radio message was flashed from Pearl Harbor, ordering the Saratoga Wake Island relief force back to Hawaii. It had been decided at the highest echelons of command that Wake Island was not worth the risk of losing what was in fact one third of U.S. Naval strength in the Pacific. When the message was received, the Saratoga was five hundred miles (thirty-three hours steaming time) from Wake.

At shortly after one in the morning of December 23, 1941, Japanese troops landed on Wake, near the airstrip.

That afternoon, his ammunition gone, his heavy weapons out of commission, and greatly outnumbered, Major Devereux was forced to agree with Commander Cunningham that further resistance was futile and that surrender was necessary to avoid a useless bloodbath.

Major Devereux had to roam the island personally to order the last pockets of resistance to lay down their arms.

Four hundred seventy officers and then of the Marine Corps and Navy and 1,146 American civilian workmen entered Japanese -captivity.