Hi I'm the History Guy, I
have a degree in history, I love history and if you love history
too this is the channel for you. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor
December 7th of 1941, that was just the start of a larger campaign. Within seven hours
Japanese forces were besieging the British in Malaya, Hong Kong and Singapore, and attacking
American forces in the Philippine Islands, on Guam and on the tiny atoll of Wake
Island. Some of these were longer campaigns, but some were short battles, and those battles
were overshadowed by the attack on Pearl Harbor. And yet they represent the first efforts of
American ground forces in the Second World War, and these small forces largely cut off from aid
from the United States deserve to be remembered. And so today we are going to remember the fierce,
nearly forgotten 1941 defense of Wake Island, by an outnumbered, outgunned force of
marines, sailors, soldiers and civilians. Wake Island is a tiny triangle-shaped coral atoll
encompassing less than three square miles of land. The United States claimed the uninhabited island
in 1899, thinking that it could be a good coaling station for Navy ships between Hawaii and the
Philippine Islands. In 1936 Pan American Airways gained a lease in order to build a weigh station
on their trans-pacific flying Clippers route. The Pan American Airways hotel was the first permanent
settlement in the history of Wake Island. Then in 1941, fearing a Japanese buildup in the Pacific,
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt ordered that Wake Island be built into a military installation
including the construction of an airfield. By December of 1941, the island held 450 officers
and men of the first marine defense battalion, a marine squadron of 12 F4F Wildcat fighter
aircraft, 68 US Navy personnel, five US Army personnel and over 1200 civilians, mostly civil
engineers working on the construction of the base in a few Pan American Airlines personnel. On the
morning of December 8th, Pan American Airlines had just sent their Philippine clipper into the air
destined for Guam. The base was just waking up, when at 7:00 a.m. news first arrived
of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Knowing that Wake Island would soon be attacked,
the base commander, Navy commander Winfield Scott Cunningham, ordered the rings on the island to
battle stations, asked Penn American Airlines to recall the Philippine clipper and sent four of
the F4F Wildcats into the air to look for enemy aircraft. Unfortunately because of heavy cloud
cover the four Wildcats missed the first Japanese attack of 34 land-based bombers, the Japanese
devastated the airfield, it destroyed the eight Wildcats that were still on the ground and killed
much of the ground crew and did a lot of damage to the Pan American facility. The Marines fired
back as best they could with their 12 three-inch anti-aircraft guns, but because of the altitude of
the Japanese planes they were difficult to target, they didn't shoot any down but they did
manage to damage eight of the planes. Amazingly the Pan AM clipper was undamaged and
was able to make it out with its passengers and many of the Pan American employees. The airfield
was devastated and had only 4 operable aircraft and many of the ground crew were dead. Fortunately
many of the civilian engineers were volunteering to help with the defense and there happened to
be a couple of mechanics among them who proved to be invaluable at keeping the airplanes in the
air. The Japanese air attacks continued on the 9th and 10th, doing more damage to facilities,
causing some casualties and again the Marines fired back not shooting down any aircraft
but damaging several of the Japanese planes. The Japanese commander, Rear Admiral Sadamichi
Kajioka, assumed that the Wake Island defenders had been devastated by all the bombing attacks,
and so he planned his land invasion to occur upon December 11th. The force that he brought
was substantial, he had three light cruisers, six destroyers, two patrol boats and two
transports. To defend against this attack the Marines had six 5.5 inch naval guns that had
been rescued from a refit of the battleship Texas, and of course the four operable F4F Wildcats.
The Marines held their fire until the Japanese ships were in close and when they opened up, it
was a devastating barrage, the Japanese ships raked by the 5.5 inch guns that they didn't even
know that the Marines had. Two shells struck into the magazine the Japanese Destroyer Hiyate and
it exploded with a loss of all hands. As the ships were trying to retreat under fire, a bomb
from one of the Wildcats landed amongst a bunch of depth charges on the Destroyer Kisaragii
and it too exploded with a loss of all hands. Stunned by the ferocious attack, Kajioka was
forced to withdraw. This was the first Japanese naval defeat of the Second World War and it was
the only amphibious landing of the Second World War to be repelled by shore guns. Kajioka,
who was humbled by the sizable casualties, was forced to retreat and ask for support
from the fleet that had attacked Pearl Harbor. Japanese air attacks continued and slowly the
four wildcat fighters were put out of commission, damaged beyond repair, but before the little air
force was grounded they had shot down at least twenty-one Japanese aircraft. The defenders
of Wake were hoping for a relief force from the United States, but after Pearl Harbor
the Navy was stretched thin in the Pacific. A relief force was put together but it was still
hundreds of miles away when Kajioka returned for his second attack with a significantly
reinforced fleet, that included two of the carriers that had been at Pearl Harbor, the
Hiryu and the Soryu, and four heavy cruisers. The final Japanese attack came on December 23rd,
supported by massive air attacks from the aircraft of the two aircraft carriers, and still the
outnumbered defenders managed to destroy two of the patrol craft, those were converted Destroyers
that were used to land the Japanese troops. The fight was brief and bitter, the Marines held
out through the night and into the next day, but as the fight went on it was clear
that there was nothing else to gain and finally commander Cunningham ordered his
troops to lay down arms and surrender. By the time the fight was over the Wake
Island defenders had taken 171 casualties, killed and wounded, 70 of the dead were civilians.
But on the other side the Japanese had taken more than 1,100 casualties, including the crews
of the two Destroyers, in addition they had lost two Destroyers, two patrol boats,
a transport, more than 20 aircraft and dozens of other aircraft and eight other
ships were severely damaged in the fight. 360 United States Marines, 60 United States
Navy personnel, 5 United States Army personnel and 1,104 American civilians went into Japanese
captivity that day. All but a hundred were sent to the Japanese mainland where they endure the
horrors of Japanese prisoner of war camps during the war, but a hundred of the civilians
were kept on Wake Island as slave labor, and then in 1943 fearing that an American invasion
of the island was imminent the Japanese commander at the time, Admiral Shigematsu Sakaibara had the
ninety-eight survivors from that group executed. It was a war crime for which
Sakaibara was eventually tried, convicted and hanged. The invasion never
came, the island was only handed back to the United States after the end of the
war, officially surrendered September 4th 1945. The air force is in charge of the island
now they still operate the airstrip as a refueling site and there's a small missile defense site,
there are 94 permanent residents of Wake Island. The Wake island defenders didn't necessarily
change the war, but they did represent to an American public shocked after the attacks
on Pearl Harbor that Americans really could fight, and to the Japanese who found great success
early in the war that well it might not be as easy as they thought it would be. Certainly though, the
Wake Island defenders proved that they deserved to be remembered because.. because they did their
duty, as well as anyone could ask of them. I'm the History Guy. I hope you enjoyed this
edition of my channel, 5 minutes of history, short snippets of forgotten history 5 to 10
minutes long. If you enjoyed this then please click the like button there on your left.
If you have any questions or comments then write them in the comment section and I would
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