_by Robert J. Cressman_
It is Monday, 8 December 1941. On Wake Island, a tiny sprung paper-clip
in the Pacific between Hawaii and Guam, Marines of the 1st Defense
Battalion are starting another day of the backbreaking war preparations
that have gone on for weeks. Out in the triangular lagoon formed by the
islets of Peale, Wake, and Wilkes, the huge silver Pan American Airways
_Philippine Clipper_ flying boat roars off the water bound for Guam.
The trans-Pacific flight will not be completed.
Word of war comes around 0700. Captain Henry S. Wilson, Army Signal
Corps, on the island to support the flight ferry of B-17 Flying
Fortresses from Hawaii to the Philippines, half runs, half walks toward
the tent of Major James P. S. Devereux, commander of the battalion’s
Wake Detachment. Captain Wilson reports that Hickam Field in Hawaii has
been raided.
Devereux immediately orders a “Call to Arms.” He quickly assembles his
officers, tells them that war has come, that the Japanese have attacked
Oahu, and that Wake “could expect the same thing in a very short time.”
Meanwhile, the senior officer on the atoll, Commander Winfred S.
Cunningham, Officer in Charge, Naval Activities, Wake, learned of
the Japanese surprise attack as he was leaving the mess hall at the
contractors’ cantonment (Camp 2) on the northern leg of Wake. He
ordered the defense battalion to battle stations, but allowed the
civilians to go on with their work, figuring that their duties at sites
around the atoll provided good dispersion. He then contacted John
B. Cooke, PanAm’s airport manager and requested that he recall the
_Philippine Clipper_. Cooke sent the prearranged code telling John H.
Hamilton, the captain of the Martin 130 flying boat, of the outbreak of
war.
Marines from Camp 1, on the southern leg of Wake, were soon embarked in
trucks and moving to their stations on Wake, Wilkes, and Peale islets.
Marine Gunner Harold C. Borth and Sergeant James W. Hall climbed to the
top of the camp’s water tower and manned the observation post there. In
those early days radar was new and not even set up on Wake, so early
warning was dependent on keen eyesight. Hearing might have contributed
elsewhere, but on the atoll the thunder of nearby surf masked the sound
of aircraft engines until they were nearly overhead. Marine Gunner
John Hamas, the Wake Detachment’s munitions officer, unpacked Browning
automatic rifles, Springfield ’03 rifles, and ammunition for issue to
the civilians who had volunteered for combat duty. That task completed,
Hamas and a working party picked up 75 cases of hand grenades for
delivery around the islets. Soon thereafter, other civilians attached
themselves to Marine Fighting Squadron (VMF) 211, which had been on
Wake since 4 December.
Offshore, neither _Triton_ (SS 201) nor _Tambor_ (SS 198), submarines
that had been patrolling offshore since 25 November, knew of
developments on Wake or Oahu. They both had been submerged when word
was passed and thus out of radio communication with Pearl Harbor. The
transport _William Ward Burrows_ (AP 6), which had left Oahu bound for
Wake on 27 November, learned of the Japanese attack on Pearl while she
was still 425 miles from her destination. She was rerouted to Johnston
Island.
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