Meanwhile, after word of the enemy landing reached Pearl Harbor, Vice
Admiral Pye convened a meeting of his staff. By 0700 (22 December,
Hawaiian time), having received further word of developments at Wake,
Pye estimated that a relief of the island looked impossible, given
the prevailing situation, and directed that the _Tangier_ should be
diverted toward the east. With the relief mission abandoned, should
his forces attack the enemy forces in the vicinity of Wake? Or should
American forces be withdrawn to the east? He feared that the timing of
the Japanese carrier strikes and the landing then in progress indicated
that the enemy had “estimated closely the time at which our relief
expedition might arrive and may, if the general location of our carrier
groups is estimated, be waiting in force.” American forces could
inflict extensive damage upon Japanese, Pye believed, if the enemy did
not know of the presence of the U.S. carrier task forces. They had not
yet seen action, though, and no one could overestimate the danger of
having ships damaged 2,000 miles from the nearest repair facilities--“a
damaged ship is a lost ship,” Brown had commented in Task Force 11’s
war diary. Damage to the carriers could leave the Hawaiian Islands
open to a major enemy thrust. “We cannot,” Pye declared, “afford such
losses at present.”
Two courses of action existed--to direct Task Force 14 to attack
Japanese forces in the vicinity of Wake, with Task Forces 8 and 11
covering Task Force 14’s retirement, or to retire all forces without
any attempt to attack the enemy. These choices weighed heavily on
Pye’s mind. If American forces hit the Japanese ships at Wake and
suffered the loss of a carrier air group in the process, Pye deemed the
“offensive spirit” shown by the Navy as perhaps worth the sacrifice.
However, in the midst of his deliberations, shortly after 0736, Pye
received a message from the CNO which noted that recent developments
had emphasized that Wake was a “liability” and authorized Pye to
“evacuate Wake with appropriate demolition.” With Japanese forces on
the island, though, Pye felt that capitulation was only a matter of
time. “The real question at issue,” Pye thought, “is, shall we take
the chance of the loss of a carrier group to attempt to attack the
enemy forces in the vicinity of Wake?” Radio intelligence from the
previous day linked “CruDiv 8 ... CarDiv 2” and, erroneously, “BatDiv
3” (consisting of two battleships) with the forces off of Wake. A pair
of _Kongo_-class fast battleships, supported by carriers and heavy
cruisers would easily have overmatched Fletcher’s Task Force 14.
In the meantime, Japanese cruisers--probably the _Yubari_, _Tenryu_,
and _Tatsuta_--had begun shelling Wake, further discomfitting the
defenders. Despite Lewis’ Battery E firing “prearranged 3-inch air
burst concentrations” over the Japanese beachhead, the enemy continued
to press steadily toward VMF-211’s position around Hanna’s 3-inch gun.
Major Putnam, already wounded in the jaw, with blood from his wound
staining the backs of the snapshots of his little daughters, which he
carried in his pocket, formed his final line. “This,” he said, “is as
far as we go.”
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