Amidst the chaos, Devereux groped for information about the progress
of the battle. At some point, he received word from one of the few
positions which had retained wire contact with his command post,
Corporal McAnally’s machine gun section, which was located at the
eastern end of the airstrip. McAnally reported that the Japanese were
advancing up the shore road, apparently intent upon launching a thrust
up the other prong of Wake. With one unit besetting Putnam’s at the
airstrip, another Japanese unit skirted Putnam and Hanna and was headed
into the triangular end of Peacock Point.
McAnally, establishing contact with the .50-caliber machine guns on
the east shore of Wake, some 400 yards south, carried on a “resolute,
well-coordinated defense” which stymied the enemy in the area. Perhaps
more important, McAnally served as Devereux’s eyes and ears on that
portion of the battlefield.
On Wilkes, Private First Class Ray’s defense of his position equalled
that of McAnally’s. Captain Platt, having lost communication with his
own posts and also with the defense battalion command post, set out on
a personal reconnaissance mission at about 0430. He crawled through
the thick underbrush and picked his way across the rocky beach, until,
at about 0500, he came to a place east of gun no. 10 where he could
see _Special Naval Landing Force_ men massed in and about Battery F’s
guns. Soon thereafter, while clambering back to the gun, Platt met
Sergeant Raymond L. Coulson and ordered him to gather two .30-caliber
machine gun crews and their guns at Kuku Point (where they had been
sent during the false alarm earlier that morning), along with the
searchlight crew and everyone else he could find, and to return to gun
no. 10.
Devereux, still isolated from his units and literally in the dark about
the actions on Wilkes and those in the vicinity of Camp 1, attempted
as best he could to keep the island commander informed. Cunningham,
consequently, also had scant comprehension of the way the fighting was
progressing in those areas. At 0500, about the time Captain Platt was
reconnoitering the Japanese position on Wilkes, Cunningham radioed
Commandant 14th Naval District, “Enemy on island. Issue in doubt.”
Poindexter, meanwhile, satisfied that Camp 1 was being defended as well
as possible, proceeded to the mobile reserve gun positions on the west
side of the airfield. Japanese machine gun and mortar fire, accompanied
by “much shouting” and “numerous pyrotechnic flares,” began to fall
around those positions, partially disabling one U.S. gun section. As
the sky over Wake began to lighten with the dawn, Poindexter became
concerned about the enemy fire that had begun to land near his men, and
also that the enemy troops infiltrating the woods might outflank the
mobile reserve. He ordered a retirement toward Camp 1. The sections
alternated in covering each other throughout the movement, maintaining
a steady volume of fire. Reaching Camp 1 after daylight, Poindexter
established a north-south line astride the shore road, east of a
prominent water tank.
While Poindexter deliberated the situation facing his force, Japanese
movement along the east shore road increasingly pressed Corporal
McAnally’s group. McAnally communicated his difficult situation to
Devereux’s command post. Japanese hand grenades and small arms fire
made life difficult for McAnally’s band, which nevertheless held its
ground and broke up several assaults.
Around 0530, Devereux told Major Potter to form a final defensive line
astride the north-south road, which was being threatened from the
south by the advancing Japanese. Calling Godbold’s Battery D into the
action soon thereafter, Devereux committed his last reserve troops
into the action on the east side of Wake. Aware of Corporal McAnally’s
predicament, Devereux ordered the corporal’s combat group to withdraw
northward, toward the command post, to join Major Potter’s detachment.
On Wilkes at about that time, Sergeant Coulson rejoined Captain Platt
with the two machine gun crews and guns, and eight riflemen. The
surf that had masked the sound made by the invaders now worked to
the advantage of the hard-pressed defenders. Along with the sputter
and crackle of gunfire along the south shore of Wake and on Wilkes,
it prevented the Japanese from discovering Platt’s briefing of his
Marines for the assault on the abandoned Battery F position. In the
waning darkness, Platt and his men crept toward the enemy, reaching a
point less than 50 yards away from the abandoned 3-inchers. On Platt’s
signal, the two machine guns chattered and spat toward the enemy
position. His skirmishers charged forward and soon began engaging the
Japanese--who, with no security on the west, were taken completely by
surprise, and whose only light machine guns had been emplaced facing
eastward, toward the old channel.
Almost simultaneously with Platt’s assault, but not at all coordinated
with it, McAlister (who lost contact with the Wilkes strongpoint
commander soon after the enemy landing) and his men encountered and
engaged a small enemy patrol on the beach ahead of them, killing one
man before the rest took cover behind some coral boulders. While
flanking fire pinned down the enemy, Gunner McKinstry started forward
to clean out that pocket of resistance. McAlister stopped him, but as
he was telling the Gunner to detail one of the men to do it instead,
Corporal William C. Halstead climbed atop the rocks and slew the
remainder of the enemy.
Platt’s and McAlister’s assaults cleaned out the Japanese in the 3-inch
gun position. Platt and McAlister reorganized their units and searched
for any enemy troops who might have escaped. They encountered no
further resistance and took two prisoners, who had been wounded and had
feigned death. The Marines counted at least 94 dead Japanese. American
losses included nine Marines and two civilians killed; four Marines and
one civilian wounded.
Meanwhile (shortly before dawn) on Wake, Japanese troops surrounded
Kliewer’s position. The four Marines, however, armed with only two
Thompsons, three .45-caliber pistols, and two boxes of hand grenades,
repelled multiple bayonet charges in the darkness. Dawn revealed a
full-scale enemy attempt to carry the post, but Kliewer and his three
shipmates, backed up by the two .50-caliber machine guns 150 yards
behind them, killed many of the attacking Japanese and continued to
hold their ground.
On Peale, with the departure of Captain Godbold and the Marines of
Battery D for the island’s command post on Wake, First Lieutenant
Kessler became strongpoint commander. At dawn, he scanned the other
islets. On Wilkes, he discerned Japanese flags whipping in the
breeze--one particularly large one flying where Battery F had been
(flags which Platt’s men would remove shortly thereafter). Kessler
reported his observations to Devereux, who had not heard a word from
Platt since around 0300. The report prompted Devereux to fear that
Wilkes had fallen.
As he scanned Wake at about 0600, however, Kessler observed the masts
of what proved to be _Patrol Boat No. 32_, which was aground on the
south shore of Wake. Kessler requested permission to fire at the ship.
His request was approved, but he was admonished to avoid firing into
friendly troops. Kessler ordered his 5-inchers to open fire. The first
salvo clipped off the mainmast. Then Battery B’s gunners lowered their
sights to hit the ship itself. They could see only the funnel tops
over the intervening island. Twenty-five minutes later, at 0625, the
command post ordered Battery B to cease fire, their target having been
“demolished.”
Twenty minutes later, Kessler observed four “battleships, or super
heavy cruisers” (probably the heavy cruisers _Aoba_, _Kinugasa_,
_Furutaka_, and _Kako_) off Heel Point, moving westward but remaining
well out of range. Those ships lay 10 kilometers offshore and shelled
the atoll, but achieved little success.
Additional Japanese forces were headed for Wake. At 0612, off to the
northwest, _Soryu_ turned into the wind and launched 12 planes. The
day’s air operations had begun. In less than an hour, the planes were
over the island.
Throughout the battle, Major Devereux had, as well as he could, kept
the island commander informed of the progress of the assault. While the
Marines, assisted by the sailors and civilians, had been attempting
to stem the tide, most of the news which trickled into Cunningham’s
command post boded ill. At 0652, he sent out a message reflecting the
situation as he knew it: “Enemy on island. Several ships plus transport
moving in. Two DD aground.” That was at 1032, 22 December 1941, on
Pearl Harbor. It was to be the last message from the Wake Island
defenders.
At Pearl Harbor, at about the time that Cunningham was sending that
last message, Vice Admiral Pye had reached making a decision. He
concluded that if Task Force 14 encountered anything but a weaker
Japanese force, the battle would be fought on Japanese terms while
within range of shore-based planes and with American forces having
only enough fuel for two days of high speed steaming. Like Brown, Pye
believed that a damaged ship was a lost ship, especially 2,000 miles
from Pearl Harbor. The risk, he believed, was too great. He ordered the
recall of Task Forces 14 and 11, and directed Task Force 8 to cover the
retirement.
Frank Jack Fletcher’s Task Force 14, meanwhile, was right on schedule,
and was in fact further west than Pye knew. His ships fully fueled and
ready for battle, Fletcher planned to detach the _Tangier_ and two
destroyers for the final run-in to Wake, while the pilots on board
the _Saratoga_ prepared themselves for the fight ahead. Fletcher, not
one to shirk a fight, received the news of the recall angrily. He
ripped his hat from his head and disgustedly hurled it to the deck.
Rear Admiral Aubrey W. Fitch, Fletcher’s air commander, similarly
felt the fist-tightening frustration of the recall. He retired from
the _Saratoga_’s flag bridge as the talk there reached “mutinous”
proportions.
As word of the recall circulated throughout Task Force 14, reactions
were pretty much the same. Pye’s recall order left no latitude for
discussion or disobedience; those who argued later that Fletcher should
have used the Nelsonian “blind eye” obviously failed to recognize that,
in the sea off Copenhagen, the British admiral could see his opponents.
Fletcher and Fitch, then 430 miles east of Wake, could not see theirs.
They had no idea what enemy forces they might encounter. The Japanese
had beaten them to Wake.
[Illustration: MAP 6