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In 1941, Japan Sailed Into Wake Island Expecting No Fight. Nobody Warned Them About the 5-Inch Guns. — Transcript

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0:00Before dawn on the 11th of December
0:021941,
0:03a Marine major stood beside a field
0:05telephone on a coral atoll in the
0:07central Pacific and watched a line of
0:09Japanese warships come at him out of the
0:11dark. He had six old 5-in guns salvaged
0:15off scrapped American warships. Coming
0:17at him were cruisers, destroyers, and a
0:20landing force whose officers had been
0:21told this place was already beaten.
0:24The ships closed to 8,000 yd, then
0:275,000. His gun crews were ready, waiting
0:30for the order to fire. The major said
0:32nothing. He let them come closer.
0:35What was he waiting for? And why, 2
0:38weeks later, would the Japanese come
0:39back for Wake Island with aircraft
0:41carriers?
0:43To understand what that major was
0:45waiting for and why it mattered so much,
0:48you have to start with the island itself
0:50and with how little he had to hold it.
0:52Wake is not one island. It's three low
0:55scraps of coral sitting on the rim of a
0:57drowned volcano arranged in a rough V
1:00around a shallow lagoon. The main
1:02island, Wake proper, forms the bottom of
1:04the V. Peale sits off the northern arm,
1:07Wilkes off the southern one, with narrow
1:09channels between them. The highest
1:11ground on the whole atoll stands about
1:1321 ft above the sea. There is no high
1:16ground to hide behind and nowhere to
1:18fall back to. There is only the reef,
1:20the beach, and the water beyond it. And
1:23it sat more than 2,000 mi west of Pearl
1:26Harbor, which meant that whatever
1:27happened there would happen alone.
1:30In 1941, the United States was building
1:33Wake into a forward base, an airfield
1:35and a seaplane anchorage on the long
1:37line that ran out toward Guam and the
1:39Philippines. A naval board had picked it
1:41in 1938 as a position that could screen
1:44Pearl Harbor and reach west into
1:46Japanese waters. To the Japanese, that
1:49was exactly the problem. Wake sat on top
1:52of their Marshall Islands perimeter like
1:53a watchtower, and they wanted it gone.
1:56Defending it was a job that barely
1:58existed on paper. The ground force was
2:01the Wake detachment of the first defense
2:02battalion, United States Marine Corps,
2:05under Major James Devereux, about 450
2:08Marines. There was a Marine fighting
2:10squadron, VMF-211, under Major Paul
2:13Putnam, with 12 Grumman Wildcats that
2:15had flown in off the carrier Enterprise
2:17on the 4th of December, a week before
2:19the shooting started. A few dozen
2:21sailors, a handful of Army radio men,
2:24and over all of it, a Navy commander
2:26named Winfield Scott Cunningham, who had
2:28arrived to run the island less than 2
2:30[music] weeks before the war reached it.
2:32Then, there were the civilians, more
2:35than 1,100 construction workers, men
2:37from a contracting firm hired to pour
2:39the runways and dredge the channel,
2:41living in a work camp with their tools
2:43and their bulldozers, and no reason on
2:45Earth to expect a battle.
2:47Devereux did not have enough men to
2:49fight [music] the island he was given.
2:51There was no radar, none. So, the only
2:54warning of an air attack was a Marine on
2:55a water tower with a pair of eyes and
2:57the weather. [music]
2:59The beaches ran for miles, and the guns
3:01were undermanned. Dozens of men had no
3:03rifle to carry. The historian who
3:05studied the garrison closest reckoned
3:07Devereux had about a third of the men
3:09the position actually needed.
3:11He found out how little that was at
3:1311:58 in the morning on the 8th of
3:15December. The news of Pearl Harbor had
3:18reached Wake a few hours earlier in a
3:20broken, uncoded radio message. Devereux
3:23was shaving when it came. He put down
3:25the razor, sounded call to arms, and
3:27sent his men to their positions. For
3:29hours, nothing happened. Then, out of a
3:32bank of rain cloud off the southern
3:34shore, a formation of twin-engine
3:36bombers came in low, about 2,000 ft, 36
3:40of them by the Marine Corps count. They
3:42came in under the clouds where no one
3:44could see them until they were on top of
3:45the airfield. A civilian watching from
3:47the brush said it looked like the wheels
3:49were dropping off the airplanes. Those
3:51were the bombs. They walked [music]
3:53straight across the parked Wildcats and
3:55the fuel farm and the men standing in
3:57the open. In a few minutes, seven of the
3:59eight fighters on the ground were
4:00wrecked and the eighth was holed. The
4:03aviation gasoline went up in a tower of
4:05flame. Of the 50-odd men who serviced
4:08and flew those planes, more than [music]
4:09half were dead or wounded by the time
4:11the bombers turned for home. One of the
4:13pilots, Lieutenant Robert Conderman, was
4:15running for his fighter when the blast
4:17caught him and pinned him under the
4:18burning wreck. Men came to pull him out.
4:21He waved them off and told them to go
4:23help the others first, [music] the ones
4:24who might still be saved. They did. He
4:27died that night. In 12 minutes, half of
4:30Wake's air force was gone
4:31>> [music]
4:31>> and the real fight had not even started.
4:34That was the morning the men on Wake
4:36stopped waiting for the war and [music]
4:37understood that it had already arrived.
4:40Before we get to the morning that
4:41answered that question, subscribe and
4:43stay with me because the way this story
4:45actually ends is nothing like the
4:47version on the wartime posters and the
4:49truth of it only comes clear in the last
4:51few minutes. [music]
4:53So, what did they have left to fight
4:54with? Six guns. They were 5-in naval
4:58guns, the secondary batteries off old
5:00American warships taken out of service
5:02years before and shipped to Wake to be
5:04set in concrete as coast defense. Each
5:06one through a shell weighing about 50 lb
5:09out to a range of roughly 17,000 [music]
5:11yd fast and flat. On the deck of a
5:14battleship, these had been the weapons
5:16that kept enemy destroyers at arms
5:18length. On Wake, they were the whole
5:20artillery park. They were split into
5:22three batteries of two guns each. One
5:25battery to each corner of the atoll so
5:27that between them they could cover every
5:28approach to the reef. Battery A sat on
5:31Peacock Point, the southern tip of Wake
5:33proper under First Lieutenant Clarence
5:35Barringer, a man his friends called
5:37Barney. Battery B stood on Toki Point
5:40out on Peale under First Lieutenant
5:42Woodrow Kessler and Battery L held Kuku
5:45Point on Wilkes, the southwest corner,
5:47under First Lieutenant John McAllister.
5:50Remember that last one. Kukuk Point on
5:52Wilkes is where this story turns.
5:55The guns were old and they showed it.
5:57They sat in the open on their concrete
5:59mounts, some of them without even a
6:01sandbag wall around the crew, nothing
6:03but netting and brush for cover. Their
6:05fire control, the instruments that
6:07measured the range to a moving ship, was
6:09worse. The rangefinders were First World
6:11War equipment and by the time the fleet
6:13arrived, most of them were already
6:15broken. One had been smashed in an air
6:17raid. The rest were wrecked on the 10th
6:19when a bomb hit a civilian dynamite dump
6:21on Wilkes and set off more than 120 tons
6:24of explosive in a single blast that
6:27flattened Battery L's instruments and
6:29very nearly flattened Battery L. So, the
6:31gunners who were about to fight a fleet
6:33would be doing it the hard way, guessing
6:35the range and correcting by watching
6:37where the splashes fell. Backing the
6:395-in guns were a dozen 3-in
6:41anti-aircraft guns, a scattering of
6:43machine guns and a few searchlights,
6:45much of it short-handed. On one
6:47anti-aircraft gun, the entire crew was
6:50civilian volunteers, construction
6:52workers who had picked up a job they
6:53were never hired to do. Devereux had
6:56worked out his plan for the 5-in guns
6:58and it came down to a single hard
6:59decision. The enemy would arrive with
7:02more ships, bigger guns and longer reach
7:04than anything he had. If he opened fire
7:07the moment he saw them at long range, he
7:09would announce exactly where his
7:11batteries were and achieve nothing. And
7:13then the warships would stand off beyond
7:15his reach and pound him to pieces at
7:17their leisure. Surprise was the only
7:20advantage he owned. He decided he would
7:22spend it all at once, up close and not a
7:25second early.
7:26He got his chance to practice patience
7:28over the next 2 days because the bombers
7:30kept coming. On the 9th, the island shot
7:33back for the first time. The 3-in guns
7:35clawing at the formations overhead. On
7:38the 10th, a captain in the fighter
7:40squadron named Henry Elrod, a Georgian
7:42the men called Hammering Hank, climbed
7:44his battered Wildcat into a wave of
7:46bombers alone and was credited with
7:48knocking two of them down. Four
7:50fighters. That was what VMF-211 had left
7:53after 3 days. Four worn-out Wildcats
7:56held together by mechanics who were
7:58cannibalizing the wrecks for parts with
8:00bomb racks improvised by hand because
8:02the planes had arrived without them.
8:04That was the island on the night of the
8:0510th of December. Half its aircraft
8:08gone, its rangefinders smashed, its men
8:103 days without real sleep, waiting in
8:13the dark for an invasion everyone knew
8:15was coming. And it was coming that
8:17night. Admiral Kajioka's force came down
8:19from the Marshall Islands with the
8:21confidence of men collecting on a debt.
8:23Three light cruisers, his flagship
8:25Yubari in the lead with Tenryu and
8:27Tatsuta behind. Six destroyers, two old
8:30destroyers converted to carry troops
8:32with about 450 naval landing soldiers
8:35crammed aboard. The men who were
8:36supposed to wait ashore and finish it.
8:39Transports, submarines out ahead. The
8:41plan was simple. Shell the island at
8:44first light, run the landing boats in,
8:46take the airfield, and raise the flag by
8:48breakfast. The sea had other ideas
8:50first. It was running heavy, and as the
8:52Japanese tried to swing out their
8:54landing boats in the dark, the swells
8:56swamped them and tipped men into the
8:57water. Just after midnight, the United
9:00States submarine, the Triton, lurking
9:02off the atoll, fired four torpedoes at a
9:04shadow that was one of Kajioka's picket
9:06destroyers. They were the first
9:08torpedoes any Pacific Fleet submarine
9:10fired in the war. They missed, but they
9:13were a sign that the water around Wake
9:15was not as empty as the admiral thought.
9:17Around 3:00 in the morning, the Marines
9:19on the water tower and the gun positions
9:21began to see it. Lights low on the
9:23horizon, flickering and moving. Shapes
9:26resolving out of the dark. The fleet was
9:28here.
9:29So, here was the question the whole
9:31island now turned on. The same one from
9:33before dawn. A major beside a telephone,
9:36his gunners ready, and a fleet closing
9:38in out of the dark. What was he waiting
9:40for? At 5:00, the flagship Yubari closed
9:43to about 8,000 [music] yd off Peacock
9:45Point and opened fire. And then began
9:48steaming back and forth along the shore,
9:50raking the island with her broadsides on
9:52each pass.
9:53The first salvos set the fuel tanks near
9:55the construction camp ablaze, and the
9:57glow lit the underside of the clouds.
10:00Shell after shell came in and marched
10:02across the atoll.
10:04And the guns on Wake stayed silent.
10:07This was the hardest part, and it is the
10:09part that decided the battle.
10:11Devereux held his fire. He held it while
10:14the flagship burned his fuel dumps. He
10:17held it while the cruiser steamed back
10:18and forth unopposed, as if the island
10:21were already a corpse.
10:23Down in the gun pits, Barringer and
10:24McAllister had their crews on the guns,
10:26loaded and laid, begging for the word.
10:29And the word did not come.
10:31On the switchboard that connected the
10:33batteries to the command post, one of
10:34the gun captains could not stand it any
10:36longer. His voice came down the line for
10:39everyone to hear. "What is the little
10:41so-and-so doing?" he said. "We have been
10:43hitting targets at Pearl Harbor at
10:4512,000 yd, and these people are into
10:477,000. And what IN THE WORLD IS HE
10:50WAITING FOR?" The answer came back from
10:52the command post switchboard, flat and
10:54final. "Hold your fire until the major
10:56gives the word."
10:58He was waiting because every yard the
11:00enemy came closer was a yard off his own
11:02disadvantage. His guns were old and
11:04outranged. So he let the enemy erase the
11:07range himself. Let them sail in out of
11:09contempt until the fleet was so close
11:12that old guns firing by eye could not
11:14miss, and surprise would do [music] the
11:16rest. He let them come inside 4,500 yd.
11:20Then he gave the word. The whole south
11:23side of the atoll opened up at once.
11:25Battery A on Peacock Point took the
11:27flagship. Barringer's first rounds went
11:30long. He brought them down 500 yd and
11:32fired again. And this time, in his own
11:35words, both shells went into her port
11:37side just above the waterline, right
11:39amidships. Yubari shuddered and belched
11:41smoke and steam out through the hole in
11:43her flank, and her speed fell off. The
11:46cruiser swung to bring her own guns to
11:47bear, and her return fire straddled the
11:49battery, shells falling short and over,
11:52but not one of them came into the
11:54position. Barringer kept hitting her. He
11:56put shells into the flagship of the
11:58invasion fleet again and again, and
12:00watched her haul off trailing smoke,
12:02[music] listing to port, until she crept
12:04over the horizon and left the fight.
12:07That was the flagship. The real killing
12:09happened on the other side of the atoll.
12:12Off Wilkes, a column of destroyers came
12:14charging straight in toward Kukuk Point,
12:16firing as they came, and McAlister's
12:18Battery L was waiting for them. The
12:21gunners had no working [music]
12:22rangefinder. They were firing on an
12:24estimated range and shooting it in by
12:25the splashes. A two-gun salvo, correct.
12:28Another salvo, correct again. The lead
12:31destroyer was the Hayate, a ship of some
12:331,300 tons with about 170 men aboard.
12:37She turned to run parallel to the shore
12:39about 4,000 yards out, which put her
12:41broadside to the two guns on the point.
12:44The third salvo found her. At 6:52 in
12:47the morning, the Hayate vanished inside
12:49a single enormous explosion.
12:52When the smoke and the spray cleared,
12:54the men on Wilkes could see that the
12:55destroyer had been broken clean in two.
12:58One of the gunners, a private named Jack
13:00Skaggs, said later that the hit took the
13:02whole back half of the ship off. She
13:05went down so fast there was almost
13:06nothing to see.
13:08Inside of two minutes, the Hayate was
13:10gone, and she took nearly her entire
13:12crew down with her.
13:13One man was pulled from the water
13:15[music] alive.
13:16She was the first destroyer the Imperial
13:18Japanese Navy lost in the Pacific War,
13:20and six Marine guns on three coral
13:23islands had done it.
13:24And here is the human thing about that
13:26moment, the thing the record is honest
13:28enough to keep.
13:29The gun crews on Wilkes had just watched
13:31a warship full of men break apart and
13:34sink in front of them. And for a few
13:36seconds, they could not keep firing.
13:38They froze. The enormity of what they
13:41had done stopped their hands on the
13:42guns.
13:43There was a platoon sergeant on Wilkes
13:45[music] named Henry Bedell, an old salt
13:47of the kind every Marine unit used to
13:49have. And he saw his crews falter, and
13:51he put a stop TO IT. "KNOCK IT OFF!" HE
13:54ROARED AT THEM. "AND GET BACK ON THE
13:55GUNS! WHAT DO YOU THINK THIS IS? A
13:57BALLGAME?" THE crews snapped out of it
14:00and went back to work.
14:01Hold on to Sergeant Bedell. We will come
14:03back to him.
14:05Because the destroyers were still
14:06coming. Battery L kept firing, and in
14:09the next hour it put shells into a
14:11second destroyer, the Oite, and into a
14:13transport, and into one of the cruisers
14:16trailing the column.
14:17On Peale, Battery B under Kessler had
14:19opened up on a destroyer division at
14:21about 10,000 yd, and then one of its two
14:24guns failed, a recoil cylinder letting
14:26go in the middle of the fight. Kessler
14:28fought on with the single gun he had
14:30left, aiming it by local control, and
14:33reached out and hit the destroyer Yayoi
14:35in the stern, killing and wounding men
14:37along her fantail.
14:38One destroyer came in so close to Wilkes
14:41that Devereux had to send down an order
14:42forbidding the machine gunners to fire
14:44at her because the muzzle flashes would
14:46have given away positions the enemy had
14:48not yet found. On Wilkes, the civilian
14:50workers who had refused to hide came up
14:52to the guns and hauled ammunition for
14:54the Marines. Somewhere in that hour,
14:56standing on the bridge of a damaged
14:58cruiser watching two of his destroyers
15:00die and his landing boats swamp in the
15:02surf, Admiral Kajioka did the only thing
15:05left to him. At about 7:00 in the
15:07morning, he ordered a general retreat.
15:10The fleet that had come to take Wake by
15:11breakfast turned around and ran for the
15:14Marshall Islands, and not one Japanese
15:16soldier had set a foot on the beach.
15:18The guns had not finished. As the fleet
15:21withdrew, the four surviving Wildcats of
15:23VMF-211 came up off the airstrip, each
15:26one carrying a pair of hand-loaded bombs
15:28on its improvised racks. Putnam, Elrod,
15:32Ferrin, and Freuler. They climbed first
15:35to make sure no Japanese carrier was
15:36waiting to ambush them. Then, they went
15:38after the retreating ships, diving on
15:40them one after another through the
15:42anti-aircraft fire. They hit the cruiser
15:44Tenryu and knocked out part of her
15:46torpedo armament. They hit the Tatsuta.
15:49One pilot put a bomb into a transport
15:51and set her gasoline stores on fire. And
15:53Captain Elrod went after a destroyer
15:55called the Kisaragi. She was steaming
15:57away with a deckload of depth charges
15:59stacked aft, [music] which is a
16:00dangerous way to sail into a
16:02dive-bombing attack. Elrod came down on
16:04her and planted his bombs on or around
16:07that stern.
16:08>> [music]
16:08>> A pilot who saw it watched at least one
16:10of Elrod's bombs strike home. At 7:31 in
16:13the morning, the Kisaragi blew up in one
16:15tremendous explosion and went to the
16:17bottom with her entire crew, [music]
16:19more than 150 men. No one survived her.
16:23The kill was credited to Elrod. [music]
16:25His own airplane did not come off much
16:27better. A fuel line was shot through,
16:30and he brought the crippled Wildcat down
16:31in a controlled crash among the boulders
16:33on the beach, climbed out of the wreck,
16:35and walked away to fight another day.
16:38So, this is the arithmetic of the 11th
16:40of December, 1941.
16:43Two Japanese destroyers sunk. A flagship
16:46and most of a cruiser division shot up
16:48and sent limping [music] home. An
16:49invasion fleet turned back without
16:51landing a single man. And on Wake
16:54Island, four Marines wounded and not one
16:56killed.
16:58It is worth sitting with why it worked,
17:00because it was not luck, and it was
17:01[music] not a miracle. It was a trade.
17:04Devereux owned exactly one advantage,
17:07surprise, and he refused to spend it
17:09until it would buy the most. He gave up
17:12the chance to shoot at the enemy early
17:13[music] and far away, and in exchange,
17:16he got to shoot at them late and close,
17:18inside the range where his old guns
17:20could not miss [music] and the enemy's
17:21longer reach meant nothing. The sea
17:24helped, swamping the landing boats
17:26before they could launch. The Wildcats
17:28[music] helped, hounding the fleet as it
17:29ran. But the hinge of the whole thing
17:32was a man standing by a telephone
17:34>> [music]
17:34>> with the discipline to wait while his
17:36own island burned. That discipline is
17:39the weapon this story is really about.
17:41The guns were just the thing it was
17:43[music] pointed through.
17:44The enemy understood what had happened
17:46to them better than anyone. Kajioka took
17:48his battered force back to the anchorage
17:50at Kwajalein, and the shock of it ran
17:52all the way up the chain of command.
17:54>> [music]
17:54>> This was the first time in the Pacific
17:56War that the Japanese advance, which had
17:58rolled over everything from Pearl Harbor
18:00to the Philippines in a matter of days,
18:02had been stopped cold and thrown back.
18:05Historians have a careful way of putting
18:07it, and it holds up. That repulse was
18:09the only amphibious landing in the
18:11entire [music] Pacific War to be driven
18:13off by the guns defending the shore.
18:16What it cost the Japanese was pride, and
18:18pride turned into a much bigger hammer.
18:21The island that was supposed to fall
18:23before breakfast now had to be taken
18:25properly. The high command detached two
18:27of the fleet aircraft carriers that had
18:29just struck Pearl Harbor, the Soryu and
18:31the Hiryu, along with heavy cruisers,
18:33and sent them to make sure Wake could
18:35not embarrass the Navy [music] a second
18:37time. Think about the size of that
18:39answer. To finish off three coral islets
18:42held by a few hundred Marines, Japan's
18:44Navy had to call back the carriers it
18:46had used to [ __ ] the American battle
18:48fleet. And Kajioka, who could have been
18:50relieved in disgrace, kept his command
18:53and sailed [music] back to try again.
18:55Now the honest part, the part that
18:57explains why the men of Wake could not
18:59do it twice. For all the courage, the
19:02garrison was living on borrowed time and
19:04broken equipment. There was still no
19:06radar. The sets that might have given
19:08them warning were sitting back at Pearl
19:10Harbor, loaded onto a ship that was
19:12supposed to carry them out to Wake and
19:14never arrived. The rangefinders were
19:16gone. A 5-in gun had been lost to a
19:19recoil failure. [music]
19:20The fighters were dying off, four down
19:23to two in a matter of days, and then
19:25[music] to none, kept in the air past
19:27all reason by a handful of mechanics
19:29scavenging parts from the dead. A
19:31squadron commander said flatly that one
19:33of those mechanics was the entire
19:35foundation of the island's air defense.
19:37And the relief never came.
19:40A task force did [music] sail from Pearl
19:41Harbor, built around the carrier
19:43Saratoga, carrying another Marine
19:45defense battalion, fresh fighters,
19:47ammunition, and the radar Wake had
19:49needed all along. It got slowed down
19:51refueling in heavy [music] seas. And
19:53then, with Wake still holding and the
19:55relief force a few hundred miles short,
19:58the acting fleet commander lost his
20:00nerve about risking a carrier so soon
20:02after Pearl Harbor and ordered the whole
20:04expedition to turn around and come home.
20:07On the Saratoga, a senior officer was so
20:09disgusted he threw his hat on the deck.
20:12The men on Wake were on their own, and
20:14now they would stay [music] that way.
20:17There is a famous story about Wake that
20:19belongs here because it is a lie, and
20:21the truth is better.
20:23The legend says that when Wake was asked
20:25by radio what it needed, the island sent
20:27back three defiant words, "Send us more
20:30Japs."
20:32It made headlines across a frightened
20:33country.
20:34It was never sent. [music]
20:36Coded messages in those days were
20:37wrapped in nonsense words at the front
20:39and back to confuse enemy code breakers,
20:41[music] and some of that padding got
20:43garbled together into a taunt that
20:45sounded like something out of a movie.
20:47What Cunningham actually asked Pearl
20:49Harbor to send him was not bravado.
20:51[music] It was radar and gun sights and
20:53spare parts and more fighters, the
20:55things that might have let Wake hold.
20:58The real message was quieter than the
21:00legend and sadder.
21:02They were not asking [music] for more
21:03enemies to kill. They were asking for
21:05the things that might keep them alive,
21:07and those things never came.
21:10What came was the 23rd of December.
21:13Kajioka had learned his lesson. This
21:15time he kept his ships well outside the
21:17reach of the 5-in guns. This time he
21:19came in the dark before dawn, around
21:222:30 in the morning, in wind and rain.
21:25And he put his landing parties ashore on
21:26stretches of beach the big guns [music]
21:28could not reach, running two of his
21:30troop-carrying patrol boats straight up
21:32onto the reef to spill their men out.
21:34Overhead, carrier dive bombers from the
21:36Soryu [music] and Hiryu worked over the
21:38gun positions one by one. The telephone
21:40wires that tied the island together were
21:42cut, and Devereux lost contact with most
21:44of his strong points [music] almost at
21:46once. The defenders fought in the dark
21:48in scattered knots, each position on its
21:50own, not knowing whether the men beside
21:53them were still alive. They made the
21:54enemy pay for every yard. At one 3-in
21:57gun, a man kept firing after his sights
22:00were shot away by looking straight down
22:01the barrel to aim, and put round after
22:04round into a beach patrol boat at
22:06point-blank range. On Wilkes, a Marine
22:08counterattack wiped out the entire
22:10Japanese party that had landed there.
22:12And Captain Henry Elrod, the fighter
22:14pilot with no fighter left to fly, took
22:16his place on the beach line with his
22:18grounded aviators and a crowd of armed
22:20civilians and held a flank of the
22:22defense with a rifle and then with a
22:24captured enemy machine gun.
22:26Shortly before dawn, near one of the gun
22:28positions he was defending, Elrod was
22:30shot and killed by a Japanese sailor
22:32hidden among the bodies on the ground.
22:34For the whole of it, for the destroyer
22:36and the beach and the last stand, Henry
22:38Elrod was given the Medal of Honor, the
22:41first awarded to an American aviator in
22:43the Second World War. And Sergeant
22:45Bedell, the old salt who had bellowed
22:47his gun crews back onto their guns after
22:49the Hayate went down, the man who asked
22:51them if they thought it was a ball game,
22:53on that same morning on Wilkes, he went
22:55out to try to knock out a landing barge
22:57with grenades,
22:58>> [music]
22:58>> and he was killed doing it. 12 days
23:00after he steadied the men who sank the
23:02first Japanese destroyer of the war, he
23:04died on the same island he had helped
23:06save. By the middle of the morning, it
23:08was [music] over. Commander Cunningham
23:10sent a last message off the island.
23:12Enemy on island, issue in doubt.
23:15With the guns silenced, the fighters
23:17gone, the beaches breached, and no
23:19relief anywhere on the sea, he made the
23:21decision [music] to surrender rather
23:23than see the island's people cut to
23:24pieces for nothing. Wake had held for 15
23:27days. In the first week of the war, when
23:30a terrified country had been told to be
23:31ready to hear the island had fallen, it
23:34had instead [music] stood and fought,
23:36and for one morning, won.
23:39What followed does not forgive the men
23:41who did it. The roughly 1,500 Americans
23:44taken on Wake went into [music] Japanese
23:45captivity, and most of them were shipped
23:47away to prison camps.
23:49On the voyage out, five of them were
23:51beheaded on the deck of the transport.
23:53And about 98 of the civilian
23:55construction workers, the men who had
23:56poured the runways and then hauled
23:58ammunition to the guns, were kept behind
24:00on Wake as forced [music] labor.
24:02In October of 1943, after an American
24:05carrier raid frightened the garrison,
24:07the Japanese commander on the island had
24:09all 98 of them blindfolded and shot at
24:11the edge of a ditch on the north shore.
24:14One of them escaped long enough to
24:15scratch a message into a block of coral.
24:17[music]
24:1898 US PW and the date.
24:22He was caught and killed.
24:24The commander who ordered it was tried
24:25after the war and hanged.
24:27That coral block [music] is still on
24:29Wake. People call it the 98 rock.
24:32It is easy from 80 years away to turn
24:35Wake into a clean story. The plucky
24:37garrison and the beaten fleet and the
24:39guns that waited.
24:41The men who were there did not remember
24:42[music] it clean.
24:44They remembered the exhaustion and the
24:45fear and the friends they left in the
24:47ground and in the sea.
24:49One of them, [music] decades later, said
24:51that people were always calling them
24:53heroes, and that to the men who had
24:55actually been on Wake, the word [music]
24:56was just embarrassing. They had not gone
24:59there to be heroes. They had gone there
25:01to pour concrete, and then the war found
25:03them, and they did what the day in front
25:05of them required.
25:06But a frightened country in December of
25:081941 [music]
25:09did not need it clean. It needed one
25:12place that had hit back. Wake was that
25:14place.
25:16Remember, Wake Island went up on
25:17recruiting posters within [music] weeks,
25:20and the Commandant of the Marine Corps
25:21found the line that fit it best early in
25:231942, with the island already lost and
25:26its defenders already in chains.
25:28"America remembers Wake Island and is
25:31proud," [music] he said. "The enemy
25:33remembers Wake Island and is uneasy."
25:36The two destroyers are still out there,
25:38Hayate and Kisaragi, somewhere on the
25:40bottom off that flat ring [music] of
25:42coral, with the men who went down inside
25:44them. Sailors of a navy that came to
25:46take the island, lying in the same water
25:49as the island that would not let them.
25:51And the thing worth remembering about
25:52the morning that put them there is the
25:54hardest thing to do in any war. Not the
25:57firing, the waiting. Six old guns loaded
26:01and laid [music] in silent, held by men
26:03who knew no help was coming, watching a
26:06fleet sail in close enough to kill them,
26:08and holding and holding and holding
26:11until the moment they had been saving
26:13their whole lives finally arrived. And
26:15then, four words: "Okay. Open fire."

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