While Cunningham headed toward Wake, events in the Pacific intensified. Kurusu’s mission failed to alleviate the growing crisis, and on November 27, negotiations had so stalemated that Chief of Naval Operations Stark sent a war warning to the commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet, Admiral Kimmel. NEGOTIATIONS WITH JAPAN LOOKING TOWARD STABILIZATION OF CONDITIONS IN THE PACIFIC HAVE CEASED AND AN AGGRESSIVE MOVE BY JAPAN IS EXPECTED WITHIN THE NEXT FEW DAYS.23 Stark added that the deployment of Japanese forces indicated that action would likely occur in either the Philippines, against Borneo, or in the Far East. No mention of Wake appeared in the communication.
The final military group to reach the atoll flew in on December 4. Led by thirty-eight-year-old Iowa native Maj. Paul A. Putnam, Marine squadron VMF-211 consisted of twelve F4F-3 Wildcat fighters. Their task was to conduct searches of the sea approaches surrounding Wake and provide air defense against a possible enemy assault.
Major Putnam, an ardent golfer and hunter who others claimed exhibited the tenacity of a bulldog, liked to lead through example. After enlisting in the Marine Corps in 1923 as a private, Putnam earned a lieutenant’s commission in 1926. He first exhibited his potential during the 1931 Marine expedition to Nicaragua, where his coolness and quiet manner proved to be a source of strength for those under him. He especially impressed other Marines with his aerial attack on a Nicaraguan stronghold, an action that won him a letter of commendation from the Secretary of the Navy.
“I flew with him for two years in Nicaragua,” mentioned another officer, “and I never saw him get excited. He is calm, quiet, soft-spoken—a determined sort of fellow.”24
Ferried from Pearl Harbor into flying range of Wake by the American aircraft carrier Enterprise, Putnam and his men picked up disturbing signs that their time on Wake might be difficult. Every aircraft mechanic aboard the Enterprise checked and rechecked the twelve fighters with meticulousness, and the carrier’s commander, Adm. William F. Halsey, ordered that the men of VMF-211 were to receive whatever supplies they desired. Not used to such attention, Putnam later wrote, “I feel a bit like the fatted calf being groomed for whatever it is that happens to fatted calves, but it surely is nice while it lasts and the airplanes are pretty sleek and fat too.”25
He may have felt more like a sacrificial lamb following a discussion with an Enterprise aviator. When the man learned Putnam was headed toward Wake with only a dozen fighters, he commented that Putnam and his men were probably gifted aviators, but “a dozen seems kind of light to take on the whole Jap air force.”26
Marines and other military personnel on Wake enthusiastically welcomed VMF-211 on December 4. Now, instead of relying only on the fighting abilities of the ground forces, Wake possessed an air force. Though small, it could reach out hundreds of miles at sea and strike invaders long before they set foot on the island, in effect increasing the range of Wake’s offensive capabilities and creating a buffer zone around the atoll. Before an enemy could strike Wake, it first had to contend with Putnam’s fighters. The sight of twelve gleaming Wildcats landing on Wake’s partially completed airstrip lent a feeling of invincibility to the garrison, which rarely lacked self-assurance or worried over a possible attack anyway.
Unfortunately, the aviators of VMF-211 did not have the same confidence when they surveyed the air facilities at Wake. Putnam and the others found that while one runway was long enough for operations, the soft coral sand base made it impossible for more than one or two aircraft to taxi at a time. Putnam worried about the small pieces of coral that dotted the runway, any one of which could be kicked up during takeoffs and landings and disable the aircraft. Gasoline supplies stood in unsheltered tanks that made tempting targets for an enemy pilot, and not one hangar or revetment had been built to house his twelve aircraft.
Since the ground crews and aviators had been training with biplanes instead of the newer fighters, they were unfamiliar with the capabilities of the aircraft. Mechanics rummaged through the crates of supplies that accompanied the planes for instruction manuals, but could find none—someone at Pearl Harbor had forgotten to pack them. Spare parts for the aircraft were practically nonexistent, which meant that even minor damage could knock them out of the fighting, and the bombs sent to Wake did not fit the bomb racks attached to the fighters. Putnam hoped his aviators and ground personnel, including the squadron mechanics, had enough time to correct the deficiencies. Putnam had no way of knowing that he and the twelve F4F-3 fighters had arrived on Wake a mere four days before the opening of hostilities.
Two of the men who quickly started their assignments were 2d Lt. Robert J. Conderman and thirty-six-year-old Capt. Henry T. Elrod. They shared the same love of flying, but that was as close as the two came in personalities. A graduate of the University of North Carolina, Conderman had a serious, intelligent side belied by his looks—his burning red hair and freckled face reminded fellow aviators of a small-town country boy in the mold of Mark Twain’s Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer. “He was a good man,” stated Lieutenant Kinney after the war. “Conderman was very friendly, very young looking. He had red hair, and that is where he got his nickname ‘Strawberry.’”27
On the other hand Elrod, who studied architecture and medicine at both Georgia and Yale, was a hard-drinking career officer with thirteen years’ experience who irritated superiors with his reckless manner of flying. In aerial gunnery practice, Elrod flew so close to the target being pulled by other aircraft that observers on the ground thought he had no chance to avoid crashing into it. He always did, usually mere seconds from a collision, but not before leaving behind a shredded target. Though frustrating to commanders, Elrod developed the reputation of being someone a man could count on when the real bullets started flying.
While exhibiting a tough crust when with his men, Elrod showed a tender side when writing to his wife. Frequent lengthy letters ended in similar fashion, with Elrod signing each with his middle name, Talmadge.
“A Bastard-Type Unit”
As the first week in December waned, Cunningham, Devereux, and Putnam faced critical shortages in many areas. Each of the three conducted inspection tours and inventoried their arsenals, and they concluded that deficiency was the norm on each island of Wake.
On Peale Island, off Wake’s northern arm, where Joe Goicoechea would spend part of the battle, Capt. Bryghte D. Godbold’s position at Toki Point stood in the best shape. Battery B’s two 5-inch naval guns, designed for use against enemy ships approaching the island and commanded by 1st Lt. Woodrow M. Kessler, and Battery D’s four 3-inch antiaircraft guns, under Godbold’s supervision, had been completely emplaced and sandbagged. In addition, four .50-caliber machine guns (one manned by Private Laporte) and four .30-caliber machine guns protected Godbold’s position. His had only enough Marines to man three of the 3-inch guns, but he was still better off than his compatriots on both Wilkes and Wake Islands.
The other two main gun positions—the places that would see most of the fighting in the days to come—faced critical shortages. At Corporal Gross’s station at Peacock Point on Wake Island’s southeast corner, Lt. Clarence A. Barninger could also call on four .50-caliber and four .30-caliber machine guns to guard the approaches to his position, but he had only partially sandbagged and sheltered Battery E’s four 3-inch guns, commanded by Lt. William W. Lewis. The four—only three of which could be manned—stood in the open, subject to attack, as did both of Barninger’s 5-inch guns.
Barninger’s men worked when they could to complete the camouflaging and dig dugouts, but constant interruptions for aircraft refueling made the task difficult at best. A more critical handicap was that none of the 3-inch guns sported height finders, automatic devices used to accurately determine an aircraft’s altitude. In an attack, Barninger would have to estimate the altitude by eyesight.
Across the channel separating Wake Island from Wilkes Island, Capt. Wesley M. Platt had to improvise at Kuku Point, as well. His two 5-inch guns, under 2d Lt. John A. McAlister, were fully manned and camo
uflaged, but a lack of personnel meant that none of his four 3-inch guns could be manned. He did the best he could with his four .50-caliber and two .30-caliber machine guns, scattering them along Wilkes’s ocean shore and the lagoon beach.
Lieutenant Hanna and Lieutenant Poindexter spread the rest of their eighteen .50-caliber machine guns and thirty .30-caliber machine guns throughout the atoll, some near the airstrip and the others where the officers felt they could do the most good. Like their counterparts behind the 5-inch and 3-inch guns, Hanna and Poindexter were forced to improvise and guess which gun positions to man and which to leave empty. They could not possibly cover Wake’s twenty miles of shoreline with the available personnel, so they tried to think like the enemy and predict where an attack might come. They concluded that the southern shore of Wake Island, where the reef jutted in close to land, and the southern coast of Wilkes were the most probable spots. The two officers posted men along those beaches and hoped that, in the hands of determined Marines, the few guns could inflict serious damage on an invading force. They tried not to dwell on the fact that fewer than six machine gun positions waited to greet the enemy on such an important portion of the atoll.
Cunningham and Devereux faced other critical gaps. Many of the 5-inch guns suffered from a lack of spare parts. The Marine garrison lacked enough rifles to give to the Army and Navy personnel stationed with them. In an attack, those men would have to rely on whatever they brought along, usually a sidearm, or wait until the fighting started and take a rifle from a Marine who had been killed.
Especially frustrating was the lack of radar. The recent invention would have allowed defenders to spot enemy aircraft long before they reached Wake, but Wake had no such advantages. Every time a transport from Hawaii arrived, Devereux and Cunningham prayed it contained the promised radar, but they were disappointed each time. They knew the equipment had been earmarked for the island, for one of the men had seen Wake’s radar equipment on the docks of Pearl Harbor, waiting shipment. Would they receive it in time?
In the absence of radar, Devereux had to make do with what he had. He placed two men with binoculars at the atoll’s highest spot—the water tower—but this arrangement hardly guaranteed success. The guards could not even rely on sound to help them in detecting enemy aircraft since Wake’s booming surf drowned out all such noise.
Fifty years later, Lieutenant Poindexter accurately conveyed the feeling of the time. He called the defenders of Wake “a bastard-type unit equipped with hand-me-down weapons, which were mostly of World War I vintage, and assigned a bastard-type mission. It is, therefore, somewhat ironic that this unlikely aggregation of the prewar military establishment would give the nation its first victory of the Second World War.”28
“We Were Just Kids”
Even though the pressing duties left little training time for his Marines, in the first week of December, Devereux decided to test the battle readiness of his men. On Saturday morning, December 6, he staged a mock alert. The drill proved to be the first, and only, time that the gun crews worked together in manning their guns. The outcome so pleased Devereux—all the men quickly reported to their stations and appeared ready for battle—that he gave his men that afternoon and all the next day off. Teters followed suit and declared a holiday for his men, as well.
Only Putnam’s squad worked on December 6, since many items needed to be done at the airstrip. Chief among them was to fill huge 25,000-gallon gasoline tanks set up along the airstrip. As he helped pump aviation fuel into the tanks, Kinney thought to himself “what juicy targets these would make to enemy bombers.”29
The rest of the men took full advantage of their free time. On December 7 (December 6 in Pearl Harbor, which stood on the other side of the international date line) many slept in, then headed to the lagoon for some leisurely fishing on a bright, sunny afternoon. With only a few days left until his discharge and a trip to the United States, Sgt. Alton J. Bertels of Battery B organized his personal belongings. Finally, he would be getting off this miserable atoll. Commander Cunningham battled Ens. George Henshaw in tennis, while Lieutenant Barninger and Lieutenant Lewis went sailboating in the lagoon. Kessler and McAlister packed some sardines, crackers, and beer and rowed a boat to the reef northwest of Kuku Point, where they spent the day observing the aquatic life that scurried and swam about. The giant clams, which slowly clamped together their shells whenever Kessler’s or McAlister’s shadow loomed over them, fascinated the pair.
If you have enough healthy Americans in one spot, sooner or later a baseball game is likely to break out. In a bit of friendly rivalry, the Marines challenged their civilian counterparts to a contest. In front of a large crowd of enthusiastic supporters, who passed around bets and insults in equal measure, the Marines won a hard-fought game, 2 to 1, earning bragging rights.
That December 7, which would be their final day of rest for the next forty-five months, provided a boost in morale to a bunch of men who had worked long days for months at a time. “We hadn’t had a day off for two months,” said Corporal Marvin. “This was the first time since Devereux came out there that we got any time off. We had a ball!”30
One Marine battled mixed emotions over calling the day off a reward, for it terminated recent hopes of heading home. On December 5, Lieutenant Poindexter had inspected his gun position and found it lacking. The officer called the work “slipshod,” turned to Holewinski, and angrily promised, “I don’t think that people like you should be that far away from the United States, so I’m gonna see if you can get sent back.” Rather than being insulted, Holewinski greeted his prospects with enthusiasm. December in the United States had to be better than December on Wake.
Before Poindexter could follow through on his claim, Devereux and Cunningham came by on their Saturday-morning inspection. “Boy, this is nice,” exclaimed Commander Cunningham when he surveyed Holewinski’s work. “Who’s in charge here?”31 Holewinski reluctantly raised his hand, realizing that Cunningham’s praise canceled Poindexter’s criticism and effectively ended his chances of seeing the mainland for the foreseeable future.
In Washington, President Roosevelt faced troubles of his own. On December 6, while the men at Wake enjoyed their last carefree day, Roosevelt learned the Japanese would present a fourteen-part ultimatum the next day. “This means war,” Roosevelt mentioned to his trusted adviser, Harry Hopkins. When Hopkins stated it was too bad the United States could not launch a first strike, Roosevelt added, “No, we can’t do that. We are a democracy and a peaceful people. But we have a good record.”32 He could do nothing but wait for the Japanese to strike.
While the festivities unfolded elsewhere on Wake, two men preferred to spend the moments in more contemplative ways. Since he had been on the island only a few days, Lieutenant Kinney decided to take a stroll around the atoll. What he saw shocked him—partially completed gun positions, undermanned machine-gun posts, shortages in equipment. He headed over to Pan Am’s facilities at Peale Island and talked to one of its crew members, an old friend named Ed Barnett. Barnett handed Kinney some shocking news—Pan Am was evacuating all its civilian dependents from the Philippines in anticipation of war.
Kinney returned to his quarters in a gloomy mood. “I sure hoped that the war would wait a little longer before it got to Wake,” he wrote after the war. “None of us in VMF-211 had ever even fired the machine guns in the Wildcats yet.”33 Kinney relaxed when he recalled that the next day, December 8, he and the other aviators were scheduled to start aerial gunnery practice. He would finally get his chance to fire the fighter’s machine guns.
After being with other Marines almost around the clock, Lieutenant Hanna appreciated the chance to escape somewhere by himself. Not surprisingly, he strolled to one of the beaches along the lagoon to find more shells for Vera. He needed only a few more to have enough for the necklace; then he could string them together and mail them to his wife. Most men, civilian and military, wanted to be with their friends and have a few laughs, but Hanna was happy to
be alone, on a Pacific beach thinking of Vera, family, and home.
As war inched closer to Wake, that final peacetime day closed with much work remaining, but most men shoved that thought aside for the moment. The island boasted a population of 1,145 civilian workers, 72 Pan Am employees, and 524 military personnel, including 6 Army, 69 Navy, and 449 Marines. Not included in the count were the passengers aboard the weekly Clipper, which landed in the lagoon that day. Among its numbers was Herman P. Hevenor, a government auditor sent to Wake to check Morrison-Knudsen’s bookkeeping. As soon as he finished the task, he intended to leave Wake as quickly as possible.
December 7 provided a tonic for the men. Thoughts of war, not that they had ever bothered them, receded. Even the most pessimistic among them refused to worry about war with Japan. “We didn’t even think about war,” said Corporal Marvin. “There were so many rumors, but we were too busy working. We were just kids.”34
Should war come, they were optimistic the Japanese would be no match for the militarily superior Americans. After all, on December 7 newspapers quoted Secretary Knox as stating the United States Navy had no superior in the world. “I am proud to report that the American people may feel fully confident in their Navy…. On any comparable basis, the United States Navy is second to none.”35
As Kinney related, many dismissed the Japanese as “short bandylegged men with prominent front teeth and very thick eyeglasses. We were convinced that even if the Japanese planes were mechanically adequate, it would be all the pilots could do to fly them in straight lines. They would be no match for American aerobatic maneuvers.”36
Joe Goicoechea faced the future with confidence also. He and his buddies believed that should the Japanese be foolish enough to start a war with the United States, it would be over in a few months. “Hell, we thought that Uncle Sam was invincible. We figured our military would beat the hell out of them and that would be it,”37 he explained.
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