On 4 September 1945, two days after the Japanese surrender on board the battleship Missouri (BB-63) ended World War 11, Marine Corps Sergeant Ernie Harwell, Pacific correspondent for Leatherneck magazine (and the future voice of the Detroit Tigers), watched a small island loom larger as his ship, the U.S. destroyer escort Levy (DE-162), inched closer. Harwell had been dispatched by the magazine to cover the Japanese turnover of the island to U.S. occupying forces. “It was just a spit of dirt in the ocean,” recalls Harwell. “All those islands looked alike.”
Though the island was barely distinguishable from countless other Pacific coral battlefields, this particular speck held special significance, not merely for Harwell and the other men on board the Levy, but for practically every soldier and civilian who could recall those early bitter days of the war, when the smooth-running Japanese war machine threw U.S. forces on their heels. This was Wake Island, scene of a heroic Marine stand that boosted U.S. morale and rallied soldiers to renew their efforts with the cry, “Remember Wake!”
“Getting Wake back from the Japanese was a symbolic event, because Wake fell in our dark days and was sort of a blot on our history,” says Harwell. “It was a big thrill for me to be covering the event. The Marines were returning to avenge their loss, and I figured it would be a big story.”
The surrender ceremony actually occurred on board the Levy, before the U.S. contingent landed on Wake. The island’s Japanese commander, Rear Admiral Shigematsu Sakaibara, accompanied by a Japanese Army colonel and four aides, approached the ship in a small whaleboat at 0745. Sakaibara was the first to step on board, saluting a waiting ensign. One of the Japanese aides, Lieutenant Commander Tachibana, offered his hand for a handshake but was curtly refused.
The surrender party waited on the ship’s deck for the arrival of the U.S. military representative who would receive their surrender, Brigadier General Lawson Sanderson, U.S. Marine Corps. Harwell recalls that Sanderson walked into the gathering, “his face lined with calm grimness,” and refused Japanese offers to shake hands. Sanderson rested his hand on the shoulder of Staff Sergeant Larry Watanabe, a Nisei interpreter, and pointedly mentioned to Sakaibara, “This boy was born in U.S. territory. He is an American citizen. Not a prisoner.”
Four other U.S. officers joined Sanderson at the surrender table, situated beneath a microphone hanging from above. Four photographers and two movie cameramen scurried around the table “like hunters stalking their prey,” remembers Harwell. Sanderson prefaced the proceedings with a stern warning to the Japanese against sabotage, to which they replied, “There need be no worry. None of our men has the strength for such action.”
In a simple ceremony of few words, Sanderson handed Sakaibara the original surrender document as well as 11 copies for his signature. After examining them, Sakaibara took the pen offered by Sanderson and affixed his signature to each copy. As the official U.S. government seal was stamped on the forms, a relieved Sakaibara uttered to Sanderson, “1 am very happy to turn the island over to you. . . .” Just then, a sudden rain squall forced the group below decks, where the crew treated the Japanese contingent to fruit juice and cigarettes.
Harwell and other Marines were anxious to get ashore after the surrender ceremony. Within 35 minutes, a landing party of two boats departed the Levy and headed for land. “There were only 20 to 25 of us to retake Wake,” remembers Harwell. “We got in a landing craft in the bay and headed for the island. An old college fraternity brother of mine, Lieutenant James Hardin, Jr., was also in the craft.” One member of the landing party gazed at Wake with an emotion few others could feel. Colonel Walter L. Bayler had been the last U.S. Marine to leave Wake before the Japanese seized it. Now he was sitting in the boat, waiting to be the first U.S. soldier to set foot on liberated Wake.
“The Marines, ever public-relations conscious, had arranged for Bayler to be present. I was in the same boat as Bayler, and when we arrived at the dock he stepped out, followed by Hardin, and was greeted by a solitary Japanese soldier.”
A few of the 1,250 Japanese soldiers came into view, wearing patched uniforms in a manner “polite but steely- eyed and aloof,” according to Harwell. The thought crossed his mind that their minuscule contingent of just more than 20 Marines, few of whom had seen hard combat, might be overwhelmed by the larger Japanese force. But the notion was only fleeting.
“If the Japanese were healthy they could have attacked, but we didn’t worry too much about it. It was a possibility, and we couldn’t have fought them if we wanted to, but they were in such terrible shape it didn’t matter. Many were sick and dying.”
Harwell’s group jumped into a nearby Jeep for an impromptu guided tour of Wake by Bayler, who pointed out where the Marines had lived and fought in late 1941. “There were very few Japanese soldiers around,” remembers Harwell, “so we asked a few Japanese where everyone else was. They told us the rest were in the hospital.”
The time between the Japanese takeover of Wake in December 1941 and its surrender in 1945 had been increasingly difficult for the Japanese defenders, as the U.S. war juggernaut rolled across the Pacific, cutting Japanese supply lines. Emaciated Japanese faces and a gruesome list of statistics Harwell was able to gather corroborated the fact. While 1,000 Japanese died on Wake from U.S. air assaults, twice as many perished from malnutrition. Air attacks had forced survivors to live underground and reduced them to subsisting on a meager diet of pumpkins, rice, and fish. The food supply was so low at the time Harwell stepped on the island that the ravenous Japanese defenders had recently been eating rats and much of the island’s large population of gooney birds. Four tons of rice and fish and 550 pounds of medical supplies came quickly from the Levy to help the hapless captives.
In spite of all this suffering, Harwell remembers moments of levity among the Japanese on Wake Island. A Japanese Army major told Harwell, in halting English, that the garrison had watched U.S. movies left behind by the Marines. Even though the movies were in English, the major indicated that, “We enjoyed American cinemas very much here.”
During the tour, one U.S. soldier asked one of the Japanese whether any Marines or U.S. civilian construction workers—who had been captured on Wake—were buried on the island. The Japanese pointed out two large common graves, one containing approximately 80 bodies, the other an unknown number. Harwell noticed that both graves had recently been tidied, as though the Japanese anticipated these would become a focus of interest. They had obviously trimmed bushes surrounding the graves, and the white paint on crude crosses was not yet dry.
The complete story behind the graves did not emerge until later. When the Japanese took over Wake, 100-odd civilian construction workers had been forced to remain on the island and work for the Japanese. As U.S. air raids on Wake increased in frequency, the Japanese became convinced that the workers somehow had made radio contact with U.S. forces, directing their attacks to island installations. On 7 October 1943, the Japanese gathered the men, bound their hands behind their backs, blindfolded them, led them to a beach, and machine-gunned them all. Admiral Sakaibara and 11 other officers were tried and sentenced to death for the atrocity.
Harwell’s tour of Wake ended when the entire U.S. contingent gathered for the official flag-raising ceremony. The original flagpole used by Marines In 1941 still stood. But it was too battered to use, so some Seabees carried a portable flagpole onto the island. A color guard of handpicked Marines and Sailors from each of the three destroyer- escorts stood at attention as the proceedings began.
“It was a hot, clear day,” recalls Harwell of the moving ceremony. Private 1st Class George Ellis sounded colors, while two other men hoisted the U.S. flag over Wake Island for the first time in nearly four years. As the flag neared the top of the pole, Harwell noticed a slight ocean breeze unfurl the flag; in the background, the sounds of a 21-gun salute from the Levy reverberated across the bay. General Sanderson ended the two-minute ceremony by handing over the island to Commander William Masek.
“The flag raising was a very emotional event,” says Harwell. “Getting this outpost was the culmination of the war because of what Wake meant to everyone.” Commander Masek summed up the deep feelings welling in everyone present—the Marines, Sailors, and correspondents—by replying to General Sanderson, “I accept this island proudly. Because this is Wake Island. Not just any island. It was here the Marines showed us how.”
Sources for the above article include interviews conducted with Mr. Harwell and articles and accounts found in Wake Island, by Duane Schultz (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1978), Life magazine (24 September 1945), Leatherneck (15 November 1945), and American History Illustrated (December 1987).
