Hell Wouldn’t Stop: An Oral History of the Battle of Wake Island
Chet Cunningham, New York: Carrol & Graf, 2002. 283 pp. Photos. Map. Bib. Index. $26.00.
Pacific Alamo: The Battle for Wake Island
John Wukovits. New York: New American Library, 2003. 308 pp. Photos. Maps. Notes. Bib. Index. $24.95.
Reviewed by Major Mark Hubbs, U.S. Army Reserve (Retired)
Wake Island actually is a V-shaped corral atoll composed of three islands, Wake, Wilkes, and Peale. The atoll, which surrounds a shallow lagoon, has a total land area of only three square miles. Lying 2,000 miles west of Hawaii, Wake is a desolate speck in the Pacific sparsely covered with scrub vegetation that averages only ten feet above sea level.
The growing threat of war in the Pacific in the late 1930s prompted U.S. military planners to recognize the strategic value of outposts such as Wake Atoll. Construction of an air and submarine base was initiated in January 1941. The following December the facility was approximately two- thirds complete. About 1,200 civilian construction workers and 535 military personnel were on the island at the outbreak of war. The first attack on Wake Island was launched by Japanese air forces within hours of the attack on Pearl Harbor. On 11 December a Japanese naval attack was repulsed by U.S. Marine Corps seacoast artillery. A better-prepared Japanese force landed on Wake and Wilkes Island on 23 December. After six hours of savage fighting, in which the Marines were outnumbered two to one, the atoll surrendered to the Japanese.
The surviving military personnel and civilians began a three-year hellish ordeal in prisoner-of-war camps in China and Japan. The men were enslaved in backbreaking toil for the Japanese war machine with inadequate food, clothing, and medical care. Sixteen percent would die during their captivity. The Japanese also murdered 98 civilians who remained on Wake in 1943.
Much has been written about the Japanese attack on the atoll during the opening hours of World War II and the heroic stand made by the U.S. Marines. A score of personal accounts and narratives have been published though the years, with the most exhaustive account of the battle published in 1997, Gregory Unwin’s Facing Fearful Odds: The Siege of Wake Island (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press). Two more books now have been added to the Wake Island library.
Chet Cunningham’s Hell Wouldn’t Stop began as a personal quest to learn more about his brother Kenneth’s experiences on Wake Island as a young Marine private first class. As he interviewed veterans of the battle to learn more of his brother’s role, Cunningham collected written responses and interviews from 120 participants of the battle. These include his brother’s account of the battle and subsequent imprisonment. Unfortunately, many of the accounts offer very few details on the battle, only an affirmation that the interviewee indeed was on Wake Island. The bulk of the book relies on the accounts of a handful of participants who offer graphic, poignant, and occasionally horrifying details of the ordeal on Wake and in the prisoner-of-war camps. The accounts are from Marine Corps, Navy, and Army survivors of the battle. The author, however, all but ignores the 1,200 civilian contractors who were on the atoll and the part they played in the siege and battle.
I found the author’s commentary and narrative of the battle fraught with errors regarding dates, military ranks, and chronology. None of this narrative is footnoted and only a simple bibliography is provided. He also does not arrange or introduce individual accounts in a manner that provides continuity in telling the story of the battle. Hell Wouldn’t Stop offers some interesting and moving personal accounts of the ordeal of Wake Island, but it does little to describe the battle to someone who is not already familiar with the story as a whole.
John Wukovits has chosen an appropriate title to his book, Pacific Alamo. Indeed, as he recounts, the Marines on the ground during the battle were the first to make the comparison to the Alamo. The fate of the Wake Island defenders almost became the same as those of the famous 19th-century last stand. Fortunately, intervention by the Japanese invasion force commander prevented the execution of the 1,700 civilians and military men.
Wukovits’s narrative is a well-written, compelling story that is a tribute to the Marines, sailors, soldiers, and construction workers who endured the battle and subsequent imprisonment. The author recounts the buildup of the island’s defenses and the preparations for what was considered an inevitable conflict with Japan. His descriptions of the early air raids, the repulse of the Japanese invasion fleet on 11 December, and the ferocious battle on 23 December flow with the engaging fluidity of a novel. Firsthand observations of the battle (including from Japanese participants) give a human element to the story.
Wukovits does not stop with the surrender of Wake Atoll to the Japanese. Approximately one-third of the book deals with the experiences of the military men and civilian contractors as prisoners. The description of this three-year ordeal of torture, malnutrition, and inhuman living conditions is, in some ways, more horrendous than the accounts of combat.
Pacific Alamo also emphasizes the important effect Wake Island had on U.S. morale. The demoralizing destruction at Pearl Harbor had left the nation in need of a victory in the first weeks of the war. The obstinate stand of the Marines and initial repulse of the Japanese provided a rallying cry that was needed desperately on the home front.
As well written as Pacific Alamo is, it does not provide any information about the battle that has not been published already. The extensive accounts of the Wake prisoner-of-war experience are new ground, however. Pacific Alamo has an extensive bibliography, although the footnoting is disappointing. Most paragraphs that provide detailed information are not referenced, so the reader cannot follow up on the original source of the data.
Although Pacific Alamo is an informative and pleasing read for the general military history enthusiast, it may not provide much new information for those with a specific in-depth interest in the battle for Wake Island.
Nelson: Love & Fame
Edgar Vincent. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003. 640 pp. Illus. Maps. Bib. Index. $35.00.
Reviewed by Rear Admiral Joseph F. Callo, U.S. Naval Reserve (Retired)
What clearly sets this book apart from the many modem Nelson biographies is its exceptional amount of relevant detail. In this new biography, each major milestone in Lord Nelson’s career is nourished with substantial military, political, and personal background. The result is an exceptionally well-developed analysis of the man who changed the course of history from the decks of his ships. The unusual amount of detail in its more than 600 pages also provides a rational basis for the various opinions of Nelson regularly
Rather than slowing the pace of the book, the details clarify and connect events and personalities and help to create a rich portrait. One section of the book that is representative in this regard is the description of the aftermath of the disastrous Battle of Santa Cruz, a recounting that includes five pages about Admiral Earl St. Vincent’s postdefeat influence on Nelson.
The author weaves St. Vincent’s interactions with Nelson, the Admiralty, Whitehall, and others into his description of this period, during which Nelson’s career very well could have ended. This expanded view of St. Vincent’s impact on Nelson’s career, when added to similarly expanded references to the Earl, shows how brilliantly Nelson’s mentor coached, coaxed, and saved him for his astonishing victories at the Nile, Copenhagen, and Trafalgar.
Other individuals who played an important role in Nelson’s career—such as his wife, his paramour, the senior naval commanders under whom he served, first lords of the admiralty, prime ministers, and even his French opposite number at the Battle of Trafalgar—are similarly enlarged. And the author’s willingness to treat those individuals as more than stage props in the Nelson drama helps readers understand the Nelson persona more fully.
Although not a career naval officer, the author’s early service in the Royal Navy shows through in his focus on the personal characteristics and career circumstances Magiclmage Publishing 740 S. 6th Ave. Abesecon, NJ 08201 (NH101) that drove one of the most noteworthy military leaders of modem times. His description of how Nelson prepared his captains before his final battle at Cape Trafalgar is a case in point. In contrast to so many Nelson biographers, Vincent moves his analysis beyond the admiral’s tactics, which were not as radical as many contend. Instead, he relates Nelson’s brilliance to combat doctrine, which guided his captains when signals and plans were overtaken by events. In addition, he makes this aspect of Nelson’s leadership relevant to our own times when he writes, “The words of modem military doctrine as laid down in the current handbooks of the British Army and Navy echo to an uncanny extent what Nelson had created.” Service in the Royal Navy also is reflected in the author’s emphasis on Nelson’s attention to the health, morale, and discipline of his sailors.
Vincent builds his story of Nelson on a solid foundation, drawing frequently from such basic references as James Stanier Clarke and John McArthur’s The Life of Admiral Lord Nelson (London: 1809) and The Dispatches and Letters of Vice Admiral Lord Viscount Nelson by Sir Nicholas Harris Nicolas (London: H. Colburn, 1844-46). Most important, he moves substantially beyond those well-known works and includes material from primary sources that will be new, even to many who know Nelson well. One example is the author’s inclusion of at least four references to Adelaide Correglia, the opera performer with whom Nelson had an extramarital affair in Leghorn, who usually receives no more than a few snickering sentences or a footnote in other Nelson biographies. Vincent’s work provides specific background on Correglia and the affair, which appears to have been based primarily on physical attraction. Those new details give her a distinct, if fleeting, place in Nelson’s early Mediterranean service. They also provide important additional perspective on Nelson’s relationships with his wife, Fanny, and his paramour, Lady Hamilton.
This biography, which includes 69 illustrations and 12 maps and charts, deserves a place on any serious Nelson bookshelf. In addition, the book, which required ten years of research and writing, also provides outstanding background for the accelerating flow of books, articles, and events leading to the October 2005 bicentennial of the Battle of Trafalgar.
