Victory in Defeat: The Wake Island Defenders in Captivity, 1941-1945
Gregory J. W. Urwin. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2010. 512 pp. Intro. Notes. Bib. Index. $38.95.
Reviewed by Mark Felton
“We had a bond there that’s still going,” remarks one veteran in Gregory Urwin’s brilliant new book. Victory in Defeat demonstrates the bond of comradeship in conquering terrible adversity. As a study in human courage and grim wartime determination, this book is unsurpassed. It is a very accomplished and detailed read.
As the title states, this is the story of the survival of the human spirit despite imprisonment at the hands of a brutal and often unpredictable enemy. The defenders of Wake Island were America’s first “band of brothers” during World War II, displaying a gallantry and fighting spirit that inspired the nation when it was facing defeat. Urwin is the acknowledged expert on the doomed 1941 defense of Wake Island, and he tells the story of the long and difficult imprisonment that the defenders endured in Japanese hands after their surrender. In many ways, it is an even more compelling tale than that of the battle itself, as the defenders were imprisoned in the Woosung and Kiangwan prisoner-of-war camps in China or in camps on mainland Japan.
The beauty of the author’s prose stands in stark contrast to the grimness and uncertainty of the situation that he records so expertly. Drawing on nearly 100 oral history interviews, Urwin has been able to give the story an immediate and fascinating voice. Beginning with a thoroughly engaging summary of the battle, he captures the mixed emotions of the defeated Americans on being ordered to lay down their arms and their fears and anxieties over their Japanese captors’ intentions. The Wake Island defenders were prisoners for 3 1/2 years, but it becomes clear that they were more fortunate than many of their comrades who were captured in the Philippines. The Woosung and Kiangwan camps were near Shanghai, where neutral nations such as Switzerland and organizations such as the International Red Cross still operated missions. With an independent Western eye constantly on the camps, the Japanese were forced to rein in their worst excesses.
What emerges from Urwin’s succinct account is the uncertainty inherent in imprisonment. He masterfully weaves the narrative threads of first-person accounts with historical research, demonstrating the shifting allegiances and internal conflicts among the prisoners and their relations with their captors and the prisoners of other nations. He depicts the intricate “buddy system” that the prisoners created to survive, reflecting again the comradeship that the men felt for each other after their bonds of allegiance were forged in the futile battle on a speck of Pacific coral. They were as determined to survive as they had been to defend Wake, and their victory was that ultimately so many of them did live through the ordeal, while in other camps prisoners perished, often in tragically huge numbers.
The Japanese in Urwin’s treatment appear to have been much more humane than they were in many other camps, with the notable exception of the Japanese interpreter Ishihara at Woosung, “The Beast of the East,” whose sadism was matched only by his comedic value to the prisoners. In general, daily contact with the prisoners demonstrated a restraint that was often conspicuously absent in so many other camps across occupied Asia, although Urwin also suggests that the camp was receiving special treatment from the Japanese authorities simply because it was under the observation of the neutral powers. Geography probably saved more American lives than simple good fortune. Urwin vividly renders the struggle for survival under extremely basic conditions, and although he clearly admires the men who went through this ordeal, he is not shy in his criticisms of some of their leaders and their decisions.
Victory in Defeat is a thoroughly absorbing read and a book that needed to be written. Although it is a big tome, Urwin has managed to create a genuine page-turner. It achieves so much more than simply filling in the rest of the story of the Wake Island defenders. Without question, this is one of the finest studies available of Japanese prisoner-of-war camps and their unfortunate inmates.
Give Me Tomorrow: The Korean War’s Greatest Untold Story—The Epic Stand of the Marines of George Company
Patrick K. O’Donnell. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2010. 288 pp. Illus. Maps. Appens. Notes. Index. $26.
Reviewed by Colonel Jon T. Hoffman, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve (Retired)
Patrick O’Donnell has written several books based on extensive interviews with veterans, and has even gone a giant step further by accompanying a platoon of Marines through a deployment in Iraq and the Battle of Fallujah. His latest volume chronicles Company G, 3d Battalion, 1st Marines from its hurried formation at Camp Pendleton in August 1950 through the amphibious assault at Inchon, the battle for Seoul, and the epic breakout from the Chosin Reservoir. Give Me Tomorrow fits into the standard mold of the oral history genre, with the author weaving the recollections of dozens of men into a relatively coherent narrative of their experiences. Readers will appreciate his skill in developing this grunt’s-eye view of combat, but overall, the book leaves much to be desired.
It has become routine to label a piece of history the “greatest untold story,” as the subtitle of this book does, even though in many cases the events in question have not previously been ignored. Aside from the obvious marketing ploy, such claims make one wonder if the author really knows his topic. In this case, the answer seemingly becomes apparent early on, as O’Donnell recounts some World War II background. In the space of a few pages he claims that “one million Leathernecks” served in that conflict (it was barely over half that), declares that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on 7 June 1941 (apparently the actual date wasn’t quite as infamous as President Franklin Roosevelt expected), ascribes the victory on Guadalcanal to the “Fifth Marine Division” (a shocking mistake for a book about a 1st Marine Division unit), and has the Guadalcanal veterans going from that campaign right into Peleliu, somehow overlooking the long struggle at Cape Gloucester in between.
The errors continue into the Korean War period that forms the heart of the story. He observes that Marines from America’s South were appropriately riding to war in a U.S. naval transport ship, the General Simon B. Buckner (T-AP-123), which the author mistakenly assumes was named after a Confederate general rather than his son, the U.S. Army commander of the Okinawa assault force.
The best oral historians provide critical context to augment the memories of their subjects and properly illuminate what they have experienced. In O’Donnell’s zeal to demonstrate the importance of his chosen topic, he asserts that Company G saved the Marine perimeter at Hagaru-ri and thus “most of X Corps,” and that “the outcome of the war hung in the balance.” But only the 5th and 7th Marines and the Army’s Task Force Faith were north of the village, and the latter unit’s fate already was sealed regardless of the outcome at Hagaru-ri. While defeat there might have meant the loss of most of a Marine division, the majority of X Corps could still have made good its escape by sea. One could argue that the successful fighting withdrawal of the Marines persuaded the nation to keep fighting in Korea, but O’Donnell simply makes sweeping assertions with little or no analysis to support them.
The story of George Company at Hagaru-ri is larger than life, but it certainly doesn’t stand alone as an epic battle in light of the accomplishments of many other Marine units in Korea. The men of George played an important role at the Chosin Reservoir when they fought their way from Koto-ri to Hagaru-ri in one day and then withstood a large-scale Chinese assault on their position the following night. But they performed those feats with the aid of others around them. To pick out just one example that would compete for the honor of the most heroic saga, Fox Company, 2d Battalion, 7th Marines survived five days and nights of attacks by overwhelming numbers while holding a critical outpost miles from any other friendly forces. By the time the campaign was finished, nearly every unit that fought in it had its own “untold” story of greatness. All the action has been recounted in the official history and numerous commercial books, though not to the level of individual perspective for this particular company.
For readers wanting to get a sense of what it was like to be an infantryman in the 1st Marine Division during the opening months of the Korean War, the stories of the men of George Company more than fill that niche. But those who want to truly understand the significance of their deeds will have to look elsewhere for a better researched, better edited, and more objective account.
Horrible Shipwreck!
Andrew C. A. Jampoler. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2010. 294 pp. Illus. Notes. Bib. Index. $34.95.
Reviewed by William S. Dudley
Horrible Shipwreck! dramatically subtitled A full, true and particular account of the melancholy loss of the British convict ship Amphitrite, the 31st of August 1833, off Boulogne, When 108 female convicts, 12 children, and 13 seamen Met with a watery grave, in sight of thousands, None being saved out of 136 souls but three! is a history that reads like a novel. Although it is indeed about a shipwreck, its labyrinthine narrative informs the readers at every turn about fascinating aspects of early 19th-century seafaring life as well as English social history, as seen in the linkages among crime, punishment, and emigration policies. Within the British penal system of the 1830s, it was the usual practice to imprison members of the lower classes for debt and petty theft, while transporting or executing those judged guilty of other serious crimes, far short of rape and murder.
At issue in this book are the fates of women who had fallen from their families’ or husbands’ favor and been made to shift for themselves, often as laundresses, shop clerks, or cleaning maids. But many also stole from their mistresses or businesses, or, worse yet, were compelled, for lack of better opportunity, into prostitution. Once arrested for these vices, if not given a second chance they were sentenced to transportation. This usually meant they were destined to be shipped to Australia where, at Botany Bay or Port Jackson, they were put to work. Ultimately, if they survived they might become contributing members of the new colony, where thousands of male convicts had arrived before them. If they already had children, those waifs were sent along with their mothers on the three- to four-month ordeal that was the voyage to the land “down under.”
Author Jampoler, a skilled narrator, was a U.S. Navy officer. He writes clearly about the events leading to and following the night of 31 August 1833, when the Amphitrite was shipwrecked with the loss of all on board but three. He writes of Captain John Hunter and his crew, the relevant navigational details, and the terrible storm that placed the British transport ship in the perilous position of being unable to escape the lee shore of Boulogne-sur-Mer, where she was trapped by a raging westerly gale.
He also explains the strange situation that prevented the ship’s master from assisting in saving his passengers’ lives as the vessel was dashed on the sands of Boulogne. He likewise depicts the inhumane French customs officers who patrolled the beach and would not allow their citizens or visiting English vacationers to rescue the drowning women or children.
To discover the reasons for these anomalies, read this artfully written book. The author spent months researching British archives. He has provided a full bibliography of primary and secondary sources in English and French, as well as 21 pages of citations and comments, and illustrations and maps.
A Measureless Peril: America in the Fight for the Atlantic—The Longest Battle of World War II
Richard Snow. New York: Scribner, 2010. 368 pp. Notes. Bib. Index. $27.
Reviewed by Marc Milner
Few really important World War II subjects have generated more smoke and less light than America’s role in the Battle of the Atlantic. Anyone who has tried to use the U.S. Navy’s records in the National Archives in Washington, D.C., knows why: They are a disaster. When I complained to the archivist for Navy and Old Army about this, he observed laconically that the U.S. Navy did not want anyone digging deeply into its history, especially that of the Atlantic. So it would seem. Richard Snow’s little book, which promises much in its subtitle, sheds little light on the subject.
A Measureless Peril is a well-written collection of anecdotes on a wide range of subjects that emerged from his father’s war stories (he served in a destroyer in the final months of the war) and from Snow’s limited bibliography. These stories are written up in a loosely chronological sequence of short chapters—a kind of “bathroom reading” format. There are chapters on why Germany built battleships instead of submarines; a profile of the German naval commander and final president of the Third Reich, Karl Dönitz; the fate of the British ship SS Athenia; what happened when President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill met in August 1941; descriptions of U-boat ops off the East Coast of the United States; the story of the development of radar; and so on.
Each chapter is its own little vignette, gleaned—for those who are familiar with the literature—largely from existing publications. But his account of America’s “fight for the Atlantic” takes place in a vacuum, largely without context, without the Allies, without meaning, and idiosyncratically to boot.
Beyond being a collection of anecdotes and tidy stories, A Measureless Peril probably reflects the author’s personal voyage of discovering his father’s war. There’s nothing wrong with that. Indeed, the book will likely be picked up by those unfamiliar with the subject and read with interest; Snow is a good writer, and they could do worse. But America’s Atlantic war remains locked up tight in the National Archives, waiting for some diligent soul to unearth it.