PART 1

Imperial Japanese ground forces experienced two clear-cut victories over American ground forces during the Second World War: the capture of Wake Island, in December of 1941, and the conquest of the Philippine Islands, which was a multi-month campaign spanning from December of 1941 to May of 1942. Wake was defended by nearly 500 US Marines and Marine aviators comprising the 1st Defense Battalion, equipped with three batteries each of 3-inch anti-aircraft guns and 5-inch coast artillery guns as well as a plethora of .30 and .50 caliber machine guns, and VMF-211, a fighter squadron equipped with F4F-3 Wildcat fighters. The Philippine Archipelago was defended by the US Asiatic Fleet, multiple American air groups, and over 140,000 men under the command of US Army Forces in the Far East (USAFFE), the vast majority of which were Filipino. Attacks on both unfolded as part of Japan’s drive to secure the Southern Resource Area, and occurred simultaneously with the invasions of Malaya and Thailand, the assault on Hong Kong, the carrier strike at Pearl Harbor, and the seizure of Guam and Makin. The capture of Wake was desired in order to sever communications between the United States and the Philippines and because it represented a potential threat to Japanese bases in the Mandates to the south. The Philippines, on the other hand, were a definite threat to Japanese plans in the Southern Resource Area. By storming and occupying the Philippines Japan would deny the United States the use of its major air and naval bases located there, which in turn would safeguard Japanese forces as they seized control of several resource-rich areas in the southwest Pacific.

Combat operations against Wake began with an aerial attack on the same day as the attack on Pearl Harbor, which was December 8th, 1941 across the International Date Line. This proved successful, as most of VMF-211’s fighters were destroyed on the ground and over half of its personnel were killed or wounded. For the next three days the Japanese conducted daily air raids that destroyed several installations on the atoll and reduced the capabilities of the 1st Defense Battalion’s anti-aircraft batteries. On the 11th of December a task force of light cruisers and destroyers escorting 450 marines of the Maizuru 2d Special Naval Landing Force arrived off the atoll and attempted to assault it. During this attempt the 1st Defense Battalion’s coast artillery batteries succeeded in damaging several ships and sank the destroyer HAYATE outright. This forced the task force to retreat, and as they did so they were harassed by the remaining Wildcats of VMF-211, which succeeded in sinking the destroyer KIRISAGA. For the next twelve days Wake was bombed almost daily; in the interim Carrier Division 2, constituted by SŌRYŪ and HIRYŪ, was dispatched to aid in the operation and the rest of the Maizuru 2d SNLF arrived at Roi, doubling the size of the marine detachment that was to assault Wake. CarDiv 2 took station to the north of the atoll joined in the bombing effort on the 21st and 22d, which by now had substantially reduced the anti-aircraft batteries of the 1st Defense Battalion and grounded VMF-211 through the destruction of all of its aircraft. The Marines had been busy building beach defenses throughout this period, and by the time the assault force arrived on the night of the 22d they had constructed several emplacements about the atoll that included the remaining anti-aircraft guns (repurposed for use as coast artillery) and several machine guns. Many of these positions included fallback points that already contained machine guns and ammunition, and a truck-mounted mobile reserve was formed around four machine guns and eight men.

The Japanese plan of attack on the night of the 22d differed slightly than that of the landing attempted on the 11th. On the earlier date the naval task force had conducted a preliminary bombardment of the atoll, which had resulted in the shootout between it and the Marines. It was therefore decided to denude the coast artillery of its effectiveness by foregoing a preliminary bombardment and land the assault troops under cover of darkness. To accomplish this several landing barges loaded with 50 marines each and two destroyer-transports, PATROL CRAFT 32 and PATROL CRAFT 33, loaded with 800 marines between the two of them, would beach themselves ashore. They did exactly this, and the battle opened at approximately 0245 when the Marines illuminated the barges and transports shortly after beaching. The Marines had been alert for at least thirty minutes by this point, and engaged the assault troops immediately with machine guns and a single anti-aircraft gun, the latter of which set PATROL CRAFT 33 afire and illuminated the battlefield. With assault troops landing on both Wilkes Island and Wake Island proper and the Marines formed into strongpoints centered around their artillery batteries or machine gun positions the Japanese marines quickly began infiltrating through the American “lines,” cutting communications wire as they went and debilitating the Marines’ effective defense of the atoll. Although their progress was in several places retarded by effective fire from Marine small arms and machine guns (and those that landed on Wilkes were wiped out by the defenders) by 0500 they had secured a beachhead and were expanding it, isolating groups of Marines and moving more or less at will. Throughout the battle the task force offshore shelled the atoll, remaining out of range of the coast artillery batteries, which remained manned and damaged a destroyer that attempted to swing in close. With daylight came air support from CarDiv 2, and by 1330 the defenses of the atoll had been shattered well enough to convince Major James Devereux, the commander of the atoll’s defenders, that it was time to surrender.