Remembering the Civilians Of Wake Island

BOISE, ID — Prior to the start of World War II, Wake Island was an island paradise. A frequent stop for Pan American flights heading to the Orient, vacationers spent time on the island swimming, sport fishing and bird watching.

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Due to the island's strategic location, construction of an air strip started in 1941 with Boise-based Morrison Knudson the primary company handling the duties. With a local company the primary force, many Boise men signed on for the work and were flown to the island.

About 1150 civilian construction workers joined 450 Marines, a few Navy men, and a five-man Army radio section in the effort to establish a base of operations close enough to Japan for American bombers to strike the Japanese-controlled Marshall Islands should such action be necessary. Those on Wake Island placed a five-inch anti-aircraft gun and ammunition on the island as a defensive measure and twelve F4F-3 fighters were stationed on the island.

Immediately following the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, the attack on Wake Island started. On December 11, the Japanese started an invasion of the island. After ten days of fighting, the Japanese were able to reach the beach. Up until that time, the civilians and military personnel on the island fought side by side.

Those left on the island, 81 marines and 82 civilians, surrendered on the morning of Dec. 24. Prior to the surrender, those left destroyed everything that could be used as a weapon by the Japanese and disabled the remaining equipment.

Both civilians and military were held as prisoners, deprived of food and water for two days and stripped and left in the sun. In mid-January, a merchants ship docked at the island and some prisoners were transported to China. For the next three years, this group was shuttled between China and Japan and treated as prisoners.

Some were not transported, but left on the island to be used as laborers. On Oct. 5, 1943, the naval aircraft carrier Yorktown raided the island. Two days later, the Japanese officer of the island ordered the execution of 98 captured civilians. The 98 were taken to the northern end of the island, blindfolded and executed with a machine gun.

According to reports, the following occurred: "One of the prisoners (whose name has never been discovered) escaped the massacre, apparently returning to the site to carve the message 98 US PW 5-10-43 on a large coral rock near where the victims had been hastily buried in a mass grave. The unknown American was recaptured, and Admiral Sakaibara personally beheaded him with a katana. The inscription on the rock can still be seen and is a Wake Island landmark."

On Sept. 1, 1945, those remaining were liberated from the island by the 1st Calvary Division. Admiral Sakaibara was hanged on June 18, 1947. The murdered civilian POWs were reburied after the war in Honolulu’s National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, commonly known as Punchbowl Crater.

My uncle, William Gates, now deceased, was one of the civilian prisoners of Wake Island. He survived, remaining on the island, until liberation in 1945. The final survivor of Wake Island, Joe Goicoechea, passed in 2017. For 40 years, the civilian survivors were denied veterans' benefits. In 1981, the U.S. government granted benefits and in 1988, a memorial was erected for the civilian workers.

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