wake island

[boomboom]

The story of wake will be on the history channel at 9pm est.Any idea why the U.S never tried to retake it?

[Drex]

They did in 1943.

[boomboom]

I never heard of that.I was suprised when I learned that the island was occupied after the war was over.

[AmiralLaurent]

The USN never tried to retake Wake, it just raided it several times during the war (from March 1942 to August 1945).

Wake was an airfield useful between Hawai and Philipinnes, but little else. It was not sufficient to send a force to retake it.

The Japanese garnison was bypassed, as in tens of other islands in the Pacific, and maybe half of it died under the bombings or form hunger/disease.

[Drex]

Originally posted by AmiralLaurent
The USN never tried to retake Wake, it just raided it several times during the war (from March 1942 to August 1945).

Wake was an airfield useful between Hawai and Philipinnes, but little else. It was not sufficient to send a force to retake it.

The Japanese garnison was bypassed, as in tens of other islands in the Pacific, and maybe half of it died under the bombings or form hunger/disease.

Sorry Amiral Laurent, but Wake was invaded by the US in October 1943. At least that's what the site on the internet said and they backed it up with photos of the signing of the surrender by the Japanese.

[Drex]

Amiral Laurent is correct. Wake was regained Sept. 1945 but there is a website that states it was 1943 and shows photos of the surrender ceremony! But it was 1943 when the Japanese executed 101 civilians.

[AmiralLaurent]

Wake was used as a live training target for US CV from 1943 to 1945.

The October 1943 was a "training" before the attack of the Gilberts and was useful in this wiew. It was also devastating from the Japanese view (300 killed according to one source, and tens of planes destroyed) and the remaining 98 American remaining on the island (civilian construction personnel) were executed the day after the raid as reprisals (wrong English here ?).

This is a quite good site on Wake in WWII:

http://marshall.csu.edu.au/html/Wake_WW ... -Text.html

The main site is:
http://marshall.csu.edu.au/WWII.html

Some interesting pages on little known Japanese bases that were left to starve: the survival rate of the garnison is between 32 and 50 % !

[estaban]

Wake is kind of out in the middle of the Ocean by itself, too far from most other places to provide a useful base. The naval and air facility potential was not that great, compared to the many good anchorages you could find in the Marshalls, so the U.S. bypassed Wake on the way to Tokyo.

[Snigbert]

Just watched the documentary this afternoon (they reran it)...I thought it was really nicely done. I highly reccomend you watch it if given the opportunity.