bigpigeon.us webpage WW II - Japan > Japan Lashes Out > Guam & Wake Island, updated by RAC 7 Oct '19.
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The United States acquired Guam, a substantial island in the Marianas, from Spain after the 1898 Spanish American War. In 1899 the United States claimed Wake, an uninhabited cluster of three tiny islands, for use as an underseas cable station.
The accompanying map shows Guam and Wake Island on the Pan American Airlines China Clipper route, established in 1936 and discontinued immediately after Pearl Harbor. Guam, surrounded by the other Japanese-occupied Mariana Islands, fell on December 10. The Marine Defense Battalion and Air Squadron on Wake Island beat off the first Japanese attack, sinking two Japanese destroyers, the first American victory in World War II. On December 23 the Japanese returned in force, storming the island and forcing a surrender. |
1930s China Clipper Route Map
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Sources for the WW II - Guam and Wake Island webpage
- The webpage header photo, Wake Island Civilians, tells of an almost-forgotten World War II story. When Wake Island in the Central Pacific fell to the Japanese on 23 Dec 1941, those captured included 1,100 civilian employees of the Morrison-Knudsen Construction Company, shown above just after capture. Around 1,000 of those captured were sent to Japan to do forced labor, of whom about 140 died in captivity. Around 100 civilians were kept on Wake Island to do forced labor. In October 1943, the Japanese executed the remaining 98 civilian prisoners.
- The Pan American Airways trans-Pacific Clipper began service in 1936. The route map is courtesy of the Smithsonian Museum's Air and Space Museum. Macau, a Portuguese colony, and Hong Kong, a British colony, are about 30 miles apart across a stretch of water. Hong Kong is sometimes given as the Asian terminus.
Pottawattamie County, Iowa WW II Dead - Guam and Wake Island
(taken from the bigpigeon.us WW II Dead webarea)
(taken from the bigpigeon.us WW II Dead webarea)
- 03-02 - Japan Lashes Out - Guam and Wake Island: (one dead, updated 5 Oct ’19)
† Goodwin, Ralph H. - civilian
d. 23 Dec ’43, Fukuoka POW Camp, Kyushu Is., Japan; one of 1,221 civilian employees of Morrison-Knudsen Civil Engineering Company who were captured or killed at Wake Is. Ralph Goodwin was born in Alliance, Nebraska, lived in Phoenix, Arizona with his wife and chldren, and was captured on Wake Island and sent to Japan as a forced laborer. Ralph's father was a childhood neighbor and perhaps schoolmate of my grandfather in Boomer Township. In the summer of my 7th year, one of my afternoon tasks was to fetch the cows from a pasture once owned by Ralph's grandfather.