Pacific Alamo: The Battle for Wake Island

Sea Power, Sep 2003 by Gardner, Sherry L

PACIFIC ALAMO: The Battle for Wake Island, by John Wukovits, New York, N.Y: New American Library (Penguin Group), July 2003. 308 pp. $24.95. ISBN: 0-451-20873-0. Author John Wukovits, widely published military expert, has written several biographies and many articles for publications such as Naval History, Journal of Military History, and the Naval War College Review.

Within hours of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese planes flew over Wake Island, a tiny coral atoll in the Pacific Ocean, and bombed U.S. Marine Corps aircraft on the ground. On 11 December, when the first wave of Japanese invaders landed, the outnumbered and overpowered Marines and Wake Island civilians put up a resistance to the Japanese force that could not have been predicted, enduring daily air raids, a bayonet charge, and hand-to-hand combat. The easy victory planned by the Japanese became a protracted and costly battle that eventually did lead to the Americans' surrender. Wukovits' account-based on extensive research into both sides of the conflict, interviews with survivors, and studies of Japanese reports-reveals the courage displayed and the incredible story of the civilian contribution during the horror of the battle. With 42 black-and-white photographs, seven maps, notes, bibliography, and index.