Given Up for Dead: America's Heroic Stand at Wake Island [Hardcover]

Bill Sloan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 30, 2003

A gripping narrative of unprecedented valor and personal courage, here is the story of the first American battle of World War II: the battle for Wake Island. Based on firsthand accounts from long-lost survivors who have emerged to tell about it, this stirring tale of the “Alamo of the Pacific” will reverberate for generations to come.

On December 8, 1941, just five hours after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Japanese planes attacked a remote U.S. outpost in the westernmost reaches of the Pacific. It was the beginning of an incredible sixteen-day fight for Wake Island, a tiny but strategically valuable dot in the ocean. Unprepared for the stunning assault, the small battalion was dangerously outnumbered and outgunned. But they compensated with a surplus of bravery and perseverance, waging an extraordinary battle against all odds.

When it was over, a few hundred American Marines, sailors, and soldiers, along with a small army of heroic civilian laborers, had repulsed enemy forces several thousand strong––but it was still not enough. Among the Marines was twenty-year-old PFC Wiley Sloman. By Christmas Day, he lay semiconscious in the sand, struck by enemy fire. Another day would pass before he was found—stripped of his rifle and his uniform. Shocked to realize he hadn’t awakened to victory, Sloman wondered: Had he been given up for dead—and had the Marines simply given up?

In this riveting account, veteran journalist Bill Sloan re-creates this history-making battle, the crushing surrender, and the stories of the uncommonly gutsy men who fought it. From the civilians who served as gunmen, medics, and even preachers, to the daily grind of life on an isolated island—literally at the ends of the earth—to the agony of POW camps, here we meet our heroes and confront the enemy face-to-face, bayonet to bayonet.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"Uncommon courage was a common virtue": this was said of Marines on another island, Iwo Jima. Texas journalist Sloan's excellent research, interviewing and journalistic prose will have readers of this moving book saying it of Wake Island, too: this popular military history is the best account yet of the Battle for Wake Island in December 1941. An almost barren coral atoll in the Central Pacific, Wake was a link in American communications with the Far East and squarely in the middle of Japanese-held islands. So both sides targeted it in the coming war, and soon after Pearl Harbor the Japanese began steady air attacks on the atoll's garrison. That garrison included a minuscule Marine air arm, flying half-wrecked F4F Wildcats, a thin battalion of Marine infantry and artillery, and a large number of civilian construction workers overtaken by the war while building a base. Battered from the air, this motley group actually drove off the first Japanese attempt at a landing, and inflicted heavy casualties on a second and much stronger effort before surrendering. The Wake Islanders can truly be called "heroic," even if Marine Major Devereaux and Navy Commander Cunningham did not coordinate as well as they could have. The Japanese emerge with little credit for either their witless tactics or their harsh treatment of the prisoners, although a Dr. Ozeki saved the lives of several wounded Americans. Wake Island has nearly faded from memory; the survivors interviewed are fading from life; this book is direly needed on any WW II shelf.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

This is the third recently published account about the capture of Wake Island in December 1941 (after Pacific Alamo by John Wukovits [2003] and Hell Wouldn't Stop by Chet Cunningham [2002]), and like its predecessors, the book avails itself of the handful of witnesses to the combat there. Sloan distinguishes himself with a seasoned journalistic approach, emphasizing the personal experience of young marines and civilian construction workers who defeated an initial Japanese attempt to land but succumbed to a second one. The possibility that Wake could have held out has generated conflicting memoirs and naval accounts, which Sloan draws on in his narrative as he recounts the fighting from the perspective of the foxhole. Collectively lauded as heroes at a grim time, when the war was going Japan's way, the marines are ably individualized by Sloan in ground-pounding dramatization of the gory action at every gun position. The last-stand courage of Wake's warriors continues to draw readers of military history. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Bantam; 1ST edition (September 30, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553803026
• ISBN-13: 978-0553803020
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,063,475 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars When heroism mattered they delivered, December 10, 2003

By 

Robert Busko (North Carolina) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Given Up for Dead: America's Heroic Stand at Wake Island (Hardcover)

If you've elected to read Given Up for Dead: America's Heroic Stand at Wake Island then you're in for a treat. It has been a long time since anything like it has appeared on the shelves in American bookstores.

Within hours of the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese strike at Wake Island. Thinly defended by a few companies of Marines and a very small Marine Air Squadron VMF-211, Wake Island was in the process of being fortified. Beside the small military detachment, there was large numbers of civilian construction crews on the Island that were sent to Wake to build various bunkers, hospitals, and barracks. PanAm also has a facility on Wake to service it's clippers that stop periodically on there way to the orient and back again. It is this small population of Americans that must face the Japanese assault that has not met defeat yet.

Bill Sloan is a master storyteller. In Given Up for Dead he tells the story in a way that will stir your admiration for the defenders, both military and civilian. He uses standard sources but also mixes in information from the few survivors that are still alive. Primary sources, especially eye witness accounts, form the backbone of this book.

Ultimately the American Marines are forced to surrender, but not until they give the Japanese a preview of what's in store for them in the subsequent months. It was the Marines at Wake Island that stopped the Japanese for the first time. It was also the Marines of Wake Island that sank the first Japanese naval vessel of WWII.

This is a pivotal book both in the history of the Marine Corps and the history of WWII. If you're a history buff then you'll want this book on your own bookshelf.

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Compelling and Worthwhile Read, October 11, 2003

By 

Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Given Up for Dead: America's Heroic Stand at Wake Island (Hardcover)

The "desert island" fantasy is a common enough parlor game in America --- imagining who you would want to be stranded with, what books or movies you would bring, and figuring out how you might survive if you were lost and alone on a coral beach out in the endless blue waters of the Pacific. What most of us would consider a fantasy was a stark reality for a few hundred Americans --- some Navy, some Marines, and some civilian contractors --- who were trapped on Wake Island in the days after the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

Wake Island was meant to be an advance base against possible Japanese aggression in the Pacific, but the attack on Pearl Harbor left the small Wake Island garrison isolated behind enemy lines. The island, a way station for Pan American's fleet of Pacific clippers, had a minimal number of defenders, a small squadron of aircraft, and not much else. The supply line back to Hawaii was cut; there could be no hope of food, fresh water, ammunition or reinforcements until the Navy, battered by the surprise attack, could put together a relief squadron out of spare parts.

No sooner had word of the attack on Pearl Harbor spread across the three islands at Wake than the Japanese struck, first with bombers and then with a naval task force bent on an amphibious assault of the island. The brave defenders managed to beat back the Japanese ships with the few remaining airplanes on the island and some well-timed artillery strikes, but a second wave of the Emperor's soldiers was on its way, racing against a rescue fleet dispatched from Hawaii.

To tell more about the valiant defense of Wake Island here in this review would spoil things, which I am constitutionally opposed to doing. Besides, there's no need to do that here. GIVEN UP FOR DEAD is so phenomenally well-written, so lucid in its prose, so clear in the way that it lifts the "fog of war" that hangs over the mysteries of combat, that you'll want to read the whole thing all at once; you won't be able to put it down, even though you know the ending.

Sloan's stated purpose in writing the book is to restore the heroes of Wake Island --- there really isn't another word --- to the American pantheon, to ensure that the defense of the island is mentioned in the same breath with the Alamo and Thermopylae and other gallant, doomed last stands. It is a goal that he more than accomplishes.

It is amazing that any of the American forces were able to survive Wake Island; that so many of them survived both the invasion and the subsequent horrors of a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp is nothing short of miraculous. Sloan documents every day of the siege, supplementing the official account with detailed interviews of the few remaining survivors. His commitment to accuracy and his teasing out the details of the conflict makes GIVEN UP FOR DEAD a compelling, worthwhile read.

--- Reviewed by Curtis Edmonds

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the first tough fights for the American military in WWII, February 27, 2005

By 

David Roy (Vancouver, BC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Given Up for Dead: America's Heroic Stand at Wake Island (Paperback)

Everybody knows about Pearl Harbor, and the sneak attack by the Japanese that helped usher the Americans into World War II. On the other hand, not that many people know about Wake island, the heroic stand of less than 1000 U.S. Marines and the civilian contractors who were there to help build it up, which began very shortly after Pearl Harbor and ended two days before Christmas. With Given Up For Dead, Bill Sloan has done his part to rectify this lack of knowledge. With powerful prose and words from the men who served there (and even a few from the invaders), Sloan tells us the story of these men and what they went through. The book is riveting, relatively easy to read, and quite thorough.

Wake island is a sleepy little atoll out in the middle of the Pacific, but it is strategically located. It was originally supposed to be built up during the 1930s, but lack of funding hampered this, until the coming of Pan Am, who wished to use it as a base for transoceanic travel. The island is mostly coral, scrub and trees, and is pretty desolate. For these men, however, it would become a crucible, and it would also gain the American army its first victory over the Japanese, though it was short-lived. The final defeat is shown to be completely unnecessary, as only a few miscues by the commanders (both on the island itself and back in Hawaii) result in the premature ending of a battle that was actually going fairly well for the Americans.

Sloan has interviewed most of the survivors from this battle, and he references the books written by the two commanders who died in the 1980s. This gives a very vivid view of the battle, right on the ground watching as the 3-inch gun crews manage to blow up two Japanese destroyers who ventured too close to land. We see the maneuvering during the second invasion, as Captain Wesley Platt manages to clear Wilkes island (one of the three islands that make up Wake Atoll) of all Japanese invaders, just prior to being ordered to surrender. Sloan pulls no punches, with the occasional description of battle that is quite graphic, but he doesn't go overboard. Instead, he makes it real.

The book begins with the history of the Wake atoll, from its discovery until its use as a military base, culminating in the pre-war years of build-up through Pan-Am and the military. This sets up the rest of the battle, as many of the civilian contractors who were on the island for this construction end up playing pivotal roles in the defense of the island. Some of the most heroic men who died were the civilians who volunteered to do whatever they could to help the Marines who were dying for them. Sure, some of the contractors fled to the jungle and survived on their own for two weeks, though strangely enough we never really hear about them again. Sloan mentions them in passing, but we never know exactly what happened to them. They were presumably killed, but if they were captured, Sloan never mentions them. Most of the civilians, however, took part in the defense.

Even more important than a detailed description of the battle, however, is the aftermath. Sloan tells us about the horrifying sea voyage of some of the prisoners, from Wake to Japan and then to a camp near Shanghai, about the desolate conditions on the ship and the brutality of their captors. There is no mention of any deaths on this voyage, except for the five who were beheaded up on the deck for no apparent reason (and Sloan states that the reason for this has never been revealed), so I'm not sure if that's glossed over or if it's just a fact that nobody died. The journey was horrible, though. Sloan also shows a few "good" Japanese soldiers, including Doctor Ozeki, who saved the life of Wiley Sloman back on Wake. Sloman had taken a bullet in the head, and Ozeki eventually saved him. None of the men had anything bad to say about him, and he even met with some of the survivors in 1995. Ed Borne even called Ozeki his best friend after years of correspondence with him.

In addition to all of this, Sloan examines the surrender and why it happened. A relief fleet was sailing toward Wake, but it was going too slow because of both the slowest ship's speed and the ambivalence of the new temporary commander of the Pacific Fleet, Admiral Pye, toward the relief effort. Add this to the severed communications between the commanders of the Wake defense and the troops giving the commanders a wrong impression of what was going on and you get a recipe for a premature surrender. Platt had cleared one island and was looking to go help on one of the others. The Marines could probably have held out for two or three more days, but the relief convoy was aborted as soon as Commander Cunningham, commander of the garrison, indicated to the Pacific Fleet headquarters (in a cryptic, though dramatic message) that Japanese troops were on the island and the situation was grim. What could have been a major American victory turned into another defeat.

Given Up For Dead is a book that's hard to put down. The book is well-researched, with most of the sources being interviews or the books written by men who fought there. There are a few details missing, as mentioned above, but overall this is quite the comprehensive work. It will keep any military history reader turning the page, and it is an important book for bringing to light a forgotten battle. Everybody remembers the Alamo, but hardly anybody seems to remember the Alamo of the Pacific.

David Roy