Customer Reviews

Wake Island

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is an outstanding account of the battle for Wake Island at the outbreak of WWII. Duane Schultz offers a well researched and very readable history of this battle, which while an American defeat was also one of its earliest victories. While the Island was eventually surrendered to the Japanese, the price they had to pay for it was very steep. The American public needed good news at the start of the war, and for sixteen days the Wake Island defenders gave it to them. Also covered here are other topics of interest including; Japanese war crimes (100 civilian construction workers were executed by the paranoid Japanese), and the controversy of who was in ultimate command of Wake Island (Cmdr W. S. Cunningham was the senior officer on Wake Island but was completely left out of all accounts of the battle, including award citations). This is a great book and one I highly recommend.

Schultz's recounting of the events at Wake reflect considerable previously published material from Devereux's 1947 and other first-hand accounts. On topic and organized well from the standpoint of chronology the book's strengths are its valuable appendicies and pictures along with most notably Schultz's attempt to bring credit to the late RADM Cunningham, whose command of the garrison at Wake Island has been overshadowed by the fickle nature of American combat history and Hollywood. Not to be neglected by historians, but for the history buff I would read either this book or Devereux's, to read both would be greatly redundant.