Hell Wouldn't Stop: An Oral History of the Battle of Wake Island (Hardcover)

~ Chet Cunningham (Author) "Most Americans today have forgotten or never knew much about Wake Island..." (more)
Key Phrases: first invasion attempt, first loader, second loader, Major Devereux, Commander Cunningham, Pearl Harbor (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

In this gritty, poignant, often disturbing oral chronicle of one of the first and most tragic military engagements in World War II, Chet Cunningham gives the gallant U.S. defenders of Wake Island—among them his older brother, Kenneth, then a private in the Marines—their long-overlooked due. For Kenneth Cunningham, a serviceman in the defense battalion stationed on Wake Island, World War II began on December 8, 1941, just five hours after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. It ended on December 23. That day the Marines on Wake Island—their twelve Wildcat fighter planes lost, their forces diminished—faced an overwhelming enemy invasion, with the Japanese arriving in so many ships that, as one eyewitness put it, they could have walked from one to the other on the open sea. Private Cunningham and his fellow Marines fought intrepidly, until their commanding officers ordered them to surrender. Their term in hell, though, had just begun. When the Marines laid down their arms they were stripped naked. With their hands bound, they sat naked in the hot sun all day; at night they shivered in the cold. They suffered endless days at sea jammed in the holds of ships that took them to prison camps in China and Japan. Forty-four months later, liberated at last, they would return home unheralded and largely forgotten. Their often horrific, frequently heroic story now stands recorded, for the most part in the words of the soldiers, sailors, Marines, and civilian personnel who were there, as well as of their wives and widows, in startling, unforgettable detail. Eight pages of black-and-white photographs add to this gripping reconstruction of the sixteen-day battle for Wake Island and its aftermath.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 282 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; 1st Carroll & Graf Ed edition (October 15, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786710969
• ISBN-13: 978-0786710966
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #498,184 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Viewing the total experience, February 3, 2003

By	Roger Mansell (Los Altos CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The Battle for Wake Island inspired a nation after the horrendous loss at Pearl Harbor. This is a remarkable compilation of first hand experiences, both by the author and the men of all ranks who fought alongside. The smoke and haze of battle prohibits any one person from experiencing the whole. Cunningham cleverly weaves the stories and memoirs of his fellow Wake Island defenders into tapestry that gives a remarkable vision of this heroic defense.

Taken as prisoners, the men were enslaved in the highly profitable Japanese War machinery, enriching companies like Mitsui and Hitachi. The savagery and endless brutality of the Japanese against the POWS became an a living hell. Truly, Cunningham has written the personal answers of so many to the question: "What really happened to these gallant men?"

Regrettably, little is said of the gallantry of the civilian construction company employees, many of whom were equally gallant defenders.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hell Wouldn't Stop Is Well Worth Reading, February 21, 2006

By	David Richard - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Hell Wouldn't Stop: An Oral History of the Battle of Wake Island (Paperback)

Hell Wouldn't Stop is probably the most complete resource available concerning the invasion of Wake Island and the POW experiences of the survivors. The personal accounts are quite gripping. However, since this book is an oral history, given by survivors, and transcribed verbatim, most events are repeated very often but from the unique perspective of each survivor.

The repitition gets tiresome occasionally but the author allows each man to tell his complete story, long or short, so these accounts do not appear edited.

The survivors of the Wake invasion became the first POWs of the Pacific Theater. Their accounts are important since they spent the longest time in the brutal Japanese prisoner of war system.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in WWII

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the most important accounts of the Wake Island Defenders., December 28, 2006

By	Ryan Fisher (Santa Maria, CA, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Hell Wouldn't Stop is perhaps one of the better research resources I have yet read regarding the battle of Wake Island. Having read several more books on Wake Island since writing my first review I must make some editing.
I do however, commend Chet Cunningham's work to compile these lesser known tales of Wake's enlisted men and officers alike. Such firsthand accounts, while repetitive provide valuable insight into the battle and subsequent imprisonment of the survivors.
Cunningham, NO RELATION TO THE GARRISON COMMANDER, has given a voice to the many enlisted servicemen whose stories would have otherwise gone untold.
Most Wake island stories are either officer's accounts or historical perspectives that rely on officer's accounts.
Cunningham, whose brother survived the battle and was the source for much of the book's material, was a Marine Private; his experiences reveal the unfortunate class differences between officers and enlisted men throughout the entire ordeal.
It is a shame that these enlisted men were forced to endure considerable hardships in Japanese captivity with such little advocacy or support from the commanders who surrendered them.
One man tells of the often lauded Marine Maj. Devereaux jotting down minor infractions like not saluting in his "little book" for later punishment, while his men endured 14 hour days of labor and frightful treatment by the Japanese.
This book is almost entirely first hand anecdotal material with little editing around mis-remembered facts.
If you can mentally overlap the stories as you read this book is fascinating, if not it is easy to get lost in its non-linear format. THINK TARANTINO IN BOOK FORM.
REVIEW EVERY BOOK YOU READ, AUTHORS DESERVE YOUR OPINIONS!