The Oregon Legislature has passed a resolution honoring the Oregon civilian contractors on Wake Island in World War II. I am proud to say that Oregon, my home state, is the first state to do so. Both the House and Senate passed the resolution unanimously, and we are very grateful to the sponsors and committees who paved the way. You can read HCR23 final in full here. Representative Rick Lewis of Oregon House District 18 initiated the...

In mid-December 2024, U. S. Marines of the 12th Marine Littoral (meaning ashore) Anti-Air Battalion (12th LAAB) trained on Wake Island for a long-distance tactical air surveillance raid. In this first field training of the recently activated battalion, the Marines deployed a state-of-the-art AN/TPS-80 radar complex (Ground/Air Task-Oriented Radar), which is an air surveillance system that can detect, identify, and track multiple types of...

I came across an interesting piece online by the Lovell Chronicle (Lovell, Wyoming, is a small town near the state’s northern border with Montana): a throw-back feature called “From Our Files” including clips from the December 22, 1949, issue – 75 years ago today. The one that caught my eye was about Henry Schmidt, a local resident who had traveled to Billings MT the week before to meet Paul Haruo Kasai, a Japanese teen coming to America for...

I highly recommend a welcome addition to the Wake Island library: Wake Island Wildcat: A Marine Fighter Pilot’s Epic Battle at the Beginning of World War II by William L. Ramsey (Stackpole Books, 2024). This is an intimate, well-sourced biography of the author’s great-uncle, Henry Talmadge Elrod, the Marine Corps captain who valiantly defended the island during the siege and battle of December 1941 and was posthumously awarded the Medal of...

I am pleased to announce that Casemate Publishers has released a new paperback edition of my book, Building for War: The Epic Saga of the Civilian Contractors and Marines of Wake Island in World War II. The hardback edition sold out last winter, though some copies are still available through used book dealers. The e-book and paperback editions are available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble online. Casemate designed a new cover for the paperback...