The Guamanian memorial stands proudly in Memorial Row on Wake Island. The delicately engraved plaque has been obscured by a well-intentioned but misguided attempt to mitigate weathering by applying a protective coating. One has to squint and shift a bit until the light hits it just right to make out the names. Context is not offered: the casual observer might wonder who they were and how they fit in to the saga of World War II on Wake Island....

A few weeks ago I heard a Radio Lab podcast about coral that got me to thinking about time and change (“The Times They Are a-Changin’”) Scientists dissecting coral shells find gray bands similar to tree rings that represent annual growth stages. Under water, coral grows an external skeleton in time with the cycles of light, temperature, and tides. In a living coral, the space between the annual growth bands contains faint lines that number...

On September 4, 1945, aboard the USS Levy, Rear Adm. Shigematsu Sakaibara surrendered Wake Island to Brig. Gen. L. H. M. Sanderson, USMC. Shortly after the surrender a landing party of marines took a small whaleboat to shore. Colonel Walter L. J. Bayler, the last American to leave the island freely in December 1941, was the first American to set foot on Wake in 1945. The sights that greeted the landing party and those who followed were...

The term itself makes ones stomach drop. It conjures up dark historical memories of massacres and disasters, hurried group burials, and comingled corpses under mounds of cold dirt. The twentieth century alone bears witness to mass graves of millions: tragic reminders of man’s inhumanity to man. In recent days we have shuddered at the discovery of mass graves in civil war-torn regions of South Sudan and the Central African Republic. Mother Earth...

While researching the postwar Wake era I came upon some interesting information about Wake Island’s role in missile defense programs over the years. Of the unclassified missions and operations that are open to public inquiry, the one called Brilliant Pebbles caught my attention. The oddly festive and evocative name seems reason enough to use it for a December blog post. Sadly, history has not recorded who in the Reagan Administration came up...