The Depression-era workers who hired on for the big prewar navy construction projects in the Pacific came from many states, but a good number hailed from the Pacific and Inland Northwest. In 1939-40 the navy contracted with a consortium of big construction companies to build naval air stations and facilities on Oahu, Palmyra, Johnston, Midway, and Wake Island (and later in the western Pacific at Guam, Cavite in the Philippines, and American...

Every few weeks I write a post to highlight the ongoing mission of the Joint POW-MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) to locate family members of the 98 men massacred on Wake Island in 1943 for possible DNA matches. For more information, see my November 2012 post on the JPAC Mission. This week I want to talk about the nearly 100 men who drew their last breath on the north beach of Wake, October 7, 1943. When the Tachibana Maru pulled away from Wake...

Wake’s human population may be small these days, but the neighborhoods are full to bursting with birds (see video link below!). The remote, isolated atoll has hosted a wide variety of migratory and resident seabirds for time out of mind. The ravages of the WWII Japanese occupation and postwar feral cat predation left indelible marks, but researchers are encouraged by signs of robust recovery across the atoll. During my visit to Wake in the fall...

If you had looked in the mess hall on Wake Island at dinner time on any given day in 1941, you would have seen a sea of white faces. Some bore dark tans from hours in the tropical sun, but most were Caucasian except for a few Pacific Islanders and a couple dozen Chinese Americans. The “color line” was a wall against equal opportunity: preferential hiring, segregation of workers, and ethnic biases were entrenched in the construction...

Wilkes Island, the southwest arm of Wake atoll, bears a wartime scar that may never heal. Halfway along the lagoon side the shore juts sharply inward, nearly bisecting Wilkes. Only a narrow strip of land remains, cluttered with concrete blocks and nearly submerged at high tide, to connect to the western end. The indentation may appear natural to the casual observer but folks familiar with Wake and its history know that it is “man-made.” The...