Wake Reunion 2016
The Wake Survivors reunion was held in Boise, Idaho, last weekend, September 9-10, 2016, and a good time was had by all. Leroy Myers was the only survivor in attendance this year, but sixty family members and friends gathered to honor him and remember those who were not with us. Alice Ingham once again organized a wonderful weekend with hospitality room and evening banquet. Alice and her family have made the decision that next year will be the last reunion and the memorabilia collection will be donated to the Idaho State Historical Society....
read moreNOAA Okeanos Explorer
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is conducting deep sea exploration in and around Wake Island this summer, and the mission has zeroed in on a WWII shipwreck on the ocean floor south of the atoll. The 24-day mission aboard NOAA’s Okeanos Explorer can be followed at the official website, titled “Deepwater Wonders of Wake: Exploring the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument.” It is a remarkable resource, featuring daily updates, mission logs, audio/video feed, informative background information, and stunning...
read moreOne Hero’s Face
Here is a photograph of young Lawton Shank, who was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross for his heroism on Wake Island in World War II. The doctor worked steadily and at great risk to care for casualties during the siege and battle in December, 1941, and volunteered to remain on the island with the last 98 American POWs, only to be cut down with them in a blaze of Japanese bullets on October 7, 1943. I wrote about Dr. Shank a couple of years ago in Wake 98 Hero, but was unable to find a photograph to go with the post at the time. While the...
read moreDead Wake
No, Wake Island isn’t dead. I know I make a connection to Wake Island in just about every blog post (it turns out that there are generally six or fewer degrees of separation), but this post is about the recent book by Seattle’s Erik Larson: Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania (Broadway Books, 2015). The skilled narrative non-fiction author of In the Garden of the Beasts and The Devil in the White City turns here to the well-known but still gripping story of the massive luxury ocean liner, sailing from New York to Liverpool in 1915,...
read moreThe Other Palmyra
There are two Palmyras, worlds apart. The ancient city of Palmyra in war-torn Syria has become a target for the systematic destruction of irreplaceable pre-Islamic antiquities by Islamic State militants – a pressing topic for sure; but this post is about the other Palmyra: a tiny tropical atoll in the mid-Pacific. I learned about the atoll while researching and writing Building for War, and it recently came to my attention again when I heard that amateur radio operators made a “DXpedition” to Palmyra a couple of months ago. This is the same...
read moreRed Hill
In January 2014 the massive World War II-era underground fuel tank facility near Pearl Harbor was found to have sprung a leak, which immediately raised environmental concerns for spillage and contamination of drinking water. The leak, or “release” as the Navy reported it, of 27,000 gallons of jet fuel, didn’t visibly spill out like the devastating oil slicks in recent memory. It didn’t coat birds or choke fish; it didn’t blacken beaches, requiring hundreds of volunteers to help clean up. Navy officials initially weren’t sure it was a leak at...
read moreWake 98 Update
In September 2015 when I last wrote about the JPAC/DPAA mission in Not Forgotten, we were still fielding some recent and resubmitted family DNA reference samples to help identify remains found on Wake Island in 2011. The remains were linked to the October 7, 1943, massacre of American POWs on Wake Island, and I have helped to locate qualified DNA donors from the families of the 98 victims. Working with the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory at Dover AFB, we found a few more donors this winter. To date, 71 families have submitted DNA...
read moreCoincidence . . . or not
A few weeks ago I received a link to a story about a midair collision of fighter jets over the Pacific, about 250 miles west of Wake. Gregory Roberts of the Voice Observer reported that two F-18 Hornets had collided and fallen into the Pacific on Thursday, December 17. One pilot was rescued quickly and returned to the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, but the other pilot was still missing. Multiple ships and helicopter crews were engaged in the effort to locate the missing pilot. I searched the internet over the coming days, hopeful of a...
read morePerpetual Threat
Yesterday the nation observed the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor: December 7, a date that has lived in infamy for seventy-four years now. Flags flew at half-staff, news media featured recollections of elderly survivors, groups with common bonds to WWII gathered to commemorate the day, schools held assemblies, and thousands attended the ceremonies on Oahu. I understand the significance of the day and honor those who lost their lives at Pearl Harbor, as well as the victims of the coordinated Japanese attacks across the Pacific that...
read moreReady, Aim, Fire
Wake Island was the center of action last week when it anchored a test of the U.S. military’s multi-layered, integrated ballistic missile defense system. The irony is inescapable. Wake Island, where the absence of even the most rudimentary radar in 1941 doomed hundreds of Americans to devastating surprise attacks by undetected Japanese bombers, became the base of operations seven decades later for state-of-the-art missile detection and interception technology. The U. S. military confirmed the successful $230 million test on Sunday, November...
read more