Typhoon Halola
Wake Island dodged a bullet earlier this month. On July 11 a tropical storm formed south of Hawaii near Johnston Atoll and rapidly gained strength as it tracked west toward Wake. The storm packed typhoon-force winds as it approached the atoll and predictions called for a close pass on July 16, prompting a Tropical Cyclone Condition of Readiness 2 on Wake. On July 15 Hawaii Air National Guard evacuated all Wake base personnel to Anderson AFB on Guam via C-17 Globemaster aircraft to wait out Typhoon Halola. The Stars and Stripes website offered...
read moreSorry
A few days ago the Associated Press announced that Japan’s Mitsubishi Corporation apologized to American POWs used as forced labor during World War II. In a ceremony held at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles on July 19, 2015, Mitsubishi senior executive Hikaru Kumura apologized to California veteran James Murphy, 94, the only living survivor able to make the trip, and by extension to all ex-POWs subjected to forced labor by the company during the war. The public apology marks the first time any Japanese company has admitted its...
read moreEaster Island
I recently attended a thought-provoking lecture by Terry Hunt titled “Rethinking Easter Island’s Mysterious Past.” Dr. Hunt, formerly of the University of Hawaii and currently dean of the Clark Honors College and professor of anthropology at University of Oregon (my alma mater), has done extensive research in the archeology and environmental history of the Pacific Islands. For a dozen years Hunt has directed archeological research on Easter Island (Rapa Nui) where his team developed the astonishing theory that the famous giant stone statues...
read moreBlue Book
Anyone connected to the Wake Island civilian contractors’ story either has or wants to have a copy of the “Blue Book,” officially titled A Report to Returned CPNAB Prisoner of War Heroes and their Dependents. The slim volume recounts measures taken to extend wartime relief to dependents and the passage of several public laws during the war to ensure compensation for the captured employees from Wake, Guam, and Cavite, and their families. The enduring appeal of the book, however, is in the nearly eight hundred prewar photographs of the missing...
read moreGuam and Cavite
One of the earliest clues to the story of my father’s wartime past came in the mailbox every month or so when I was growing up: an envelope bearing the return address of the “Survivors of Wake, Guam, and Cavite.” As the years went by I connected a few dots, but Dad never told his story. He had some mysterious scars and debilitating, recurring illnesses relating to the war, but he didn’t talk about it and we knew better than to ask. My father died in 1994 and only after his death did I begin to search in earnest for “what happened to Dad.”...
read morePacific Workhorse: The PBY
Knowing my interest in WWII aircraft, some friends recently forwarded a video about the restoration of a PBY 5A Catalina, a real workhorse of prewar and wartime Pacific air power. Many PBYs landed on Wake Island’s turquoise lagoon in 1941 and the contractors were building the naval air station as a base for this type of plane. The U. S. Navy used the versatile PBYs for patrols, scouting, and when war was underway, for search and rescue operations. Not as flashy as the big wartime bombers and nimble fighter planes, the PBY didn’t capture the...
read moreSkulls and Bones
Every semester in my early World Civilizations class I teach a unit on the migrations that populated the Americas and Oceania. In the last decade advanced DNA research has thrown traditional migration theories into question. My recent involvement with the Joint POW-MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) and the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory (AFDIL) on the Wake Island mission has raised my interest in genetic research and the corresponding moral dilemmas that attend it. DNA testing of human remains can reveal a wide range of historical...
read morePunchbowl Grave Dedication
On October 21, 1953, a memorial ceremony was held at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl in Honolulu to mark the mass burial of 178 Americans killed on Wake Island in World War II. Fourteen marine survivors attended, as well as some family members of the deceased and officials and dignitaries. An actual recording of the Wake mass grave dedication ceremony has recently become available at the AFRTS Archive website. See end of this post for more information on the recording. The late morning sun bore down on the...
read moreEscape
Watching the Wake Island episode of Oliver North’s 2005 series “War Stories” last week, I was reminded of Brigadier General John F. Kinney’s heroic escape story. Very few POWs attempted escape from Japanese camps in WWII, and fewer still succeeded. For those interned in Japan proper escape was inconceivable, but in Japanese-occupied territories outside the homeland there was a slim chance of success. Physical escape was the least of the challenges: safe movement and connection with friendly forces on the outside would be the deciding factors....
read moreEnglish Plurals
I found the following poem on the oddities of English plurals in our local newspaper today. According to the columnist, the poem’s origin is obscure: it showed up in newspapers in the late 19th century and more recently in “Crazy English,” by Richard Lederer. It’s just the sort of thing that my father and those other “hard hat poets” on Wake Island would have loved. So here, apropos of nothing, is “Ode to English Plurals.” We’ll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes, but the plural of...
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