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...

Alice Ingham Obituary

I am sad to report that Alice Ingham passed away on May 9, 2024. Alice organized and led the Wake Island reunions from 2004 to 2017 in Boise, Idaho. I had a good visit with Alice last fall in the lovely house in Oregon where the family moved her and her sister for extended care and to be near the family. While much of her memory had fallen to Alzheimer’s disease, she remained as friendly and gracious as ever. Eight years ago, Alice and her...

In the spring of 1975 Wake Island’s population briefly soared to over eight thousand, the largest number of humans ever on the little coral atoll in the mid-Pacific. Operations Babylift and New Life evacuated tens of thousands of refugees in the closing days of the Vietnam War, and Wake Island became an overflow station for the New Life program. While the island had been home to a bustling community of over a thousand Americans and Filipino...