1/2/2024 0 Comments Wake islandThe mass grave was torn apart, and the bodies recounted to confirm it. After they were dead, their bodies were tossed in the ditch and hastily covered with coral sand. Then they were blasted with machine gun and rifle fire. They were lined up along a tank ditch they had been forced to dig facing the ocean. On the late afternoon of October 7, 1943, the prisoners were blindfolded with their hands and feet tied. Prisoners of War on Wake Island Photo by the National Archives Fearing the POWs would rise against their captors to aid their countrymen, he decided to be proactive and remove them from the equation. carrier task force, which had done considerable damage to Wake Island’s infrastructure, included a landing force. That was enough.īut Sakaibara was certain the U.S. The bombings were to deprive them of supplies, their airfield, and port facilities. The atoll served no strategic or tactical purpose for the Allies. Sakaibara needn’t have worried - no attack was in the works. Navy was increasing its submarine patrols around the island so the island commander was convinced an attack was imminent. One of the Americans was caught stealing food in the summer of 1943, and after an investigation of sorts, Sakaibara presided over his beheading. bombings and the arrival of the new island commander Rear Admiral Shigimatsu Sakaibara in December of 1942. The monotonous hard work was broken by stepped-up U.S. The Japanese, in complete defiance of Geneva Convention restrictions, worked the contractor prisoners of war (POWs) relentlessly on war-related projects. By September of 1942, only 98 Americans, all civilians, still remained on the island. When Japan gained control of Wake Island, they sent most of these contractors and all military personnel to Chinese POW camps. Approximately 500 of the Americans on the island at the time were military personnel, the remaining 1,300 or so were civilians, most working for the construction company Morrison Knudsen. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the Battle of Wake Island occurred simultaneously on December 7, 1941. Wake Island is located halfway between the Hawaiian Islands and the Philippines. It reads: “98 US PW, 5–10–43.” This is a self-written epitaph of a mass murder committed near this spot during one of the bleakest periods of human history. On the shore of the turquoise lagoon, the highest coral boulder bears a chiseled inscription. On Wake Atoll in the South Pacific, there is a gravel path edged by white coral leading away from the road and toward the water. Rock on Wake Atoll inscribed by a POW Photo by
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