Given Up for Dead: America's Heroic Stand at Wake Island

Just five short hours after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, the battle for Wake Island began. A tiny dot in the vast remoteness of themid-pacific. Wake lay on the edge of Japan's growing sphere of influence. The US at first showed little interest in Wake's strategic value,but congress changed its mind in mid-1940, and appropriated money to turn it into a formidable fortress and build an airbase. Early in1941, about 1150 civilian workers were laboring feverishly to complete the job. Meanwhile, the first elements of a Marine defensebattalion had arrived in August, but by December only about 450 Marines-less than half the battalion's authorized strength-had reachedthe island. For defense: the artillery sent them by the Navy consisted of a half-dozen old five-inch guns salvaged from World War Ivintage battleships and three batteries of obsolete three-inch anti-aircraft guns-there wasn't even enough personnel to man them all.By the time Christmas Day, 1941 dawned, nineteen-year-old PFC Wiley Sloman had been lying helplessly on a beach close to 48 hours,struck in the head by a stray enemy bullet-two more long days would pass before he'd be found clinging to life by a detail sent out tobury the dead. Before Sloman was hit, he firmly believed his fellow marines were decisively winning the battle. It was only when heregained consciousness on December 27 that he learned the awful truth. The marines had been ordered to lay down their arms andsurrender. The 16-Day fight for Wake Island was over.GIVEN UP FOR DEAD is more than a gritty, poignant battle book of sailors and marines, soldiers and civilians fighting side-by-sideagainst a vastly superior force. It is a tremendous story of courage and survival. For almost four years Wake's survivors endured endlessbrutality and unspeakable living conditions as prisoners of the Japanese. As far as the American public was concerned, all of Wake'ssurvivors vanished, and little reliable information concerning their fate would emerge until after the war, when they came home to telltheir stories.