Battle of Wake Island, (December 8–23, 1941), during World War II, battle for Wake Island, an atoll consisting of three coral islets (Wilkes, Peale, and Wake) in the central Pacific Ocean. During the battle a small force of U.S. Marines and civilian defenders fought elements of the Imperial Japanese Navy, which ultimately seized the island but at great cost.
Located about 2,000 miles (3,200 km) west of Hawaii and 600 miles (approximately 1,000 km) north of the Japanese-held Marshall Islands, Wake Island impressed American naval planners as an ideal site for an advance defensive outpost. In January 1941 a consortium of civilian firms called Contractors Pacific Naval Air Bases (CPNAB) began construction of military facilities on the atoll. By December CPNAB had more than 1,100 construction workers toiling on Wake, but they did not complete their work before the outbreak of war between Japan and the United States. A garrison of 449 U.S. Marines, several dozen navy personnel, and a handful of army radio operators also were stationed on Wake. That force had nearly 2,100 fewer troops than American strategists had deemed necessary to properly defend the atoll. The island’s defenders were equipped with six 5-inch (127-mm) coastal artillery pieces, 12 3-inch (76-mm) antiaircraft guns, 12 F4F Wildcat fighter planes, and an assortment of machine guns and small arms. Forty-five Guamanian men, employed by Pan American Airways as part of its transpacific Clipper service, rounded out the atoll’s human population.
The Japanese first struck Wake Island at noon (local time) on December 8, 1941, with a wave of tactical bombers launched from the Marshall Islands. The atoll’s defenders had received word of the Pearl Harbor attack several hours earlier (Wake and Hawaii are separated by the International Date Line), but heavy cloud cover and the absence of radar facilities allowed the attackers to achieve surprise. The Japanese caught the bulk of the island’s fighter squadron on the ground and destroyed eight Wildcats as well as killing or wounding nearly two-thirds of the aviation personnel. Wake was bombed on an almost daily basis for the next two weeks. Once Wake became a battlefield, 186 CPNAB employees volunteered to fight beside the marines, and about another 250 workers found other ways to support the embattled garrison, from building bomb shelters to delivering hot meals to gun positions and other battle stations.
On December 11 a Japanese naval task force—including three light cruisers, six destroyers, and two transports—attempted to land 450 Special Naval Landing Force (SNLF) troops on Wake Island’s south shore. The Japanese suffered a rude repulse from the marines’ light coastal-defense guns and the four remaining fighters. Two Japanese destroyers were sunk, several other ships sustained damage, and the transports were withdrawn. That small engagement, the first tactical defeat experienced by the Japanese navy in World War II, electrified the American people, dispelling much of the gloom caused by Pearl Harbor.