HELL WOULDN’T STOP

Exhaustive account of an early WWII battle and its aftermath, adroitly combining the testimony of 68 men who defended Wake Island and were held as POWs for almost four years.

Two years after the death of his brother Kenneth, paperback novelist Cunningham “realized that I knew very little about what happened to him during sixteen horrendous days in December 1941.” The author talked with as many veterans as he could find to learn about the campaign against Wake, a tiny atoll 2,300 miles west of Hawaii. The initial attack, only five hours after Pearl Harbor, destroyed most of the US fighter planes. On December 11, the Japanese attempted a landing along the south shore, but were repulsed. It seemed a renewed assault might be forestalled by the arrival of American reinforcements from Hawaii, but those forces hesitated and retreated. On December 23, a large Japanese invasion overran the defenders, who surrendered. Cunningham produces little material about the period between the landing and the US surrender; overall, although he does supplement the first-person accounts with a historical overview, his description of the battle could have been better. He couldn’t really go wrong, however, with the soldier’s subsequent ordeal, horrifying and gripping in equal portions. Five American prisoners were beheaded on the trip to Yokohama and Shanghai, and 98 civilian workers held on Wake were later slaughtered. Overworked and undernourished, the prisoners built a rifle range in China, labored in a mine in northern Japan, and did industrial work near Tokyo. One marine’s weight went from 180 to 87 pounds. One third of POWs in China and Japan died. Other men were killed after August 15, 1945, when B29 bombers recklessly dropped relief supplies in large containers. Cunningham’s assiduous search for survivors, unfortunately, did not lead to any veterans who remembered his brother.

Occasionally repetitious, but a stirring account of bravery and fortitude. (maps and 8 pp. b&w photos)