The most influential works in the Wake Island canon are the memoirs of some of the American garrison's officers:  Walter L. J. Bayler (with Cecil Carnes), Last Man off Wake Island (1943); W. Scott Cunningham (with Lydel Sims), Wake Island Command (1961), and James P. S. Devereux, The Story of Wake Island (1947).  Each contains valuable information, but each should be used with caution.  The Bayler book is wartime propaganda, with fabricated conversations to stir American patriotism.  Devereux indulges in self-glorification, exaggerates Japanese losses, and slights the contributions of the garrison's non-Marines and subordinates with whom he later quarreled.  Cunningham takes greater care in relating the basic facts of the siege and generously acknowledges the achievements of other Wake defenders, but inflates his own role in the atoll's defense.

        The best memoirs of the siege are John F. Kinney (with James M. McCaffrey), Wake Island Pilot (1995), and articles by Kinney, John R. Burroughs, Charles A. Holmes, and Arthur A. Poindexter for Combat Illustrated, American Heritage, Naval History, Leatherneck, and American History Illustrated.  Guy J. Kelnhofer, Life after Liberation:  Understanding the Former Prisoner of War (1992), gives a graphic portrayal of the shock and shame of capture on Wake.

        Robert Debs Heinl Jr., The Defense of Wake (1947), is the official Marine history of the campaign, but it suffers from the author's partiality for the Corps.  Heinl's treatment sets the tone for the coverage the Wake fight receives in two later official histories, Samuel Eliot Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II.  Vol. 3:  The Rising Sun in the Pacific (1948); and Frank O. Hough, Verle E. Ludwig, and Henry I. Shaw Jr., History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II.  Vol. 1:  Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal (1958).  Robert J. Cressman, A Magnificent Fight:  Marines in the Battle for Wake Island (1992), one in a series of illustrated booklets commissioned by the Marine Corps to commemorate the fiftieth annivesary of World War II, is the work of a Navy historian.  Cressman contradicts Heinl on a number of key points and takes Cunningham's side in the Cunningham-Devereux Controversy.  Cressman's recent book from Naval Institute Press, "A Magnificent Fight":  The Battle for Wake Island (1995), offers the fullest account of the campaign from Japanese sources now available in English, but Cressman does not understand the command relationships that existed within the American garrison and his use of Japanese accounts is uncritical.  Duane Schultz, Wake Island:  The Heroic Gallant Fight (1978), contains little more than material found in Devereux, Cunningham, and Heinl.  The same is true of Irving Werstein, Wake:  The Story of a Battle (1965), which also leans heavily on Bayler.

2d Lt. Robert Debs Heinl Jr. grasps a swagger stick as he stands beside a three-inch antiaircraft gun on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, February 1940.  Heinl later joined elements of the Fourth Defense Battalion in the abortive effort to relieve Wake Island. After the war, he wrote the first official Marine history of the Wake Island Campaign.  (Courtesy Benjamin Beach Collection, Parris Island Museum)

        John Toland, But Not in Shame:  The Six Months after Pearl Harbor (1961); James B, Darden III, Guests of the Emperor:  The Story of Dick Darden (1990); Barrett Tillman, The Wildcat in WWII (1983); and Richard Wheeler, A Special Valor:  The U.S. Marines in the Pacific War (1983), offer fresh perspectives on the Wake story thanks to interviews that their authors conducted with more than a dozen participants in the siege.  Stan Cohen, Enemy on Island. Issue in Doubt: The Capture of Wake Island (1983), is an excellent pictorial history of the siege produced with the cooperation of several Wake survivors.

        David Woodbury, Builders for Battle:  How the Pacific Naval Bases Were Constructed (1946), is a sound history of Contractors Pacific Naval Air Bases, and emphasizes activities on Wake Island.  The most informative memoirs by Wake Contractors include Theodore A. Abraham Jr., "Do You Understand, Huh?":  A POW's Lament, 1941-45 (1992); Joseph J. Astarita, Sketches of P.O.W. Life (n.d.); Rodney Kephart, Wake, War and Waiting . . (n.d.); and Hans Whitney, Guest of the Fallen Sun (1951).

        Robert Daley, An American Saga:  Juan Trippe and His Pan American Empire (1980); Stan Cohen, Wings to the Orient:  Pan American Clipper Planes 1935 to 1955 (1985); R. E. G. Davies, Pan Am:  An Airline and Its Aircraft (1987); and Robert L. Gandt, China Clipper:  The Age of the Great Flying Boats (1991) accurately chronicle the rise of Pan American Airways and its involvement with Wake.  They should be supplemented by the eyewitness accounts of William S. Grooch, Skyway to Asia (1936) and Winged Highway (1938); and Dorothy Kaucher, Wings over Wake (1947).

        The Marine Corps Historical Center, Washington, D.C., boasts extensive holdings on the Wake Campaign, including the after-action reports of every surviving Marine officer in the American garrison, Commander Cunningham's radio dispatches, other Navy records, and translations of captured Japanese documents.  The MCHC's fine oral history collection, personal papers collection, and reference section offer additional data on Wake and its garrison, as well as on the Marine Corps in 1941.  The author of this study will eventually donate the interview tapes, photographs, correspondence, and other papers gathered from Wake Islanders and their relatives during the writing of Facing Fearful Odds: The Siege of Wake Island to the MCHC for use by other researchers.

        Wake's development into an American outpost can be traced through the Records of the General Board and the Records of the Strategic Plans Division, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations and Predecessor Organizations, 1912-1947, at the Operational Archives, Naval History Division, Washington, D.C.  The OANHD's Action and Operational Reports of Naval Commands, War Diaries of Naval Commands, and World War II Command File provide insight into the Pacific Fleet's effort to relieve Wake.  Also useful are the files in the Miscellaneous Record Material and Publications and Wake Island Civilians, Correspondence and Documents, 1946-1981.

        The holdings of the National Archives, Washington, D.C., fill gaps in the Wake Island story.  Record Group 38, Records of the Chief of Naval Operations, and Record Group 80, Records of the Office of the Secretary of the Navy, shed light on Wake's conversion into a naval base.  The logistics of that effort can be reconstructed from Record Group 181, Records of Naval Districts and Shore Establishments, and the ship's logs in Record Group 24, Records of the Bureau of Naval Personnel.  Translations of captured Japanese documents, some of which deal with the siege, can be found in Record Group 226, Records of the Office of Strategic Services, and Record Group 407, Records of the Adjutant General's Office, 1917--.  Essential for the Wake Islanders' experiences as prisoners of war are Record Group 94, Records of the Adjutant General's Office, Record Group 153, Records of the Office of the Judge Advocate General, and Record Group 389, Records of the Provost Marshal General.

        Wake Island's fate was decided in large part by Pearl Harbor.  Fittingly, the literature generated by that event often illuminates the struggle for Wake. At Dawn We Slept:  The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor (1981), Miracle at Midway (1982), and Pearl Harbor:  The Verdict of History (1986), by Gordon W. Prange and his collaborators, Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon, stand as the best accounts of both American and Japanese naval operations in the early days of the Pacific War.  Other instructive studies are H. P. Willmott, Empires in the Balance:  Japanese and Allied Pacific Strategies to April 1942 (1982); and The First South Pacific Campaign:  Pacific Fleet Strategy December 1941-June 1942 (1976) and The First Team:  Pacific Naval Air Combat from Pearl Harbor to Midway (1984), both by John B. Lundstrom.  U.S. Congress, Pearl Harbor Attack:  Hearings before the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, Congress of the United States, Seventy-Ninth Congress, First Session, Pursuant to S. Con. Res. 27., A Concurrent Resolution Authorizing an Investigation of the Attack on December 7, 1941, and Events and Circumstances Relating Thereto (1946), is a massive archive of America's most severe naval defeat.  The disaster is well captured by the eyewitness accounts in Paul Stillwell, ed., Air Raid:  Pearl Harbor! (1981).  Several memoirs reveal much about the workings of the Pacific Fleet in 1941:  William F. Halsey and J. Bryan III, Admiral Halsey's Story (1947); W. J. Holmes, Double-Edged Secrets:  U.S. Naval Intelligence Operations in the Pacific during World War II (1979); Husband E. Kimmel, Admiral Kimmel's Story (1955); Edwin T. Layton, And I Was There: Pearl Harbor and Midway--Breaking the Secrets (1985); James O. Richardson, On the Treadmill to Pearl Harbor:  The Memoirs of James O. Richardson USN (Retired) (1973); William Ward Smith, Midway:  The Turning Point of the Pacific (1966); and Theodore C. Mason, Battleship Sailor (1982).

        The Japanese Navy's side of the story is covered in Paul S. Dull, A Battle History of the Imperial Japanese Navy (1941-1945) (1978); Mitsuo Fuchida and Masatake Okumiya, Midway:  The Battle that Doomed Japan, The Japanese Navy's Story (1976); Donald M. Goldstein and Catherine V. Dillon, eds., Fading Victory:  The Diary of Admiral Matome Ugaki, 1941-1945 (1991); Raymond O'Connor, ed., The Japanese Navy in World War II (1969); and Masatake Okumiya and Jiro Horikoshi, Zero! (1956).

The destroyer Kisaragi became the second warship lost by the Imperial Japanese Navy in World War II when Capt. Henry T. Elrod of VMF-211 sank it a short distance south of Wake Island  with 100-pound bombs dropped from an F4F-3 Grumman Wildcat fighter on 11 December 1941.  (Courtesy U.S. Naval Historical Center)

        Essential for putting the events at Wake in historical context are Ronald H. Spector, Eagle against the Sun:  The American War with Japan (1985); Edward S. Miller, War Plan Orange:  The U.S. Strategy to Defeat Japan, 1897-1945 (1991); Louis Morton, Strategy and Command:  The First Two Years (1962); D. Clayton James, The Years of MacArthur.  Vol. 1:  1880-1941 (1970); Edwin P. Hoyt, How They Won the War in the Pacific:  Nimitz and His Admirals (1970); Allan R. Millett, Semper Fidelis:  The History of the United States Marine Corps (1980); Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate, eds., The Army Air Forces in World War II.  Vol. 1:  Plans and Early Operations January 1939 to August 1942 (1948); Forrest C. Pogue, George C. Marshall:  Ordeal and Hope, 1939-1942 (1966); Ronald Schaffer, Wings of Judgment:  American Bombing in World War II (1985); Robert Sherrod, History of Marine Corps Aviation in World War II (1952); Charles L. Updegraph Jr., U.S. Marine Corps Special Units of World War II (1979); and Jeter A. Isely and Philip A. Crowl, The U.S. Marines and Amphibious War:  Its Theory and Its Practice in the Pacific (1951).

        Finally, an antidote to ethnocentrism on the Pacific War is John W. Dower, War without Mercy:  Race & Power in the Pacific War (1986).