The valiant efforts of Poindexter and his men, however, stopped the Japanese just momentarily, for soon they began swarming ashore and moving inland. Shortly before the wire communications to Devereux’s command post failed, Poindexter reported the result of his foray.
Having seen flares streaking skyward in the murk, Captain Godbold on Peale, meanwhile, sent out two patrols, one to move westward toward the naval air base, and the other to go eastward along the lagoon’s shore. Neither patrol encountered any enemy troops. A half-hour later, Godbold established an outpost at the bridge connecting Peale and Wake.
MAP 4
JAPANESE LANDING ON WILKES
0300, 23 DECEMBER, 1941
Meanwhile, after word of the enemy landing reached Pearl Harbor, Vice Admiral Pye convened a meeting of his staff. By 0700 (22 December, Hawaiian time), having received further word of developments at Wake, Pye estimated that a relief of the island looked impossible, given the prevailing situation, and directed that the Tangier should be diverted toward the east. With the relief mission abandoned, should his forces attack the enemy forces in the vicinity of Wake? Or should American forces be withdrawn to the east? He feared that the timing of the Japanese carrier strikes and the landing then in progress indicated that the enemy had “estimated closely the time at which our relief expedition might arrive and may, if the general location of our carrier groups is estimated, be waiting in force.” American forces could inflict extensive damage upon Japanese, Pye believed, if the enemy did not know of the presence of the U.S. carrier task forces. They had not yet seen action, though, and no one could overestimate the danger of having ships damaged 2,000 miles from the nearest repair facilities—“a damaged ship is a lost ship,” Brown had commented in Task Force 11’s war diary. Damage to the carriers could leave the Hawaiian Islands open to a major enemy thrust. “We cannot,” Pye declared, “afford such losses at present.”
Two courses of action existed—to direct Task Force 14 to attack Japanese forces in the vicinity of Wake, with Task Forces 8 and 11 covering Task Force 14’s retirement, or to retire all forces without any attempt to attack the enemy. These choices weighed heavily on Pye’s mind. If American forces hit the Japanese ships at Wake and suffered the loss of a carrier air group in the process, Pye deemed the “offensive spirit” shown by the Navy as perhaps worth the sacrifice.
However, in the midst of his deliberations, shortly after 0736, Pye received a message from the CNO which noted that recent developments had emphasized that Wake was a “liability” and authorized Pye to “evacuate Wake with appropriate demolition.” With Japanese forces on the island, though, Pye felt that capitulation was only a matter of time. “The real question at issue,” Pye thought, “is, shall we take the chance of the loss of a carrier group to attempt to attack the enemy forces in the vicinity of Wake?” Radio intelligence from the previous day linked “CruDiv 8 ... CarDiv 2” and, erroneously, “BatDiv 3” (consisting of two battleships) with the forces off of Wake. A pair of Kongo-class fast battleships, supported by carriers and heavy cruisers would easily have overmatched Fletcher’s Task Force 14.
In the meantime, Japanese cruisers—probably the Yubari, Tenryu, and Tatsuta—had begun shelling Wake, further discomfitting the defenders. Despite Lewis’ Battery E firing “prearranged 3-inch air burst concentrations” over the Japanese beachhead, the enemy continued to press steadily toward VMF-211’s position around Hanna’s 3-inch gun. Major Putnam, already wounded in the jaw, with blood from his wound staining the backs of the snapshots of his little daughters, which he carried in his pocket, formed his final line. “This,” he said, “is as far as we go.”
