Fine story telling of an epic battle
I have seen some poorly made movies of this WW II fight. The story teller, Wukovits, gives the reader more than a war story, by adding some character sketches of fighters that tenaciously held Wake Island from being over run. Wake was the next natural barrier to the Japanese grasp of Pacific power control, following the destruction of the fleet at Hawaii.
It is too bad the whipped enemy was so filled with pride that their bloody nose, from the civilian contractors and a few Marines, brought cruel and unusual punishment upon those few defenders. We seem to get in fights with men that have no honor in their defeat, in-spite of Japan's out gunning the defenders.
Surrender is honorable over suicide, in the code of western Christian morality of war. The lack of aviation defense and persistent bombing of the gun placements deteriorated the practicality of further defense of the island and the civilian contractors.
The Asian honor code was a strange concept visited upon the Christian fighter in the Pacific. The enslavement of survivors is still a puzzlement to the western sense of an honorable surrender of arms.
Semper Fidelis, Fratres Aeterni Marines.
