Hopeless, if heroic

Wake Island: The Alamo of the Pacific was on the History Channel today. (You can get the DVD here.) A heroic if grim story; they beat back the first wave (including destroying two enemy ships and seven enemy aircraft) and thought they were going to be relieved by an incoming force. They were wrong. They did last, however, sixteen days, which was amazing:

The Marines lost 47 killed and two MIA during the entire fifteen-day siege, while three U.S. Navy personnel and at least 70 civilians were killed {besides the ten Chamorros}. Japanese losses were recorded at between 700 to 900 killed, with at least 1,000 more wounded, in addition to the two destroyers lost in the first invasion attempt and at least 28 land-based and carrier aircraft either shot down or damaged. The Japanese captured all men remaining on the island, the majority of whom were civilian contractors employed with Morrison-Knudsen Company.
On 5 October 1943, American naval aircraft from USS Yorktown raided Wake. Two days later, fearing an imminent invasion, Rear Admiral Shigematsu Sakaibara ordered the execution of the 98 captured American civilian workers remaining on the island. They were taken to the northern end of the island, blindfolded and machine-gunned. One of the prisoners (whose name has never been discovered) escaped the massacre, apparently returning to the site to carve the message 98 US PW 5-10-43 on a large coral rock near where the victims had been hastily buried in a mass grave. The unknown American was recaptured, and Sakaibara personally beheaded him with a katana. The inscription on the rock can still be seen and is a Wake Island landmark.
On 4 September 1945, the remaining Japanese garrison surrendered to a detachment of United States Marines. The handover of Wake was officially conducted in a brief ceremony aboard the USS Levy. After the war, Sakaibara and his subordinate, Lieutenant-Commander Tachibana, were sentenced to death for the massacre and other war crimes. Several Japanese officers in American custody had committed suicide over the incident, leaving written statements that incriminated Sakaibara. Tachibana’s sentence was later commuted to life in prison. The murdered civilian POWs were reburied after the war in the Honolulu Memorial in Hawaii.