The Execution Of The 96 Americans POWs Claiming They were Trying To Make Radio Contact With U.S Forces.

  

On this day in 1943, Rear Adm. Shigematsu Sakaibara, commander of the Japanese garrison on the island, ordered the execution of 96 Americans POWs, claiming they were trying to make radio contact with U.S. forces.

In late December 1941, the Japanese reinforced existing forces on Wake Island, part of a coral atoll west of Hawaii, in massive numbers after being unable to wrest the island from a small number of Americans troops earlier in the month.

 The Japanese strength was now overwhelming, and most of those Americans left alive after the battle were taken by the Japanese off the island to POW camps elsewhere. 

Ninety-six remained behind to be used as forced labor. The Allied response was periodic bombing of the island–but no more land invasions, as part of a larger Allied strategy to leave certain Japanese-occupied islands in the South Pacific to basically starve in isolation.

The execution of those remaining American POWs, who were blindfolded and shot in cold blood, remains one of the more brutal episodes of the war in the Pacific.

PHOTO: Surrender of Wake Island, September 1945. A climactic moment in the war crimes trial of two Japanese officers from Wake Island. Here stands Lieutenant Soichi Tachibana and Rear Admiral Shigematsu Sakaibara, both convicted and sentenced to hang for the murder of 98 American civilians on Wake Island in October 1943. 

Sakaibara is shown reading a final statement in his own behalf before sentence is pronounced at Kwajalein Island in the Marshall Islands. Photograph released 27 December 1945.

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