How a Remote Army Post in the Pacific helped to launch the Internet

 Few people have ever heard of Kwajalein Atoll.  The ring of 98 tiny islands, about 2,000 miles southwest of Hawaii, has 1,100 square miles of ocean in its lagoon - the largest lagoon in the world. 

From: http://www.kwajaleinscubaclub.com/

The mightiest amphibious invasion force (up until that time) in World War II assembled off its shores in February 1944.  The battle that followed was one of the most successful American operations against the Japanese of the War - but few remember it.

Marines of the 4th Division mop up after taking Roi-Namur Island at Kwajalein Atoll, February 1944.

Although it is public knowledge, Americans are generally also unaware that most of the significant testing on our anti-ballistic missile defenses was conducted at Kwajalein over the last fifty years.  The remote islands, and giant lagoon, are an ideal spot to receive target missiles from other locations and to launch interceptor missiles to defeat them high in the atmosphere.  An amazing array of very powerful radars and sensors are in place to detect, track and target incoming test missiles.  Those same radars are used by NASA and other agencies to monitor space debris and missile tests. 

24 January 1962 – The Kwajalein ZEUS Acquisition Radar (ZAR) received its first signal
returns from an ICBM, the initial test of the ZAR against a real target.
Courtesy USASMDC Historical Office

11 January 1971 – The first salvo launch was made from Meck Island, Kwajalein Atoll.
The test involved two Spartan missiles. One missile successfully intercepted an RV, the other a space point.
Courtesy USASMDC Historical Office

The US Army Kwajalein Atoll (USAKA) is managed by the US Army Space and Missile Defense Command on Redstone Arsenal, at Huntsville Alabama.  A host of laboratories and command centers, spread all over the United States, analyze the data that is gathered during these test activities.  With today’s computer and fiber optic connectivity, integrating all of the test data from radars, optical sensors, cameras and the missiles themselves can be done swiftly.  Fifty years ago it was a time consuming challenge that worked across antiquated and non- standard computer servers, at multiple locations, none of which could communicate with one another.

Some very smart people at the Pentagon developed a system that could bring all of those various mainframe computers in line, speaking a common language. The result was the direct ancestor of the internet.

Charles Herzfeld of the missile defense program at the Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA) wanted an interconnected chain of computers where each operator could communicate with the others, with as much ease as a telephone.  You can read the full story of how Charles Herzfeld developed the Arpanet at this link.   

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/08/herzfeld/#more-89512

ARPA’s Charles Herzfeld (center, in white shirt) and other military researchers visit the Kwajalein Atoll for missile defense tests. The problem of processing the trials’ data would help lead to the creation of the Arpanet.

From: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/08/herzfeld/#more-89512

So, now you know how a remote Army test site in the central Pacific helped lead to the development of Internet technology.  You’ll know the truth the next time some politician claims that he invented it!

A Wake Island Helmet - Part Five "The Legacy of the Forgotten 98"

NOTE:  This is the last installment of five part series which began here:  http://erasgone.blogspot.com/2012/08/a-wake-island-helmet-part-one-dodging.html

 

 

News of the War's end came to Wake Island on August 15, 1945.  On August 18, Sakaibara ordered all of his officers to his headquarters.  According to War Crimes Trial testimony from Commander Tachibana, Sakaibara announced that, "I have just heard over the radio from Melborne that all criminals of war, whether they were ordered or were the officers who gave the orders, will be punished."  At that point it became obvious that they would be held responsible for the massacre of two years earlier.  A few days later, in another meeting, Sakaibara and his officers agreed on a cover story to tell regarding the murdered 98 civilians.  An American force was coming to take the surrender of the island

The mass grave on Wake lay forgotten for two years, but now Sakaibara decided to confuse the Americans in any investigation that might occur.  He ordered the dead Americans moved.  His men clumsily extracted the bones from the ditch and moved them to the U.S. cemetery that had been established on Peacock Point after the battle.  The remains were dumped into a small single grave.  The cemetery was roped off, and wooden crosses were erected and painted in preparation for the expected arrival of U.S. forces.

 

A Japanese Soldier bows at the mass grave of the
98 civilians.  Nat Archives

In accordance with the terms of surrender, Japanese garrisons were required to hold an official surrender ceremony.  Wake Island was no different.  The USS Levy, with a party of Marines, arrived off shore on September 4, 1945.  Rear Admiral Sakaibara (he had been promoted to Admiral near the end of hostilities) sat with Brigadier General Lawton Sanderson and signed his 1,250 man garrison over to the United State Marines.

Col Walter L.J. Bayler, reputedly "the last Marine off Wake" in December 1941,
is the first to set foot on the island in 1945.
Department of Defense Photo (USMC) 133688

 

Admiral Sakaibara signs surrender papers on board the USS Levy


 




 

US Marines raise the Stars and Stripes over Wake Island on September 4 1945

 

When questioned about the last 98 Americans left on Wake, each of the Japanese retold an identical rehearsed story.  The Americans had been placed in two bomb shelters to protect them from their countrymen's bombs.  One of the shelters had received a direct hit and all the occupants had been killed.  Those in the other shelter panicked, killed a guard and fought their way out of their compound.  They had been cornered on the beach at the north end of Wake Island and all had fought to the death.

"I think my trial was entirely unfair and the proceeding unfair, and the sentence too harsh, but I obey with pleasure"

Soon after the Japanese surrendered Wake Island on 4 September 1945, Captain Sakaibara and fifteen of his officers and men were arrested and sent to Kwajalein to stand trial for the murder of the 98 POWs.  Two men committed suicide en route and left statements that implicated the admiral and others.  While being held during the trial, Lieutenant Ito also killed himself and left behind a signed confession.  After being confronted with this statement, Sakaibara finally confessed that he had ordered the murder of the 98 Americans and stated that all responsibility should rest on his shoulders.  The trial concluded with a sentence of death for Captain Sakaibara and Lieutenant Commander Tachibana.

Eventually, a reprieve was granted for Tachibana, whose sentence was commuted to life in prison.  Sakaibara, however, was transported to Guam to await his fate.  There, on 19 June 1947, he was executed by hanging along with five other Japanese war criminals.  Sakaibara's last statement was filled with Japanese stoicism: "I think my trial was entirely unfair and the proceeding unfair, and the sentence too harsh, but I obey with pleasure."

 

According to Judgment at Tokyo by Tim Magna:

For some, the hanging of one of these six men had been a horrible tragedy and perhaps even a mistake.  Rear Adm. Shigematsu Sakaibara had enjoyed the reputation of “gentleman soldier” and protector of the common man.  Hailing from a wealthy family near Misawa in Tohokhu province, some 450 miles north of Tokyo, Sakaibara never forgot his roots.  Forever poking fun at the fast-paced Tokyo lifestyle, the rear admiral touted the value of rural living, the integrity and honesty of those who lived in Japan’s rugged north country, and Tokyo’s need to recognize their great contributions to the war effort.  Contemplating a postwar political future, he would be following in the footsteps of his politically influential family in northern Japan.  That future was linked to championing the rights of returning veterans and other have-nots.  Misawa had indeed had a heroic reputation as an important navy town and base for years.  Sakaibara had assisted in the training exercises held there for the Pearl Harbor attack plan in late 1941. His future seemed golden no matter who won the war.  But what some in his command called “The 1943 Incident” changed all that.

These events, Sakaibara admitted in his trial, had taken place in an atmosphere of near starvation and impending doom.  The defense counsel especially emphasized that point, asking the commission to understand and respect the pressures and strains on Sakaibara at the time of the incident.  But the commission was not in a forgiving mood. In the chaos of retreat or not, innocent civilians had been murdered.

Unfortunately for Sakaibara, several members of his former command expressed surprise on the witness stand when asked about the desperate situation on Wake in 1943.  These men insisted that Sakaibara and his defense team’s description of a starving, chaotic Wake was an exaggerated one.  There had been no unexpected miseries, confusion, or sense of peril, they said.  Sakaibara’s fate was sealed.

True to form, defendant Sakaibara offered a very literate final statement to the commission.  In contrast to so many of his colleagues on trial in Tokyo, on Guam, or elsewhere, Sakaibara, albeit with carefully picked words, admitted he was guilty of rash and unfortunate actions.  He appeared especially convincing when he noted that he wished he had never heard of Wake Island.  But his most memorable comments involved his own view of morality in war.  A nation that drops atom bombs on major cities, the rear admiral explained, did not have the moral authority to try so many of his countrymen.  With Hiroshima and Nagasaki in mind, Sakaibara claimed there was little difference between himself and the victors over Japan.  With that statement a legend grew, particularly in his home town, of Sakaibara, the victim of American revenge.

As late as the 1990s, some people there, not necessarily of the World War II generation, still bowed in reverence to Sakaibara family members out of respect for the “sacrificed” gentleman soldier.

 

 

An unidentified Japanese war criminal ascends the gallows in Guam in 1947

 

 

The war was over, the murders had occurred more than three years previously, and the public had already been outraged with the news of similar massacres in the Philippines and in the European Theater.  No national acknowledgement of the Wake Island massacre ever materialized.

In Section G of the Punchbowl National Cemetery in Honolulu there is a large, flat, marble gravestone.  At 5 by 10 feet it is the largest in the cemetery.  On it are listed the names of 178 men.  This common grave holds the remains of all the unidentified military and civilian burials repatriated from Wake Island in 1946.  Many of these men were killed during the siege, and circumstances did not allow proper burial and identification.  Of these names, 98 represent the men who were murdered by the Japanese in October 1943.  After several years of unsuccessful attempts to separate the remains and identify them, they were interred together during a ceremony at the Punchbowl in 1953.

 

 

A large marker at the Punchbowl Cemetery marks the resting place of the 98
and other unidentified American remains from Wake Island
Photo by author

 

"98 US PW, 5-10-43"

 

I visited Wake Island for the first time in 1994.  The bland black-and-white newsreels of the Pacific War that had burned into my psyche did not prepare me for the Technicolor paradise that I encountered at the Wake Island Launch Center air terminal.  A large sign declares "Wake Island Airfield, Where America's Day Really Begins."  Indeed it does, as Wake is on the west side of the International Date Line.  It was difficult to imagine Wake as the desolate hell that it was in 1941.

I drove past the end of Wake Island, across the causeway to Wilkes Island, to a point on the map that said "POW Rock."  A shiny new sign read: "POW Rock, no vehicles allowed beyond this point."  A coral gravel walkway led to the shore of the lagoon where a four-foot-high dome of coral thrusts its way up among smaller boulders.  Here an anonymous American chiseled a brief but poignant message that has come to symbolize the sacrifice of all 98 men.  As the afternoon sun tinged the lagoon with a warm yellow glow, and the surf crashed in the distance, I traced a roughly chiseled inscription in the rock with my finger.  "98 US PW, 5-10-43." 

Morrison-Knudsen had installed a bronze tablet that lists the names of the Ninety-Eight nearby.  This tablet and boulder with its simple inscription has become the island's memorial for a mass murder that took place nearly 70 years ago.

 

A bronze tablet list the names of the murdered 98

 

The sun helmet is also a memorial to all Wake Island defenders, but specifically to those men who autographed it for their comrade, Glen Binge.  The fragile cardboard and cloth headgear's survival is testimony to the perseverance of those men who came home, and a cenotaph for those men who died at the hands of a brutal enemy.

 

 

The Glen Binge Wake Island helmet.  Courtesy the Glen Binge Family

An earlier post announces the discovery of the massacre site at Wake Island:

http://erasgone.blogspot.com/2012/08/massacre-site-revealed.html

A Wake Island Helmet - Part Two, "Babe Hoffmeister Was Murdered This Morning"

Part Two of  "A Wake Island Helmet."  See part one at: http://erasgone.blogspot.com/2012/08/a-wake-island-helmet-part-one-dodging.html


With the exception of a handful of senior military officers and contractors held indoors, the captives remained three days and two nights on the rocky runway after the surrender.  Leal Henderson Russell of La Grande, Oregon, wrote in his otherwise optimistic diary: 23 December—". . . Rocks hard, rain, wind, no cover and few clothes.  Bread and water. Very uncomfortable night." 24 December—"Still on the rock-pile.  Very hard on the unclothed men and those who are ill.  Many have dysentery. . . Men hard to control while food and water being passed out.  Act like wolves. . . ."

Leal Russell's signature on the sun helmet. Courtesy Glen Binge Family.

Tensions of the previous days relaxed a bit on Christmas morning.  One contractor remembered that they were allowed to retrieve clothing, food, and tobacco from their dugouts. Russell recalled that the POWs were allowed to bury their dead and were fed well for the first time.  They were marched to the north end of Wake Island and put into the barracks they had used before the beginning of hostilities.  Several 40-man barracks were packed with 150 men each, but the men had shelter at last.  He recorded on 27 December: "Japanese treating us with reasonable consideration."  Rodney Kephart, the young carpenter from Boise remembered: "We slept so well even the screaming of the Japs didn't disturb us - that was indeed a welcome Christmas present."

The only known photo taken of US POWs on Wake Island.  Notice the white sun helmets. Nat Archives Photo.

Three weeks after the fall of Wake, the POWs awoke to see a large vessel, the Nita Maru, standing off the southern shore.  She had arrived to transport the POWs to camps in China. "About 350 including the key men were selected and were supposed to stay," wrote Russell.  He became the ranking civilian POW when the Nita Maru sailed away.  Another of the Morrison-Knudsen men, recorded in his diary on 12 January, "All but 360 of the contractors have been sent to Japan today. [He incorrectly assumed the destination was Japan.] Also the service men except 21 Marines who are too badly wounded to go." 

The Nita Maru.  She was later converted to an escort carrier by the Japanese and was sunk by an American Submarine.  She took 1,250 men to the bottom with her.  You can read more about her here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_aircraft_carrier_Ch%C5%ABy%C5%8D

 

 

"You're already identified as dead and buried!"

 Forty-seven year old Glen Binge was like many other men on Wake.  The promise of well paying work during a bleak economy lured him far from his Galesburg, Illinois home.  It would be almost four years before he would see his children again. Binge arrived at Wake on October 27, 1941 on a nine-month contract.  He came ashore with 175 other men from the USS Curtis (AV-4) a seaplane tender, which shuttled men and equipment between Honolulu and Wake Atoll.

 

Pre-War photo of Glen Binge from his local newspaper announcing his capture at Wake Island.

 

Sometime after January 12th, Binge began to have men sign his helmet.  Binge's sun helmet was not unusual.  Hundreds of the white sun helmets were issued by the CPNAB to its Wake Island men.  The Marines issued similar sun helmets that were tan and bore the Globe & Anchor emblem on the front.  There is evidence that many men recorded names of comrades, or had their mates sign their helmets as mementos, but the Binge helmet is the only one known to have survived.  It has been a family treasure for sixty years, but its existence has only been brought to light outside of the family in the past year.

All of the American names inscribed are from those men who remained on Wake after the departure of the Nita Maru.  The 360 contractors who remained were chosen because of their skills in operating heavy equipment.  They would continue the military build-up of Wake Island with the same supplies and equipment that they had used for the U.S. Navy.  This time, however, the new architects of the island defenses were the Japanese.

Logan Kay and Fred Stevens remained hidden in the scrub brush of Wake Island.  They scavenged for food and moved every few days to avoid the Japanese.  On March 10th, after living in the bush for seventy-seven days, the fugitives stumbled upon 56 year-old Ted Hensel of Burbank, Washington.  "You can't be living men.  You're already identified as dead and buried!" Hensel retorted.  "You two look terrible.  Better give yourselves up.  The Japs won't hurt you.  They're treating us fine."  Hensel persuaded the ragged, starving men to surrender.

Ted Hensel drew a map of Wake Island to go with his sigtature.  Courtesy Glen Binge Family.

 

"A warning to some who still feel that they have some rights here."

 

Leal Russell paints a relatively optimistic picture of his life as a POW.  His keen eyes recorded the daily coming and going of bombers, fighters, and ships from Wake as well as the weather and day-to-day activity of the Japanese garrison.  He seemed to be very interested in his captors and cultivated cordial relationships with some, even arranging dental work for one of the Japanese with the U.S. contractor doctor.

Russell surely was aware of the suffering that was going on around him and indeed that he was probably experiencing himself.  His tone is up beat in the diary, however, and he refrains from recording adversity except in extreme cases.  One such case was the execution of one of his men who had broken into the Japanese canteen and gotten drunk on stolen alcohol.  On 8 May, Russell wrote:

After breakfast I found that they had arrested Babe Hoffmeister who was out of the compound during the night. Okazaki told me later he had broken into the canteen. . . I also heard he was drunk. It is apt to go very hard on Babe as he had been repeatedly warned.

Two days later the Japanese gave Hoffmeister a hasty trial.  He was found guilty, blindfolded and marched to his grave.  Logan Kay recorded:

The Japs made Hoffmeister crouch on his hands and knees.  A Jap officer took his sword, laid the blade on his neck, brought it back like a golf club and then down on his neck, severing his head with a single blow.

Of the execution Russell wrote: "May 10th—Julius 'Babe' Hoffmeister was murdered this morning.  Nearly all foremen and dept. superintendents were called to witness it.  Possibly it will serve as a warning to some who still feel that they have some rights here." 

The next morning, with Babe's murder fresh on their minds, the Japanese evacuated 20 Marines and sailors, who had been recuperating from wounds, from the atoll.  One of these men was PFC Richard L. Reed of South Whitney, Indiana.  Reed was the only Marine to sign Glen Binge's helmet.  Reed and the other recovering GIs sailed away on the Asama Maru, bound for camps in China.  Only the civilian contractors remained to toil for the enemy.

PFC Richard Reed was the only Marine to sign the helmet. Courtesy Glen Binge Family.

The Japanese did not observe the Geneva Convention restriction on using POW labor for war-related projects, and the workers worked at various military projects on all three islands of the atoll.  Extensive antitank ditches—protected by slit and communication trenches—were dug on the outer and inner periphery of all three islands.  Barbed-wire entanglements and land mines provided protection on potential landing areas.  Inshore from the narrow beaches, an elaborate system of concrete defenses provided interlocking fire at almost any point on the atoll.  An estimated 200 concrete and coral pillboxes, bunkers, bomb proofs, and command posts were constructed with POW labor.

One of the many Japanese defensive structures still extant on Wake Island.  Most were made of captured American Portland cement and built with American POW labor.  Photo by Author.

 

"Rumors fly but even they grow tiresome."

 

Only the occasional U.S. bombing raid or Japanese holiday (when no work was performed) punctuated the monotonous life of the POWs.  Russell wrote: "Washington's Birthday on Wake Island and still prisoners of the Japanese.  No change at all. We work, we eat, we sleep, and then we get up and do it all over again . . . Rumors fly but even they grow tiresome." The rumors of prisoner evacuation became reality on the last day of September 1942.  Two hundred and sixty five captives, including Glen Binge and twenty-one of his friends who autographed his helmet, were loaded aboard The Tachibana Maru and sent to Yokohama, Japan.  Ninety-eight Americans were chosen to stay and to continue their work on construction projects.

Most of the men were jubilant that they were leaving Wake.  They couldn't know that their lives as POWs on Wake for the previous nine months had been relatively easy, and that true hell awaited them. 

Go to Part Three - http://erasgone.blogspot.com/2012/09/a-wake-island-helmet-part-three-i-ate.html

You can see a complete listing of all the names of Glen Binge's Sun Helmet at this link:  https://sites.google.com/site/markehubbs/home/names-on-the-wake-island-sun-helmet

 

The Marines got it right!

Return of the Model 1911

The US Marine Corps has not always led the way on new weapons procurement.  In the past they have often been slow to adopt newer systems long after their comrades in the US Army have done so. 

 Recently, the Marines have broken that trend and abandoned the 9mm Berretta M9 pistol that was adopted in the mid 1980s.  Instead of a newer 9mm, they have wisely brought back the venerable old .45 cal Colt Model 1911. 

The Colt has already had a sterling career that spanned eight decades.  Some background first:  During the Philippine Insurrection the US military became dissatisfied with their Colt Model 1892 .38 caliber revolvers.  They just did not have the knock down power needed against the drugged up Moro Islamic guerillas that they faced in the Philippines.  In 1904 the Army began a search for a new service pistol.  Seven different designs were submitted, each chambered for a new .45 ACP (Automatic Cartridge Pistol) cartridge that was to provide the punch needed to quickly put down any adversary.

Three of the designs had promise, but by 1910 the pistol designed by famed firearms designer John Browning won out.  His pistol survived a grueling two-day, 6,000 round test without a single malfunction.  When the gun grew hot, it was immersed in a bucket of water to cool it down!  The Model 1911 .45 began full production in early 1912.

The Author's Colt Model 1911, made in 1913

The Model 1911 went on to be the finest semi-automatic pistol of World War I.  A few minor improvements were introduced in 1924 and the Model 1911A1 was born.   Five different makers built almost 2 million 1911A1s during World War II.  Production stopped in 1945, but the design was so practical and so robust, the same guns remained in service until the late 1980s.  (I carried many different .45s during my Army career, but the Union Switch and Signal version I was issued while in the 1st Infantry Division was my favorite.)

The 1911A1s were phased out in the 1980s for a new high capacity 9mm Berretta.  An Italian design but built in America; it never achieved any popularity with the soldiers and Marines who carried them.  Malfunctions, cracked frames and scant stopping power added to the disfavor.  Lessons learned in Iraq and Afghanistan gun battles prompted some Special Ops units to ditch their Berettas and buy commercial .45s to take into combat.  It seems the 9mm (same diameter bullet as the old .38) did not always have the knock down power to stop a doped up al-Qaeda or Taliban Islamic terrorist. (Is this sounding familiar?)

On July 20, 2012 the US Marine Corps contracted with Colt Industries to produce as many as 12,000 new M45 pistols.  The M45 has a few improvements over the old M1911A1 (tan finish, accessory rail, night sights, extended safety lever etc.)  However the base design remains the same as those that came out of the Colt factory 100 years ago.



The New Marine Corps M45 Pistol

The contract is worth 22.5 million dollars and includes spare parts and a maintenance package.  $1,875 per pistol for the life of the contract!  That is over 100 times more expensive than those produced during World War I ($16 average price back then.) 

Now, lets see if the Army can play catch up and go back to the .45 like their Marine brothers.