Disclaimer: everything contained in this blog is MY OPINION. Every attempt is made to present the truth through actual facts or to identify statements which are in doubt; otherwise there will be no deliberate presentation of gossip, rumor, or innuendo which can't be proven as factual.
No, I am not stopping the blog because I've been threatened with retaliation-as if that would stop me anyway. I am stopping it because the research and investigation into rumors and facts is very time-consuming, and because when I'm out of town, I can't verify those rumors and get the facts.
This is the little-known story of the USS Wake and a couple of my very distant relatives.
In 1926, the keel of a gunboat was laid down at Kiangnan Engineering and Dock Works in Shanghai, China. Almost a year later in May 1927, the ship was launched and named USS Guam. Six months after that it was assigned to the South China Patrol.
For three years the Guam, along with the USS Tutuila and USS Panay patroled the Yangtze River in China from Shanghai to the above "The Three Gorges," along with British, French, and Japanese gunboats.
In 1930, the Chinese Civil War broke out and the Guam sailed to guard the safety of American missionaries and other foreigners in two Yangtze cities that were now in Communist hands. Near Yochow, the ship came under small arms fire and a seaman was killed. The Guam fired its guns in anger for the first time.
The Japanese conquered and occupied Shanghai in October 1937, and as they advanced the Guam transfered Americans to Hankow. Still on Yangtze patrol, the Guam was renamed the USS Wake* because the name Guam was wanted for a new battle cruiser.
In response to dangerously deteriorating political conditions, on 7 November 1941, President Roosevelt ordered all river gunboats and the 4th US Marines to leave China, with the exception of the Marines and gunboats left to guard embassies and other diplomatic posts.
Three weeks later, Lieutenant Commander Andrew Harris, now in charge of the Wake sensed critical danger in Japanese orders for the ship to stay in Hankow. He defied them and prepared to up anchor which brought the Japanese commander on board shrieking that the ship couldn't move unless it had a Japanese ship for escort.
The hubbub brought Lt. Cmdr Harris to the door of the pilot house from which he told the Japanese that unless he wanted a free trip to Shanghai, he'd better leave.
In Shanghai, Harris and his crew, except for a 14 man skeleton crew, were transferred to larger gunboats which were to sail to the Philippines. Out of the frying pan into the fire.
At this point, the Navy asked Columbus D. Smith a US naval reservist who had served in World War I and won the Navy Cross, to accept a commission. He was by now an Old China Hand, and had spent years piloting on the Yangtze. He accepted the commission and became Lieutenant Commander Smith, commanding officer of the Wake.
Still on the Yangtze, the Wake and its companion ship Tutuila (at Chunking, guarding the US Embassy there) were notified that a typhoon was on the way. The two flat-bottomed ships weren't considered seaworthy enough to weather the storm and cross the Formosa Straits to possible safety, so were effectively marooned in China.
The new commander and his 14 sailors were virtually abandoned. In short, they were to be thrown to the wolves-in this case, the Japanese.
The day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the Wake was rigged to be scuttled by explosive charges set in strategic places. The ship was to be destroyed, but it seemed there were no plans to evacuate or rescue the men. The night before, Smith had received a call from a Japanese officer whom Smith knew. The officer told him he wished to make a gift of turkeys to the ship and asked where Smith would be. It came out later that the same trick was pulled on other Allied officers and officials to discover where they'd be located when the Japanese forces took over.
Smith was ashore when he was told of the attack on Pearl Harbor. He rushed to the Wake only to discover that although his crew had fought the Japanese and attempted to scuttle the ship, they had failed.
Smith didn't make it to his ship. He was taken prisoner at the dock and presented to the Japanese commander, who was very upset that Smith's sword was on board the Wake. He wanted a ceremonial surrender of Smith's sword so people could see that the Japanese navy followed protocol and treated its prisoners honorably (truth to tell, the public humiliation of Smith was probably uppermost in the Japanese commander's mind).
It was not to be. The Japanese were forced to accept the Wake's commander's capitulation-swordless.
In consequence, the USS Wake was the only American ship to surrender during World War II.
Its commander and sailors were imprisoned under hideous circumstances at a Japanese concentration camp in Shanghai.
The surrendered Wake was taken into the Imperial Japanese Navy and named the Tatara. On patrol for nearly four years with the Japanese, it was surrendered to Allied forces on 9 September 1945. Shortly thereafter, it was removed from the US Navy List. In 1946, the Guam/Wake/Tatara was given to the Chinese Nationalist Party and named RCS Tai Yuan. Three years later, it was captured by the People's Republic of China and served into the 1960s.
In 1944, Lt. Cmdr Smith and two other POWs, a British Royal Navy commander and an American Marine, cut their way through their cell bars with a smuggled hacksaw blade. Somehow managing to climb over the 25 foot wall surrounding their prison, they bluffed their way to safety across 700 miles of Japanese-held territory by pretending to be White Russians.
*Not to be confused with another ship, the USS Wake Island, a Casablanca class escort carrier built and launched in 1943.
Anita Huguelet McMurtrie
