Described as one of the loneliest atolls in the Pacific, Wake Island is a submerged volcano top, which consists of Wake and two other islets, Wilkes and Peale. Wake Island is 450 miles from the nearest land, and approximately 2,300 miles from Honolulu. Claimed and annexed by the United States in 1899, the military had decided in the 1930s, with the clouds of war suddenly beginning to darken, to use it as an advanced naval and air base that was within striking distance of various Japanese-held territories in the Pacific.
By December 1941, the garrison on Wake was comprised of a severely reduced detachment of 422 Marines Corps enlisted men and 27 officers of the 1st Defense Battalion under Major James Devereux, as well as Marine aviators of Marine Fighting Squadron (VMF) 211; 10 naval officers and 58 enlisted men (including hospital corpsmen); a small Army communications unit of 1 officer and 4 men; 70 Pan American Airways civilians and 1,146 contractor employees. Most of the Marines on Wake were artillerymen, but all of them were overworked as the detachment was vastly undermanned. The exhausted Marines were just finishing breakfast at 0650 on Monday, 8 December when a message came through that Pearl Harbor, on the other side of the International Date Line, was under attack by the Empire of Japan.
