An American solder mused, "We were amazed. We had always been told that [the Japanese] were inferior people. We was amazed at how well they were bombing."
History had conspired to teach Japan the need to bomb its way to racial equality. It seemed the only language Caucasians understood. Few place names resonate more luridly than Pearl Harbor as a symbol of that sad need. Wake Island, 3,000 km west, stirs fewer memories today. It was Dec. 8, 1941, breakfast time on that inhospitable little coral atoll garrisoned by U.S. Marines. Radios crackled with the news of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. Defense preparations got under way, but languidly. "Those little yellow bastards haven't got the guts to attack us," muttered one marine to himself.
But they did, and Wake Island fell on Dec. 23, after a valiant defense that made it something of a Pyrrhic victory for Japan. Most of the 1,621 Americans captured that day remained prisoners of war for nearly four years, until August 1945. Their captivity is the subject of "Victory in Defeat." American historian Gregory Urwin relies on diaries and interviews to recreate in exhaustive detail the day-to-day suffering, fear of worse suffering, drudgery, discomfort, hopelessness, hope, grit, and something else, something hard to put your finger on, that maybe transcends all those things. Perhaps irreverence is the word. When a somewhat underqualified Japanese interpreter announced, "The Emperor has gracefully presented you with your lives" — meaning their supposed death sentence had been revoked — a marine "muttered in response, 'Well, thank the son of a bitch.' "