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Heroic Battle of Christmas Past Is Vivid for Survivor

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Times Staff Writer

Instead of lobbing snowballs in front of his family’s home in Kansas, Arthur A. Poindexter spent Christmas Eve wading into the surf off Wake Island, lobbing grenades into Japanese landing craft.

It was 1941. For 16 days, outnumbered and outgunned, the 21-year-old second lieutenant and another 442 Marines, under the command of Maj. James P. S. Devereux, prevented a Japanese invasion force from capturing the tiny, horseshoe-shaped Pacific atoll.

After hearing about a steady string of defeats, beginning with the attack on Pearl Harbor, the American public was captivated by the dramatic defense of Wake Island. Newspapers ran headlines praising the “valiant” and “heroic” defenders and Hollywood even made a movie about the battle.

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Forty-four years later, the battle--which ended Christmas Day with the American garrison’s surrender--is still remembered as a high point in America’s early involvement in World War II. For survivors like Poindexter, 65, it remains a vivid memory.

Yellowed News Clippings

Contentedly smoking a pipe, Poindexter leaned back on the couch of his Huntington Beach home, punctuating his recollections of the battle with references to the albums of yellowed news clippings his mother collected during the war.

Poindexter commanded what was euphemistically called the “mobile reserve,” which amounted to the 70 persons who were able to fight and not required to man one of the gun emplacements on the three-square-mile island.

“I commanded what was left over--which wasn’t very much: the cooks, the clerks, the searchlight crews and a few men from my machine-gun battery. We had several cargo trucks and four or five old Browning machine guns. Wherever the heaviest action was, that’s where we were sent.”

Poindexter joined the Marine Corps at 19, attracted by what he described as the “glamor” of recruiting posters that carried a simple message: ‘First to Fight.’

“They kept that promise,” Poindexter said. In August, 1941, he was assigned to Wake Island to protect the 1,100 civilian workers constructing a naval air base there.

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Destroyed 27 Planes

Thirty-six Japanese bombers swept over the island the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Americans countered with four Grumman Wildcat fighters and, in the next two weeks, destroyed 27 Japanese planes before the last Wildcat crashed on Dec. 22.

On Dec. 11, Japanese cruisers and destroyers closed on the island in preparation for an amphibious assault.

Devereux, whom Poindexter described as “a quiet, dapper sort of guy--but gutsy,” ordered the coastal guns to hold their fire until the ships came within 4,000 yards. After the guns opened fire, hitting one of the destroyers and several of the cruisers, the Japanese postponed their assault.

For the next two weeks, Japanese bombers pounded the island and, on the morning of Dec. 24, the Japanese returned in greater numbers and sent landing craft in toward the beach.

The mobile reserve was sent to the southern side of the island, where the brunt of the attack was aimed. In the dark, Poindexter saw the machine-gun tracers glancing off the armor of the landing craft and decided that “the only way to inflict casualties was to meet them at the surf line and lob grenades into those craft.”

In two teams of two, Poindexter, two other Marines and one civilian waded out to meet the attack. During the night of Dec. 24, Poindexter gathered his men and formed a skirmish line, battling back to where the rest of the American troops were located.

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“The irony of the thing was that when the surrender party appeared Christmas morning and told us to lay down our weapons, I thought things were looking up.”

Poindexter and the other survivors of the battle were rounded up and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp in China where they spent most of their days filling and hauling cartloads of dirt. Each prisoner received two bowls of rice a day and a bowl of what Poindexter called “shadow soup” because of its thin consistency. To reduce the monotony of 44 months in captivity, Poindexter and the other prisoners learned Spanish.

“We had a Spanish class in a Japanese prison camp in China that was taught by a Peruvian to Americans.”

Retired as a Colonel

Freed at the end of the war, Poindexter eventually retired from the Marine Corps as a colonel in 1963 and taught international relations at Cal State Long Beach for the next 16 years.

In November of this year, he returned to Wake Island with 30 other survivors of the battle. (Poindexter estimates that only about 100 of the troops who served at Wake Island are still alive.)

“For the first six hours I was there I had to take it on faith that it was Wake. There was so much greenery.” Wake Island now serves as an Air Force base with about 200 U. S. troops stationed there.

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Poindexter remembers that during the battle no one really thought too much about it being Christmas, and he is particularly amused by being labeled a hero.

“We were doing the job that Marines have been called on to do for 200 years. It makes you wince a little to be a called a hero but it’s nice to know that we weren’t lacking in the right stuff. We certainly gave it our best shot.”

One incident has stuck with him through the years. After his capture, a Japanese naval officer came to where Poindexter and the other officers were being held.

Dressed in a soiled khaki shirt and several burlap bags wrapped around his waist like a sarong, the Japanese officer apologized for his appearance, saying that all his uniforms were destroyed when the Americans blew up his ship.

Poindexter remembers the officer saying in English: “I’m afraid this is going to be a long war and you’ll have some disagreeable experiences ahead of you. But after the war is over, I hope you will not think all Japanese are beasts.”

Stuffing his pipe full of tobacco, Poindexter said: “I’ve often thought about him. I’ve always regretted not finding out who he was and looking him up. What a gentleman. If he’s alive, I’d like to meet him again and tell him I remembered what he said.”

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