Adm. Cunningham Dies; Wake Island Defender

Winfield Scott Cunningham, commander of the American forces on Wake Island when that Pacific island was captured by the Japanese at the beginning of World War II, has died at the age of 86.

Cunningham, who died March 3, retired from the Navy as a rear admiral in 1950.

The U.S. Naval Academy graduate and aviator was transferred to Wake Island less than 10 days before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. He took over an island defended by 449 U.S. Marines and 68 Navy men, along with several hundred civilian construction workers who were building an airfield.

Cunningham’s small force, equipped only with guns removed from scrapped battleships, a few machine guns and half a dozen outmoded fighter planes, fought off one invasion attempt by the Japanese on Dec. 11.

But the Japanese gained a foothold on the atoll on Dec. 23, and Cunningham was forced to surrender a week later. Wake Island was the first U.S.-defended territory to be claimed by the Japanese during the war.

Cunningham, then a commander, spent the rest of the war as a prisoner and was awarded the Navy Cross in March, 1942, along with 61 other Navy personnel and civilians, for their heroism at Pearl Harbor and Wake Island.

After his release in 1945, Cunningham was assigned to the Memphis Naval Air Station in Tennessee, where he retired in 1950. He later went into business in Memphis.