Obituaries : J. Devereux; Led Heroic WW II Force

James Devereux, who led a small Marine detachment and 1,000 civilian construction workers that held off an overwhelming Japanese force trying to take Wake Island in December, 1941, has died of pneumonia.

The retired brigadier general, who later served four terms as a congressman from the Baltimore area, was 85 when he died Friday.

After two weeks of fierce fighting at the small airstrip north of the Marshall Islands, then-Maj. Devereux surrendered to spare the rest of his 500 troops and workers. During the battle, Devereux’s poorly armed force managed to sink two enemy destroyers. He spent 3 1/2 years in a Japanese prison camp.

Japanese historians have categorized the Wake Island battle as “one of the most humiliating defeats our Navy ever suffered.”

Devereux earned the Navy Cross and retired as a brigadier general in 1948.

Two years later he won a seat in Congress as a Republican in a district near Baltimore that had sent only two Republicans to Washington since the Civil War. In 1958 he left Congress to run for governor. After losing to J. Millard Tawes by a nearly 2-1 margin, he said his opponent was “much better qualified for governor than I was.”