Winfield S. Cunningham

Winfield Scott Cunningham (February 16, 1900 – March 3, 1986) was the Officer in Charge, Naval Activities, Wake Island when the tiny island was attacked by the Japanese on December 8, 1941. Cunningham commanded the defense of the island against the massive Japanese attack. After 15 days, he surrendered the island to the Japanese. Cunningham was taken prisoner and held as a POW in Japan. He was awarded the Navy Cross for his leadership at Wake Island.

Quotes

• We had heard with pride that President Roosevelt himself had hailed Wake’s resistance effort, and we had tried to discount as propaganda for enemy consumption the gloomy reports that relief for Wake would not be expected. But now we heard something that set our teeth on edge.
  When Pearl Harbor asked the defenders of Wake if there was anything that could be done for them, the story went, an answer came back:
  "Yes. Send us more Japs."
  If there was anything we didn’t need at Wake it was more Japs. I had sent no such message, and since the release of dispatches was at all times under my direct control, I dismissed the story as a reporter’s dream, as did most of the others on the atoll who heard it. Not until years later, in fact, did I learn through Bucky Henshaw, one of the decoding officers, how the story began. ...
  Part of the decoders’ job is to "pad" messages with nonsense at the beginning and end as a device to throw off enemy code-breakers. Such padding was either entirely meaningless or, on occasion, something involving a private joke. ... It was not expected that the padding would be filed with the text of the message.
  On the morning we turned back the invasion fleet ... [the decoder] had done the padding on my message. He had begun it:
  SEND US STOP NOW IS THE TIME FOR ALL GOOD MEN TO COME TO THE AID OF THEIR PARTY STOP CUNNINGHAM MORE JAPS. ...
  What the world took as a gesture of defiant heroism from Wake Island was actually nothing of the kind and was never intended to be.
  • Reported in W. Scott Cunningham and Lydel Sims, Wake Island Command (1961)

External links

• Encyclopedic article on Winfield S. Cunningham on Wikipedia