Winfield Scott Cunningham
Naval Officer, Wake Island Garrison Commander · 1900–1986
Who is Winfield Scott Cunningham?
Winfield Scott Cunningham was a United States Navy commander who served as the senior officer in charge of the American garrison on Wake Island, a remote Pacific atoll that today forms part of the U.S. Minor Outlying Islands, at the outbreak of the Pacific War. Arriving at Wake only days before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Cunningham oversaw a small combined force of Navy personnel, Marine Corps defenders under Major James Devereux, and civilian contractors as Japanese forces launched repeated air raids and an amphibious invasion attempt beginning 8 December 1941. The garrison's coastal defense guns and fighter aircraft managed to repel an initial invasion force, sinking a Japanese destroyer, an action widely reported in the American press as a rare early bright spot after Pearl Harbor. A larger Japanese invasion force overwhelmed the island's defenses on 23 December 1941, and Cunningham sent a final radio dispatch to Pearl Harbor before the garrison was forced to surrender. Cunningham spent the remainder of the war as a prisoner of the Japanese, held in camps in China and Japan, before being liberated in 1945. He later wrote a memoir of the battle and remained a prominent voice in the history of the Pacific War until his death in 1986.
Sources: Winfield Scott Cunningham (with Lydel Sims), Wake Island Command (1961) · Official U.S. Navy histories of the Pacific War · Gregory J.W. Urwin, Facing Fearful Odds: The Siege of Wake Island (1997)