98 Rock

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Morrison-Knudsen Company workmen were at Wake Island helping to build Naval Air Station, Peale Island. They were also contracted to build a submarine base and airfield, and dredge an access channel in the lagoon for the submarines.

The civilians, sailors and Marines captured at Wake Island were some of the earliest POWs during WWII. On 12 January 1942, 360 civilians were left behind on Wake Island while all of the other POWs were transported by ship to POW camps in China and Japan, mostly Shanghai and Fukuoka. Those left behind were forced to build bunkers and other infrastructure for the Japanese invaders.

Aircraft from the USS Yorktown raided Wake Island on 05 October 1943. By then, there were only 98 of the 360 civilians alive. Garrison commander Rear Admiral Shigematsu Sakaibara, thinking the October raid was a sign of an imminent American landing, ordered all of the remaining civilians to be executed. One managed to escape the massacre and chiseled "98 US PW 5-10-43" into a coral rock (now called "POW Rock" or "98 Rock") near the mass grave located on Wilkes Island. The unknown POW was later recaptured and personally beheaded by Sakaibara. For his role in the Wake Island massacre, Sakaibara was hung as a war criminal on 18 June 1947. The bodies of the 98 civilians were exhumed and reburied at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in section G.