450 Marines Vs The Imperial Japanese Navy - Wake Island | CG reacts 

re: the question at around 25:45 "Would the US military be so big if they weren't attacked at Pearl Harbor?" Ok, first, I need to point out the US was simultaneously attacked at Guam and The Philippines along with Pearl. I really don't want people to overlook that. The view at the time was that eventual US entry into the war was inevitable. The US military had been ramping up for several years prior to the attacks. In December 1941, the US Navy alone had 380,000 men in it- compared to 125,000 in 1939. There were multiple carriers and battleships already under construction, that entered service in 1942-44. Japan attacked when they did, because they saw it as a "now or never" situation. To dig further into what's implied by the question, the US military isn't big NOW. Right now, the US Navy has around 470 ships, and in 1945 it had 6,800.

LOL....I have seen folks react to this video a few times, and I just now noticed that Fat Electrician showed the wrong kind of machine gun when he was listing all of the Marines' weapons on Wake Island. He talked about the Marines having thirty .30 caliber machine guns, and he flashed up a picture of the M1919 air cooled version of the Browning .30 caliber, but the Marines did not use that one until later...the Marines on Wake were using the water cooled M1917 version of the Browning...basically unchanged since WW1. So few mistakes...it is almost nice to know that he is still human. LOL

The marines didn't have a chance of winning and the only chance they had for survival was to surrender and then be transported as POW's to camps in China where most lived to the end of the war. Unfortunately, the civilian workers were not POW's and most were left on the island working as slave labor for the Japanese. When the admiral commanding the island thought that the Americans were going to invade the island (plus the Japanese had a severe food shortage) he ordered all the civilians to be lined up and shot for which he was tried for war crimes after the war ended.

Thank you for understanding that, for the general/admirals, sometimes have to look at the bigger picture and make decisions that will lead to soldiers dying because of circumstances. And to make it clear, yes the island of Wake Island was basically surrounded by the Japanese and the few ships the US Navy had left would get destroyed if they tried to get close to Wake

Japan's navy during WWII *sucked* when it came to hitting things. The American losses at Pearl Harbor were so high only because we had so many more people, ships, and buildings there. They failed to destroy or even really cripple repair facilities, meaning America bounced back pretty fast. The Japanese also took some heavy losses in terms of aircraft.

Commander devro wasn't only seeing one Japanese flag. He was seeing hundreds of them, absolutely everywhere. Remember that basically every single one of those Japanese soldiers had one of these good luck flags strapped to their rifle and there all over the island. Imagine the sight of coming out of a bunker after not hearing from anyone for 11 hours only to see hundreds of enemy flags flying quite literally everywhere. I would also assume the worst and get any survivors to surrender. He probably thought that most of his men were dead and just wanted to give the rest any chance he could to live.

The United States Navy wasn't the size it is today and trying to get a task force together in that short time frame wasn't possible