Who won wake island?

Answer 1

This sad story of Wake Island is from Wikipedia under the heading of The Battle of Wake Island. The US was eventually victorious over the Japanese but the POWs suffered dearly on that island.

****War crimesSee also: Japanese war crimes The 98 rock

On October 5, 1943, American naval aircraft from USS Yorktown raided Wake. Two days later, fearing an imminent invasion, Rear Admiral Shigematsu Sakaibara ordered the execution of the 98 captured American civilian workers remaining on the island, kept to perform forced labor. They were taken to the northern end of the island, blindfolded and executed with a machine gun. One of the prisoners (whose name has never been discovered) escaped the massacre, apparently returning to the site to carve the message 98 US PW 5-10-43 on a large coral rock near where the victims had been hastily buried in a mass grave. The unknown American was recaptured, and Sakaibara personally beheaded him with a katana. The inscription on the rock can still be seen and is a Wake Island landmark.

On September 4, 1945, the remaining Japanese garrison surrendered to a detachment of United States Marines. The handover of Wake was officially conducted in a brief ceremony aboard the USS Levy (DE-162). After the war, Sakaibara and his subordinate, Lieutenant-Commander Tachibana, were sentenced to death for the massacre and other war crimes. Several Japanese officers in American custody had committed suicide over the incident, leaving written statements that incriminated Sakaibara. Tachibana's sentence was later commuted to life in prison.(Admiral Sakaibaral was hanged in June 18, 1947) [11] The murdered civilian POWs were reburied after the war in Honolulu Memorial, Hawaii.