Midway: A place of history, heroes

By William Cole
Advertiser Military Writer

Midway veteran Frank Tompkins reflects at a lei-draped memorial on Midway honoring those who died in the Battle of Midway 60 years ago. Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser

MIDWAY ATOLL — Sixty years ago, with 107 Japanese warplanes raining bombs and bullets on this atoll, Frank Tompkins had no way of knowing he was helping to turn the tide of World War II.

What the U.S. Marine and 37 mm anti-aircraft gunner did know was that a large-scale Japanese air attack was under way, and that sandbags on the beach were all that separated him from a world of trouble.

"We were close to the reef. Our planes were coming in and were out of ammo," the 85-year-old Tompkins said. "The Zeros were waiting to pounce on them."

One American flier winged low over the reef with a Zero behind — hoping Tompkins' gun would find the pursuer.

"We fired right in between the two," the California man said, adding that later, his crew was able to shoot down a Japanese plane.

The night before, his sergeant said, "Men, get a good night's sleep, it'll probably be your last."

Radar had picked up the invading force when it was 100 miles out.

The Marine, then 25, was hoping an outgunned U.S. armada lying in wait 390 miles northeast of Midway would be his salvation.

Luckily, for Tompkins and the United States, it was.

Veteran Bill Tunstall sits alone with his thoughts at a gathering of invited guests marking the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Midway. Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser

June 4-6, 1942, in a battle that historian Walter Lord said logistically it "had no right to win," the U.S. Pacific Fleet used advance knowledge of the attack on Midway to sink four Japanese aircraft carriers and stem further attacks on Midway.

Six months after the demoralizing Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, the Battle of Midway dealt the Imperial Navy a crippling blow from which it never recovered.

Yesterday, amid tall ironwoods and thousands of Laysan albatross that military people still call "gooney birds," the 60th anniversary of that crucial victory was marked with a visit to Midway by more than two dozen World War II veterans, and Navy and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials.

For this anniversary, some of the aging veterans arrived with wheel chairs and walkers, and children and grandchildren.

"When we listen to the stories of the real heroes of the Battle of Midway, the same heroes have been a part of our American history since day one — but Midway brought it all together and gave us an excellent example ... of how uncommon folks can rise to meet the situation when it comes," said Assistant Secretary of the Navy Hansford T. Johnson.

Rear Adm. Anthony L. Winns, commander of the Pacific Fleet's patrol and reconnaissance force, said the Japanese plan to lure the Pacific Fleet by attacking Midway was a good one, but one "that didn't take into account the war-fighting spirit and heroism of our great U.S. Navy — sailors whose names have been immortalized ... like Admirals Nimitz, Spruance, Fletcher."

When the sea battle was over, 307 Americans were dead, and the aircraft carrier Yorktown was lost.

Midway Island and surrounding islands were the scene of the decisive battle that turned the tide in favor of the Americans during World War II. Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser

Japanese "Kate," "Val," and Zero warplanes struck Midway for 17 minutes, destroying almost every building on Eastern Island — one of two major islands comprising the atoll.

Forty-nine Marines died and 53 were wounded. But the Japanese lost far more: 2,500 men, 100 fighter pilots, more than 300 aircraft, and the carriers Kaga, Soryu, Akagi and Hiryu — the same carriers that attacked Pearl Harbor.

The naval air facility at Midway was closed in the early 1990s, and the atoll was turned over to the federal Interior Department in 1996.

The Fish and Wildlife Service has held Battle of Midway commemorations every year — but usually in Honolulu, said Pacific region spokeswoman Joan Jewett.

"This year is important because it's the 60th, and it may be the last time on a significant anniversary that there are veterans able to participate," she said.

Today, Midway is a mix of ecology and history.

Its combined 1,550 acres support the largest Laysan albatross colony in the world, 15 other species of migratory seabirds and four species of migratory shorebirds. Endangered Hawaiian monk seals and threatened green sea turtles are found in its waters.

But it retains the scars of Japanese attacks.

The Japanese had hoped to entrap the Pacific Fleet at Midway and use the tiny outpost 1,300 miles from Honolulu as a forward-operating base.

But code-breakers working at Pearl Harbor had cracked the Japanese Navy 25, or JN-25 code, and Nimitz ordered the carriers Enterprise, Hornet and Yorktown — patched up at Pearl Harbor after receiving bomb damage in the Battle of the Coral Sea — to lie in wait 390 miles northeast of Midway at a spot designated "Point Luck."

Ralph Brevik of Eugene, Ore., a musician 3rd class who played guitar in a 21-piece band on the Enterprise, didn't know where the carrier was headed.

"It was going to be a big one — that's all they said — that we were going to beat the Japanese fleet," Brevik said.

But it wouldn't be easy.

Fifteen Devastator torpedo bombers from the Hornet's Torpedo Squadron 8 were quickly shot down.

Of 25 Marine fighters taking off from Midway, meanwhile, only eight survived. But masses of following SBD Dauntless dive-bombers found their targets, and in a span of six minutes, three Japanese carriers — the Kaga, Akagi and Soryu — were ablaze.

Bill Tuntstall, 82, who maintained one of the ill-fated Torpedo Squadron 8 aircraft, made the trip to Midway from Portland with his wife, Dorothy. He remembers a radioman 2nd class asking him to take his wallet in case something happened.

"I said, put it back in your pocket, nothing is going to happen to you," Tuntstall said. But the radioman was among those who never returned that day 60 years ago.

"It's a real sentimental type" of experience coming to Midway, Tuntstall said. "I enjoy being out here because I see this memorial that reminds me of some very, very fine people."