This is the U.S. Marine Corps Memorial on Wake Island. Wake was attacked the same day as Pearl Harbor. 450 Marines, 68 sailors and 1,221 civilian contractors repelled a series of attacks until finally being overrun on 23 December. Most captives were sent to China as slave labor for the Japanese Army. The remaining men were enslaved by the invading Japanese and forced to build infrastructure on the island. On 5 October, 1943, fearing invasion by US forces and wanting to conceal their horrific treatment of the Americans, the Japanese soldiers killed 98 civilian workers that remained on the island.