There was a program on the History Channel the other night about Wake Island. From the sounds of it, the Marines put up quite a fight against the Japanese before throwing in the towel.
Later on, when the US re-took many of these islands (I know they bypassed Wake itself but I mean other islands) it seems like while they did suffer casualties in retaking them, it wasn’t as bad as the Japanese initial invasions.
This surprised me. I would figure that the Americans, more willing to surrender if the situation looked hopeless, would mean the Japanese invaders would suffer comparatively less casualties rather than the other way around, where American invaders had to often seemingly kill Japanese to the last man just to completely liberate an island.
Was the ‘island hopping’ tactic really that effective in weakening these little ocean fortresses? I imagine even a significant and fanatical island garrison wouldn’t be terribly effective if deprived resupply for months/years on end. Or is it more a matter of raw numerical superiority (i.e. when US invaded Japanese occupied islands they did it with more overwhelming force)?