evidence: Located about 2,000 miles (3,200 km) west of Hawaii and 600 miles (approximately 1,000 km) north of the Japanese-held Marshall Islands, Wake Island impressed American naval planners as an ideal site for an advance defensive outpost. In January 1941 a consortium of civilian firms called Contractors Pacific Naval Air Bases (CPNAB) began construction of military facilities on the atoll. By December CPNAB had more than 1,100 construction workers toiling on Wake, but they did not complete their work before the outbreak of war between Japan and the United States. A garrison of 449 U.S. Marines, several dozen navy personnel, and a handful of army radio operators also were stationed on Wake. That force had nearly 2,100 fewer troops than American strategists had deemed necessary to properly defend the atoll. The island’s defenders were equipped with six 5-inch (127-mm) coastal artillery pieces, 12 3-inch (76-mm) antiaircraft guns, 12 F4F Wildcat fighter planes, and an assortment of machine guns and small arms. Forty-five Guamanian men, employed by Pan American Airways as part of its transpacific Clipper service, rounded out the atoll’s human population.