These raids took place within a few hours after the bombing of Pearl Harbors naval base had begun.
Facing starvation, the Japanese troops began to eat whatever they could hunt.
Fortunately for them, Wake Island had a large population of seabirds.
In fact, birds were the only thing the island had.
He remarked with distaste that there was nothing on it but sea-birds, and sandy places covered with bushes.
Most of the birds the poachers were after were migratory, such as albatross, frigatebird and terns.
But one species lived there year-round.
The Wake Island rail (Gallirallus wakensis) was a tiny, flightless bird about 22 centimeters in length.
It was this bird that the Japanese preyed upon for food because they were easy to hunt.
By 1945, every living rail had been killed and eaten out of existence.
Bailey notedthat the Wake rails had not been seen since the island was reoccupied by Americans.
Nearly every bird species suffered from the Japanese occupation of Wake Island.
Dr. Bailey noted that he saw no boobies, or red-tailed tropicbirds, or albatrosses either.
The Wake Island rail remains one of most poorly studied birds.
Only a handful of scientific papers mention the species.
The number of surviving specimens in museums is also low.
A rare photograph of a Wake Island rail from a 1936 book.
