Don Butler, who went to Wake Island in the Pacific in 1940 to help build a military base and ended up a prisoner of war, died of complications of a subdural hematoma Feb. 20 at George Washington University Hospital inWashington. He was 91.
Butler joined about 1,000 other civilian contractors who had come to help the Marines and other service members transform the desolate coral strip into a strategic naval air station and submarine base.
Butler, who was a mechanical engineer, also volunteered to be part of a civilian defense force to help the Marines if the atoll were attacked. He took weapons classes from Marine instructors with about 200 other contractors.
On Dec. 8, 1941, the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese assault on Wake Island began. Until Dec. 23, Butler and several hundred other U.S. civilian contractors fought alongside about 445 Marines and a few sailors and Army radiomen in a fierce yet relatively small battle that came to symbolize the defiant spirit of the American people. Butler was freed from captivity in Japan in 1945.
Butler was a native of Clarion, Iowa, and graduated from Iowa State University.
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