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THE WILSON JOURNAL OF ORNITHOLOGY • Vol. 123, No. 4, December 2011 
Wetmore recorded it in pencil in his field catalog 
only as “rail'' or "Hypotaenidia" (Olson 
1996:184) and informed his superior about it. 
Nelson's response was that he “was highly 
pleased to get your wireless recently announcing 
your arrival on Wake Island and the capture of a 
land rail, which I assume is a new species. I hope 
you may get other fine things there" (E. W. 
Nelson to Wetmore 7 August 1923. Smithsonian 
Institution Archives Record Unit 7006. Box 141, 
Folder 7). 
Wake Island was placed under the jurisdiction of 
the Navy Department in 1935 (Bryan 1959), the 
same year that Pan Am established an airport, 
hotel, and support facilities on Peale Island as a 
stopover point for its trans-Pacific China Clipper 
flight from San Francisco to Honolulu, Midway, 
Wake, Guam. Manila, and Hong Kong (Grooch 
1936, Krupnick 1997). The threat of war with 
Japan led to increased military activity and 
fortification of the island in 1940 and 1941 (Heinl 
1947). It was during that period from 1935 to 1941 
when numerous Pan Am employees, tourists, and 
military personnel encountered the Wake Island 
Rail and commented on it or took photographs that 
we assembled from widely scattered accounts and 
archival sources. Rat control specialists from the 
U.S. Biological Survey headed by H. J. Spencer, in 
conjunction with staff of the Hawaii Agricultural 
Experiment Station, worked out an agreement “in 
order to cooperate with the PAA [Pan Am] in 
ridding the islands of rats in an effort to preserve 
bird life there" (Hansen 1937:3). That may have 
been a pretext. Getting rid of rats may have been 
more of a cosmetic attempt to keep them from 
being encountered by airline passengers staying at 
the hotel, as rats at that lime had not been 
demonstrated to be a threat to birds. The rat control 
biologists were on Wake Island during 31 July-9 
August 1936,4-23 September 1936. and 30 May- 
13 June 1937 (Spencer 1959). 
Heinl (1947). Cressman (1992). and Kinney 
and McCaffrey (1995) provide a map showing 
runways, personnel quarters, and gun installations 
as they existed in December 1941. The Japanese 
military perceived Wake Island to be of far 
greater strategic importance than it turned out to 
be and launched an air attack on 8 December 1941 
to coincide with the surprise attack on Pearl 
Harbor, on the other side of the International Date 
Line, where the date was still 7 December. The 
scant American forces, in one of the most 
valorous actions of the entire war, held off the 
Japanese fleet until 23 December when they were 
overwhelmed by massively superior numbers 
(Heinl 1947. Cressman 1992). The Japanese 
military occupied Wake Island, almost continu¬ 
ously under siege, until they surrendered on 7 
September 1945. The island has since been a U.S. 
possession. 
SYSTEMAT1CS AND EVOLUTION OF THE 
WAKE ISLAND RAIL 
The Wake Island Rail, in plumage and 
proportions, is clearly a representative of the rails 
formerly grouped in the genus Hypotaenidia , 
which is widespread in Oceania and Australasia. 
The name refers to the breast band found in most 
species, including most individuals of the Wake 
Island bird. Hypotaenidia was long subsumed in 
the nearly cosmopolitan genus Rallus, until its 
distinctiveness in plumage, particularly the 
strongly barred primaries (Frontispiece) and 
osteology (Olson 1973, Steadman 1987), were 
deemed sufficient to separate them. The flightless 
Weka (Gallirallus australis) of New Zealand 
clearly belonged with this group and the species 
were included under the older name Gallirallus 
(Olson 1973). Mayr (1949:4) considered Rallus 
wukensis to be among several “strikingly differ¬ 
ent" geographical representatives of the Buff- 
banded Rail ( Rallus [Gallirallus] philippensis ). 
Fuller (2001:127) stated that ” Rallus wakens is 
seems to have only barely passed the point at 
which separate status as a species is appropriate." 
However. Kirchman (2009), in a phylogeny based 
on mitochondrial DNA, found that Gallirallus 
wakensis, G. owstoni (Guam), and G. ripleyi 
(extinct Tonga), among others, were basal to G. 
philippensis. 
Sea Level and Evolution of Gallirallus waken- 
sis.—Wake Atoll, with its greatest elevation at 
only 6.4 m. has little protection from the ravages 
of intense storms or tsunamis. Kaucher (1947:95). 
who saw the rail in August 1937, mentions that a 
member of her party thought all of Wake Island 
had once been awash, although another compan¬ 
ion questioned that idea because of the presence 
of flightless rails. That the rail was absent from 
Wilkes Island in 1923 is a reasonably clear 
indication the island had been inundated and the 
rails wiped out sufficiently recently that they had 
been unable to recolonize. This evidently did not 
occur to Grant (1924:48) who considered that the 
rails were “apparently excluded from [Wilkes] by 
a channel six inches deep studded with stepping 
