BRIGADIER GENERAL JAMES P.S. DEVEREUX, United States Marine Corps received the Navy Cross for distinguished and heroic conduct in the line of his profession in the defense of Wake Island, December 7 to 22, 1941. Marine Brigadier General James P.S. Devereux was Commanding Officer of the Wake Detachment, First Defense Battalion during the heroic but futile defense of Wake Island from December 8 to 23, 1941. For his gallant leadership in defending the tiny American outpost for 15 days against overwhelming odds, he was awarded the Navy Cross. On the morning of December 7, 1941 (It was December 8 on Wake) when he received the message that Pearl Harbor had been attacked by the Japanese. In the fight that followed, General Devereux, then a major, and his men added a brillant page to the annals of the Marine tradition. They went down, but in doing so damaged two cruisers, sank two destroyers, one escort vessel, and destroyed or damaged a total of 72 aircraft, and possibly sank one submarine. Two more destroyers were damaged the last day. After a bitter struggle, surrendered to the Japanese on December 23, 1941. “After our capture we remained on Wake until January 12, when we were sent away on the NITA MARU,” stated General evereux upon his release from the Japanese prison camp on Hokkaido Island in September 1945. “We stopped at Yokohama where some of our officers debarked, but we continued to Woosung, China, downriver from Shanghai, arriving on the 24th of January, 1942,” he added. “We remained there until December 9 of the same year, when we were transferred to Kiangwan, just outside of Shanghai, and there we spent 29 months . . . On that day we were sent to Fungtai, near Peiping, for five weeks and then were transferred to camps in central Hokkaido. . .”

BG Devereux joined the L.O.V. in 1985 and resided in Maryland.