George James Wolney was born in 1917 in Wyoming. He was the son of Joseph Franz Wolny (1887-1974) and Julia Szerencsa (1885-1962). His father was born in Poland and his mother in Hungary. He had 4 brothers and 2 sisters.

According to the 1940 US Federal Census George was 22 years old, living with his parents and working as a coal miner in Sheridan, Wyoming. He had completed 8 years of schooling.

George enlisted in the Navy on 28 June 1940 in Salt Lake City and was assigned to USS Honolulu in San Francisco, California. During most of 1940, USS Honolulu continued operations out of Long Beach California, and she steamed out of Long Beach Naval Shipyard on 5 November 1940 for duty in Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii.

On 18 September 1941 Coxswain Wolney was assigned to the Marine Detachment on Wake Island for temporary duty. He was a passenger on USS Regulus from Pearl Harbor to Wake Island.

From the USMC Historical Monograph on ibiblio.org:

Wake, as it appeared to the Marines of the 1st Defense Battalion, was a V-shaped atoll composed of three islands: Wake Island proper, the body of the V; and Wilkes and Peale, the two tip-ends. Its land-mass consisted of some 2,600 acres of sand and coral, a substantial part of which was, in 1941, covered by very dense low brush. Offshore, heavy surf roared continually against a coral reef which surrounded the whole atoll at distances varying from 30 to 1,100 yards. The beaches and much of the terrain inland were covered with coral boulders, some large enough to conceal several men. The interior lagoon, although affording sufficient surface and depth for seaplanes, was studded with coral heads and foul ground which must be dredged clear before ships could enter through the one channel, that between Wilkes and Wake Island. Despite its limited land area, however, Wake's coastline was extensive, altogether exceeding 21 miles. An excellent vignette of Wake in 1941 was given by Colonel Bayler:

Wake is by no means the bare sandy spit one thinks of when atolls are mentioned. Considerable areas of it are covered by woods, and though the trees are small, their thick foliage and the scrubby tangled underbrush provided admirable cover. Walking in these jungles was difficult but not impossible.

On 8 December, 5 hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese Air Attack Force and the 24th Japanese Air Flotilla, based at Roi, bombed Wake Island Camps One and Two and the airstrip. Seven of eight US F4F-3's were destroyed, the airstrip was fired by an exploded 25,000-gallon aviation gas tank, and numerous casualties were sustained.

By 11 December 1941, Wake Island was the Japanese Empire's first unsuccessful amphibious attack on U.S. territory in World War II when the Marines and Navy personnel, with help from the civilians on the island, repelled an attempted Japanese invasion. The island was attacked daily until U.S. commanders surrendered to the overwhelming Japanese forces on 23 December 1941.

American casualties numbered 52 military personnel (Navy and Marine) and approximately 70 civilians killed. Japanese losses exceeded 700 dead, with some estimates ranging as high as 1,000. Wake's Defenders sank two Japanese fast transports and one submarine and shot down 24 Japanese aircraft. The 465 captured military personnel were sent to POW camps in Asia for the remainder of the war. Wake Island remained occupied by Japanese forces until the end of the war.

Of the 1,146 civilians involved in construction projects on Wake Island, 70 were killed and 12 were wounded. Approximately 98 civilians remained on Wake Island as deemed important by the Japanese to finish construction projects. The Japanese executed these 98 civilians in October 1943, an atrocity for which atoll commander, RAdm Shigematsu Sakaibara, was hanged after the war.

Five of Wake's defenders were executed by the Japanese on board the prisoner transport Nitta Maru. Four Japanese officers were convicted in February 1948 for the 5 random selections of war prisoners that were executed in revenge for the Japanese who died at Wake Island.

On 8 December 1941 Coxswain George James Wolney was killed in action at Wake Island during the first attack. From the book A Magnificent Fight: The Battle for Wake Island, by Robert J Cressman, an account of the first battle as “among the first of the navy casualties was Coxswain George J Wolney, a member of the small boat crew at Wake attached to the defense battalion, who, struck by several bullets as he exited the panel truck near the airfield, fell “like a sack of grain”.

Coxswain George James Wolney’s grave is at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, Honolulu, Honolulu, Hawaii. He was survived by his mother and father and 5 of his 6 siblings.

Sources:

FamilySearch.org Profile Page

FindaGrave Memorial

Cressman, Robert J. A Magnificent Fight: The Battle for Wake Island. Naval Institute Press, September 2013

Documents and Evidence posted on Fold3.com.

Marine in The Battle for Wake Island

The Defense of Wake

Sloan, Bill. Given Up for Dead, America’s Heroic Stand at Wake Island. New York:Bantam Books, October 2003.

SBTSProject/ WY/ Sheridan

This story is part of the Stories Behind the Stars project (see www.storiesbehindthestars.org). This is a national effort of volunteers to write the stories of all 400,000+ of the US WWII fallen saved on Together We Served and Fold3. Can you help write these stories? Related to this, there will be a smartphone app that will allow people to visit any war memorial or cemetery, scan the fallen's name and read his/her story.