MIDWAY ATOLL — Cameras clicked and video rolled yesterday as 1,370 people — 1,165 of them off a cruise ship — commemorated the 65th anniversary of the Battle of Midway, which tipped the balance of sea power away from Japan and to the United States early in World War II.

Only about six veterans of the land and sea battle were present; the cost of travel to remote Midway and advancing age prevented more from attending.

But their recollections, fewer and fewer each year, continue to tell the story of sacrifice, luck and gritty perseverance that rocked the Imperial Japanese Navy on its heels on June 4 to 7, 1942, and perhaps kept Japan from attacking Hawai'i again or the West Coast.

The four Japanese aircraft carriers that had attacked Pearl Harbor six months before were sunk, while the U.S. lost one flattop, the Yorktown.

Historian Walter Lord has called Midway a battle the "U.S. had no right to win. Yet they did, and in so doing, they changed the course of the war."

Yesterday's commemoration mixed Midway's historic buildings and ironwood trees, the world's largest population of Laysan albatrosses, the cruise ship and a Military Historical Tours charter flight.

CARNAGE RECALLED

William Tunstall, now 85, yesterday remembered the personal side of that victory, and the loss of American lives that accompanied it.

He was a plane captain on the carrier USS Hornet. Douglas Devastator torpedo bombers sent aloft on June 4 were nearly wiped out by Japanese fighters and anti-aircraft fire.

Fifteen were quickly shot down, but they drew off enemy fighters and left the skies open for U.S. dive bombers.

Ensign George Gay was the only survivor from Torpedo Squadron 8, and Tunstall recalled the planes taking off and never returning.

"You would go out on the stern or out on the bow and just sit and look at the water and just hope that some of them would come back," he said.

"It was a sad day all the way around."

Yesterday, the Portland, Ore., man knelt at North Beach, with its brilliant blue water, and where visiting tourists now swim, to collect some sand for a fellow Midway veteran.

During the Midway battle, Tunstall knew fliers who were based on the atoll. Six planes with three men in each, a pilot, radioman and gunner, took off and only two came back.

"I talked to one of them the other day, and he said, 'I'd love to have some sand (from Midway)," Tunstall said.

Besides four carriers, the Japanese lost a heavy cruiser, three destroyers, some 291 planes and at least 4,800 men.

Dominant before Midway, Japan's fleet after Midway would never again regain the offensive.

American losses included, besides the Yorktown, a destroyer, about 145 planes and 307 men.

The Japanese had hoped to entrap the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Midway and use the tiny outpost 1,200 miles from Honolulu as a forward operating base.

Japanese "Kate," "Val" and "Zero" warplanes struck Midway itself for 17 minutes, destroying almost every building on Eastern Island — one of three islands, along with Sand and Spit, comprising the atoll.

Forty-nine Marines died and 53 were wounded.

PLOTTING AN AMBUSH

Despite the losses, the U.S. had an advantage going into the fight.

Code-breakers working at Pearl Harbor had cracked the Japanese Navy 25, or JN-25 code, and Adm. Chester Nimitz ordered the carriers Enterprise, Hornet and Yorktown — patched up in a Herculean effort by Pearl Harbor shipyard workers after receiving bomb damage in the Battle of the Coral Sea — to lie in wait several hundred miles off Midway at a spot designated "Point Luck."

Retired Rear Adm. John Besson, now in his mid-90s, was on the cruiser USS Pensacola.

"I was down locked up inside," he said yesterday, "waiting for signals of changing the speed of the ship."

He remembered "guns going off" and being worried about torpedoes.

"If they had a torpedo attack and they wanted to put it into the side of our ship, it would come in there (where I was)," he said.

Adm. Robert Willard, commander of U.S. Pacific Fleet, told hundreds gathered in the shade of a big beige and blue hangar showing its age that "words can't express our nation's gratitude" for the sacrifice of the Midway defenders 65 years ago.

Gov. Linda Lingle, noting that Hawai'i could have been the next place to be attacked if the Japanese had prevailed at Midway, said the Midway battle is a reminder "not to take anything for granted — not our life, not freedom, not natural beauty."

ACCESS NOW LIMITED

Midway Atoll, with 280 buildings, including a handful built in 1904 for the Commercial Pacific Cable Co., is managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and is part of the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument.

Those taking the cruise from Long Beach, Calif., to Midway for the 65th anniversary paid $25 each to the Fish and Wildlife Service to be on the atoll for the day and received historic information lectures aboard the ship.

Fish and Wildlife plans to open Midway for small-scale visitation, beginning in November or December, with no more than 30 people allowed on Sand Island at a time.

In the past, up to four cruise ships have docked at Midway a year, but plans call for a limit of three a year.

The cruise ships follow stringent environmental guidelines, said Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman Barbara Maxfield.

Reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com.