<P> With the annexation of Hawaii in 1898 and the seizure of Guam and the Philippines during the Spanish -- American War that same year , the United States began to consider unclaimed and uninhabited Wake Island , located approximately halfway between Honolulu and Manila , as a good location for a telegraph cable station and coaling station for refueling warships of the rapidly expanding United States Navy and passing merchant and passenger steamships . On July 4 , 1898 , United States Army Brigadier General Francis V. Greene of the 2nd Brigade , Philippine Expeditionary Force , of the Eighth Army Corps , stopped at Wake Island and raised the American flag while en route to the Philippines on the steamship liner SS China . </P>
when did the us take over wake island
July 4 , 1898