Besides Pearl Harbor, the Japanese also attacked other portions of sovereign American soil during World War II. Anyone hear of Operation Land Crab? Engineer Hill?
Following December 7th, 1941, on June 3rd of 1942, Japanese bombers attacked Dutch Harbor on Unalaska Island. In crappy weather, only half the planes found the target and little damage was done. Unalaska Island comprises only one (roughly mid-point) of a large number of islands in Alaska’s “beard chain” of islands — and is clearly SOVEREIGN United States soil.
For reference, Dutch Harbor is the port from which many boats issue when you choose to watch the Discovery Channel’s series The Deadliest Catch about current-day crab fishermen.
Three days later, Japanese then invaded the Island of Kiska on June 6, 1942 and the Island of Attu the next day. Of the 42 inhabitants who remained on Attu, all were taken to a prison camp near Otaru, Hokkaido. There, sixteen of them died.
Kiska and Attu were on soverign United States soil.
The Battle of the Aleutian Islands lasted from June 3rd, 1942 to August 15th, 1943.
In all, the United States deployed 144,000 personnel; the Japanese deployed 8,500.
The US lost 1,481 dead (2,500 wounded, sick or frostbitten) ; Japan lost 2,351 dead.
The re-capture of Attu produced some of the bloodiest fighting in the Pacific theatre, similar to the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
There were 3,929 U.S. casualties:
- 549 were killed,
- 1148 were injured,
- 1200 had severe cold injuries,
- 614 succumbed to disease, and
- 318 died of miscellaneous causes, largely Japanese booby traps and friendly fire.
This all occurred on United States soil.
Did you ever hear of it?
BZ
I did not know of this B Zep, thank you, for sharing it with me and others. It’s a good history lesson for us all who did not know. History in school is often taught in general details but the smaller hidden details seldom are taught.
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Hey BZ:
I never knew that stuff either. I suppose we learn something different every day. The picture of Analaska in Wikipedia is BEAUTIFUL! I had no idea that the Japanese tried to take over those islands back then. But if we think about it, the islands are in the Pacific Rim and I guess they were trying to increase their sphere of influence. What I find most intriguing is that it took almost a whole year to eject the Japanese from the two islands due to weather?!!! How insane! Thanks for sharing this, because so many facts get lost to the subjective judgement of those who write history books.
As far as readership is concerned, don’t worry about it. You write for you. I have really fallen off lately with all the familial stuff and I have also noticed a decline in my readership. However those that come to visit are usually the ones who were always my buddies to begin with, and I value what you all havta say before arbitrary blog readers;)
The History Channel had a story on Kisku and Attu, with some B/W films. It was indeed one of the forgotten theatres of WWII, like
Lapland and Imphal. Those link ratings are an interesting data set to look at. Never even heard of most of the top-rated ones. I wonder, do number of links related to number of posts by readers?
Chance & Mahndisa: yeah, pretty amazing, isn’t it, to think that this occurred on our own soil and that, in addition, somehow it’s been primarily forgotten — particularly how deadly the fighting was!
BBI: I think the ratings occur and are calculated by the number of hits the individual blog receives; that is, the number of visitors in a given hour, day or week.
BZ