Posted on 05/29/2013 4:57:56 AM PDT by Bratch
Fifteen months of warfare in the frost and fog of subarctic weather ought to be tough to forget. But seven decades after the fight for the Aleutian Islands reached its banzai climax on May 29, 1943, the mistake-plagued allied campaign to drive Japanese forces from North America remains "the forgotten battle."
The campaign does rate a sensational headline: Japan Invades North America. The Aleutians campaign began in early June 1942 when a large Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) task force entered U.S. territorial waters and launched successful amphibious invasions of the Alaskan islands of Attu and Kiska.
Which leads to a second sensational headline: Japanese Invaders Conquer, Fortify U.S. Territory.
At a time when Americans, with good reason, feared a Japanese invasion of Hawaii and the continental U.S. West Coast, Kiska and Attu actually became Japanese Occupied America. On both Kiska and Attu, Japanese troops --occupation troops -- built airfields, barracks and bunkers, and then stationed combat aircraft on bona fide U.S. soil. The Battle of Attu (May 11 to May 30, 1943) was the only World War II land battle fought on incorporated U.S. territory.
Attu lies at the far western end of the Aleutians, where the cold North Pacific approaches the Bering Strait. Kiska is 180 miles east of Attu. Based on a quick scan of the map, the Aleutians look like a logical invasion route. Strategists in Tokyo and Washington saw the islands as stepping stones to the respective enemy homeland. Land-based aircraft could operate from airfields on the bigger stones.
Japanese planners did not think Alaska and British Columbia were realistic objectives. However, blocking a U.S. route to Japan's northern Kurile Islands and denying U.S. strategic bombers northern bases made sense in Tokyo.
After Pearl Harbor, the IJN had the offensive edge. The Aleutian invasion force was the northern prong of the IJN's June 1942 bid to deal the U.S. Navy (USN) a fatal blow. The southern prong is much more famous -- its troops had orders to take Midway Island, a stepping stone to Hawaii. The U.S. victory at Midway dramatically altered the Pacific war. In the latter half of 1942, the great American counteroffensive commenced. Japan's Aleutian garrisons were exposed to U.S. air and naval bombardment and -- even worse -- winter weather.
Both sides learned that the isolated, rugged Aleutians are a difficult place to supply, much less fight. The weather, wicked currents, uncharted rocks and U.S. submarines hindered Japanese supply ships. A March 1943 IJN attempt to reinforce the garrisons led to the Battle of the Komandorski Islands, an encounter historian Samuel Eliot Morison argued "has no parallel in the Pacific war." Southeast of Siberian Russia's Kamchatka peninsula, IJN and USN warships fought a World War I style long-range gun duel, without the presence of combat aircraft.
On May 11, 1943, after days of foul weather and high seas, 11,000 U.S. soldiers invaded Attu. At the beach, they met sporadic resistance. The Japanese had prepared defenses in Attu's rugged valleys and ridges. For 18 days, pockets of Japanese infantry fought to the last man. At 0330 on May 29, over 1,000 Japanese soldiers trapped near Massacre Bay launched one of the war's largest banzai suicide attacks. The attackers broke the U.S. line and overran two headquarters and a medical station, where they stabbed wounded U.S. soldiers. When U.S. units counterattacked, surviving fanatics committed suicide using hand grenades. On Attu, 2,351 Japanese died; the U.S. took 28 prisoners. Attu cost 549 U.S. killed in action, 1,148 wounded, 1,200 very severe cold weather injuries and 900 other non-combat casualties. Attu may be forgotten, but it wasn't easy.
Kiska repeated Attu's tragedy as tragic farce. On Aug. 15, after weeks of bad weather, 35,000 U.S. and Canadian troops assaulted Kiska. The allied soldiers met fog and mist at the beaches, but no resistance. On Aug. 17, troops "groping through a clammy fog" (Morison's description) found the Japanese main base deserted. The Japanese had evacuated Kiska on July 28 -- a very foggy day.
Intelligence failure? In every sense. In the fog and mist, fratricidal gunfire killed 25 allied soldiers and wounded 31. That is a lesson no one should forget.
Years ago, I met a grizzled old North Dakota veteran of Guadalcanal. He actually wished he’d been sent to Attu instead. “What was the army thinking,” he asked me, “when they sent North Dakota boys to fight on Guadalcanal and Arizona boys to fight on Attu?”
Otherwise all military actions will need to be isolated to late July and early August.
Or, use robots.
We should have sent nobody to fight on Attu. The Aleutians campaign consumed an astounding proportion of US military resources in the war, and there would have been no harm in just letting the Japanese sit on the islands and rot till the end of the war.
I have the book,” The Thousand Mile War” that chronicles the action in Alaska. The Army ignored the input from the units that had been stationed there before the invasion, and sent in the GIs with no winter gear. Those guys were issued leather boots which resulted in many losing feet to frostbite. Incredible conditions, yet they threw the Japanese out. One interesting tactic developed there was the use of airborne forward observers, which we still use today. If you can find this book, grab it.
It has been reprinted.
http://www.amazon.com/Thousand-Mile-War-Aleutians-Classic-Reprint/dp/0912006838
Yep, too many forget that the military is another government bureaucracy.
Great advice in 20-20 hindsight. But, at the time, there was serious national pride issues at stake with the enemy occupying sovereign U.S. Territory.
The Japanese were dumbfounded when we made no move to counter the initial occupation in June 1942. The main purpose of the occupation was to divert us from Midway. Little did they know that we'd cracked their naval code and were focused on the big prize.
My father and my father-in-law both served in the Aleutian Campaign. FIL was an Army anti-aircraft artilleryman and my dad was in the Navy. My dad ended the war with nine battle stars serving on the Fleet Oiler USS Neches AO47, that was involved in every major invasion in the Pacific. Anyway, with all that action and despite hitting a mine, kamikazes, having his ship used as bait to entice the Japanese fleet at Leyte, and the Okinawa Typhoon in 1945, he says his most terrifying experience was a storm in the Bering Sea.
I once met a Marine who said he was given special cold-weather warfare training before being sent to Vietnam, where he fought at Khe Sanh.
Yep, here in Alaska the weather in the Aleutians and Bering Sea is well known. A joke here: their weather is so bad that they use logging chains for wind socks. Ordinary Bering Sea storms are as bad (and worse) as the Okinawa Typhoon you mentioned, we are not surprised your dad would say it was his most terrifying experience.
With Attu retaken, the US now posed a potential threat to Japan's Kurile Islands and Northern Territories that it would have to at least take into account, diverting its attention from other battle fronts.
In fact, the only combat which occurred on their equivalent of the Aleutians was a bloody firefight against a Russian force invading Shumshu Island in the northern Kuriles in August 1945. Arguably, that garrison was put there in anticipation of an American invasion, so there was at least some diversion value. But probably not much.
Interestingly, the gulf stream is active miles above these miserable weather islands and transpacific flights still most commonly take these routes. Once in a great while, these flights even use them for emergency landings as I believe a China based commercial flight did at the U.S. base in Shemya some years ago.
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Thanks Bratch. |
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