Posted on 12/13/2007 5:18:58 PM PST by Richard Poe
| by Richard Lawrence Poe Monday, December 10, 2007 |
Permanent Link Past Columns |
JAPANESE BOMBERS descended on Pearl Harbor 66 years ago, killing more than 2,400 Americans and demolishing our Pacific fleet. Every American knows the story. However, too few of us know that Japanese forces made additional attacks on U.S. soil after December 7, 1941. Pearl Harbor was merely the first. Our history books grow strangely tongue-tied on this subject. After 66 years, it is time to tell the full story.
Following his success at Pearl Harbor, Japanese Fleet Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto sought to press his advantage. He planned a two-pronged assault on America. His main force would invade Hawaii. A smaller force would create a diversion by attacking Alaska.
Alaska’s soft underbelly was the Aleutians, a chain of more than seventy islands stretching 1,100 miles to the southwest. The easternmost island, Attu, lies only 750 miles from Japan. After taking Attu, Yamamoto could island-hop his way to the Alaskan mainland.
For the attack on Alaska, Yamamoto sent his Fifth Fleet, including 2 light aircraft carriers, 13 destroyers, 5 cruisers, and 4 troop transports.
Two waves of Japanese bombers struck Dutch Harbor, Alaska on June 3 and 4, killing 33 U.S. servicemen and 10 civilians. After neutralizing this critical U.S. base on the island of Unalaska, Japanese troops siezed Attu and Kiska, and dug themselves in.
The attack on Hawaii did not fare as well. American cryptographers had cracked the Japanese naval code and knew Yamamoto's plans. They knew he planned to capture Midway island to use as a staging base for his move on Hawaii.
While Yamamoto's main force attacked Midway on June 4, the Americans lay ready for him. By the end of the day, they sank four Japanese aircraft carriers, crippling the Imperial Navy.
Japan's offensive ground to a halt. Now the Americans counterrattacked.
The Japanese proved strong on defense. In the Aleutians, U.S. ground troops got their first taste of Japan's warrior code, which favored death over defeat. Out of 2,650 Japanese troops defending Attu, only 28 lived to surrender. It took 14 months and 700 American lives to clear the invaders from the Aleutians.
Meanwhile, Japanese submarines prowled America's Pacific coast, sinking ships and even firing on land-bound targets.
On the night of February 23, 1942, for instance, the submarine I-17, under Commander Nishino Kozo, surfaced near the Bankline Company Oil Refinery in Goleta, California -- about 12 miles north of Santa Barbara -- and opened fire with the sub's deck gun, damaging an oil well.
Some Japanese submarines functioned as mini-aircraft carriers. They stored one or two light bombers in watertight hangars on deck, which they launched with explosive catapults. These Yokosuka E14Y floatplanes could carry two bombs or one torpedo. A 7.7-mm machine gun adorned the rear cockpit.
One such converted submarine, the I-25, terrorized America's west coast for four months in 1942.
Its skipper Meiji Tagami bombarded a naval base at Fort Stevens, Oregon on June 22, 1942, firing 5.5-inch shells from the I-25's deck gun.
Tagami's most daring feat was launching the first air strike on the U.S. mainland. Planners in Tokyo hoped to start forest fires with incendiary bombs, which would spread down the coast destroying cities.
A young pilot named Nobuo Fujita would lead the historic raid.
The I-25 surfaced off the Oregon coast on September 9, 1942. Captain Tagami told Fujita, "You're going to make history today, Nobuo. You're going to show them who really owns the Pacific -- the Empire of the Rising Sun!"
Fujita and his navigator-bombardier, Shoji Okuda, took off with two bombs and flew inland. "For miles there were nothing but great forests..." Fujita later wrote. He released the first bomb, watching it "explode with a brilliant white light..." The second burst like a "white blossom".
“We had done it!” Fujita wrote. “We had bombed America!”
Fujita dropped two more bombs on Oregon forests the night of September 29. Pressed by U.S. aircraft and bad weather, the I-25 aborted its mission and headed out to sea on October 5.
Before the war ended, the Japanese started much worse fires with unmanned balloon bombs set adrift over U.S. forests. Yet Fujita’s mission stands unique in the annals of warfare.
Militarily ineffective, it nonetheless captures our imagination, embodying all that we hated and admired in our Japanese adversaries: their bluster, their arrogance, their disquieting tenacity, their selfless valor.
Sixty-six years ago, two peoples met in war, finding in each other worthy foes. May our peoples prove as stout in friendship as we did in enmity.
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Richard Lawrence Poe is a contributing editor to Newsmax, an award-winning journalist and a New York Times bestselling author. His latest book is The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Sixties Radicals Siezed Control of the Democratic Party, co-written with David Horowitz. |
The Japs also tried to bomb us with the plague bacteria. They infested fleas and put them in clay pot canister, floated them in balloons but nothing came of it.
My first legal drink at age 21 was at a bar in Goleta called the Timbers that was supposed to have been built from the timbers of the dock that was destroyed by the Japanese sub. The attack was well known in the Santa Barbara area in the ‘60s.
Japan never realized how well this weapon was working, so they abandoned it.
Today, the MSM would be showing Japan the exact coordinates of each and every explosion!
Military lesson? Keep it simple.
We are lucky nothing came of it!
Otoh, plague is endemic in spots of Southern California. There are BLM campsites with warning signs, do not play with or disturb rodents, plague carrying rodents have been found in this area.
Maybe the disease is not really long-term endemic, maybe it’s leftover war germs from WWII.
This is a truly hilarious statement, given the weather, just about the worst on earth. Both the American and Japanese forces in the area spent most of their time just trying to survive.
The Aleutians aren't a "soft" anything. The Japanese footholds there were only useful for propaganda purposes and the American attacks to remove them were undertaken for the same reason. No military value at all.
Kiska was eventually retaken by a joint US-Canadian amphib assault. By the end of D-day, there were almost a hundred KIA. Unfortunately the Japanese had evacuated the island about a month earlier. Talk about “Frats-R-Us”!
Oh? Today we call them Democrats.
Reality today is much more alarming. This was 65 years ago. Nuclear subs from at least two nations can now take out our cities minutes after the order is given. But we feel safe based on deterrence. Some day it will happen nonetheless.
This is another silly statement. Almost all those American lives were lost in one month, May 1943, in retaking Attu. The Aleutian Islands were a major sinkhole for Japanese resources in resupplying Attu and Kiska. After Attu fell, Kiska was quietly evacuated. American and Canadian forces lost a handful of men accidently shooting at each other in the fog before they discovered there wasn't a single Japanese soldier left on the island.
Theoretically, the Aleutians would have been the closest invasion route to America or, conversely, the closest counterattack to Japan.
The fact that this front fell almost entirely inactive after July 1943 is probably the best proof of just how unrealistic these fogged-in islands were for military operations even in their mildest season. These are not tiny islands. Attu is roughly 15 times the size of Manhattan. These islands are still home to U.S. military bases and the closest to Russia and China.
Nome alaska is closer to russia than any of the aleutian islands.
I THINK guam is closer to china than any of the aleutians.
I read an article on forensic geology once that told about how the location of the factory making those Japanese balloon bombs was discovered.
The sand that was used as ballast in the baskets was analyzed and determined to have microscopic shells which are only formed in cold water between particular latitudes. An intense aerial survey was made of the coastal section of Japan within those latitudes and the factory was discovered and bombed off the map.
Great Link! I read a similar article about 10+ years ago in Smithsonian or one of those types of mags.
She swore until her death, that with the kids in the basement (my mom and uncle), the Jap planes buzzed over the city from the ocean.
Other times, looking out the widow, she could see a garbage scow being followed by a Jap sub. Things would wash up on the beach and kids were told to never pick up anything shiny on the beach. Indeed there were reports of kids being harmed by such items found on the beach.
After the war, 44th st was built out to 48th to the Lincoln Hwy.
My grandfather was a marine contractor, working in the Bay. His company was the one that won the contract to clear out the mess after POrt Chicago blew up. Pretty wild stuff.
Hiroshima school kids folded paper-cranes for the American victims.
Almost unknown - The Manhatten Project was delayed by a day or so by the effects of one Japanese ballon bomb --for decades this was classified. The explosion caused a power-outage of a facility (very far from New Mexico) that powered a critical part of the "device" research facility.
The (history) scholarly journal that detailed the event was fascinating --truly gripping.
The balloon bombs were assembled near one of the places I lived in in Japan.
I-25. More info here Type B1 Submarine
And it as a WWII base, it was worthless most of the time due to the extreme WX.
Good book out "Those Navy Guys and Their PBYs: The Aleutian Solution" by Elmer Freeman talks of the issues and has a good set of photos for the WWII buffs.
simple ping
On May 5, 1945, a balloon bomb which had drifted over the Pacific killed five children and a woman. It exploded when a 13-year-old girl (Joan Patzke) attempted to pull the balloon from a tree during a church group picnic in the woods near Bly, Oregon. Having taken some local children on an outing, Reverend Archi Mitchell watched in horror as his wife, Elsie Mitchell, and five children who accompanied them (ages 11 to 14) were killed. The minister escaped by luck of being a short distance behind. Those six were the only known victims of the balloon bombs. However, dangers of the balloon bomb still may exist. Hundreds were never found and may still constitute unexploded ordnance.
The six who perished were the only known casualties inflicted by Japanese attack on the U.S. mainland during World War II. Those who died were:
Elsie Mitchell, 26
Edward Engen, 13
Jay Gifford, 13
Joan Patzke, 13
Dick Patzke, 14
Sherman Shoemaker, 11
Japanese propaganda broadcasts announced great fires and an American public in panic, declaring casualties as high as 10,000. The press blackout in the U.S. was lifted after the deaths to ensure that the public was warned.
A memorial, the Mitchell Monument, is located 110 kilometres (70 mi) northeast of Klamath Falls. It was rededicated during a 50-year anniversary service in 1995.
The reverend Mitchell escaped the bomb blast that killed his wife, and remarried.However he was killed in the early 60’s in S. Vietnam as a missionary.Killed by Jane Fonda’s friends.
“Almost unknown - The Manhatten Project was delayed by a day or so by the effects of one Japanese ballon bomb —for decades this was classified. The explosion caused a power-outage of a facility (very far from New Mexico) that powered a critical part of the “device” research facility.”
I believe that would be at Hanford, Washington where some aspect of the nuclear material took place.
The History Channel played a new episode I had not seen previously, which covered all this material.
I think much of this material remained classified for 50 years. Enigma, docetalkers, etc.
My mother lived throughout the war in the Los Angeles area, and she recounted blackouts, gas, tires, food rationing. She was a Rosey the Riveter, too. (Building airplanes).
That war was a REALLY big deal, leaving lifelong memories for all involved. Her father served in France in WWI, then also built planes during WWII.
I have some historical front pages of the Lost Angeles Times, and they actually called the enemy “Japs.”
The Japanese gave bin Laden some of his ideas, I think.
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