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. |
Weyerhaeuser sure wanted to get their name in there.
"I do not understand the caginess, this long after the events."
The "caginess" you cite is a genuine problem. The history of these events -- and many others on the East Coast, involving German attacks during World War II -- has been systematically downplayed by academic historians and by journalists who follow their lead.
I am at a loss to understand why.
The left (academia) is heavily invested in the belief that America is evil. They prefer to downplay anything that suggests otherwise.
As you note, the weather in the Aleutians is fearsome, rendering aircraft carrier operations extremely hazardous.
That is why Yamamoto proceeded by island-hopping. He wanted airstrips on solid ground from which to launch his planes.
Yamamoto's plan was to build airstrips on each island he captured, and use those airstrips to attack islands further up the chain.
His plan failed not because of bad weather, but because the Americans had already foreseen the possibility of a Japanese attack on the Aleutians and had moved swiftly to strengthen Alaska's defenses after Pearl Harbor.
When the Japanese task force arrived, it encountered much stiffer resistance than Yamamoto had anticipated.
Italy was considered part of the "soft underbelly". However, as the Americans discovered at places like Monte Cassino, Italy was far from "soft", especially after the Germans moved in troops to defend it.
Even so, Churchill's metaphor made sense, considering the fact that northern France was more heavily fortified and garrisoned than any place in southern Europe.
The term "soft underbelly" should be understood in a relative sense, of course.
ping
Again, the weather in the Aleutians was fierce, but it was not the decisive factor in the failure of Yamamoto's offensive. The decisive factor was the speed and strength of America's counterattack, which Yamamoto did not expect.
Weather is always important in warfare but seldom decisive. For instance, it is often said that bad weather was decisive in the Soviet victory over Germany in World War II. Yet the same two nations clashed in World War I with a very different outcome. The Russians surrendered to Germany in 1918.
Weather is important, but usually not decisive.
The Japanese offensive in the Aleutians ground to a halt when the Japanese carrier fleet was destroyed at Midway. Had Yamamoto won at Midway, the result might have been different.
In that case, he would have taken Hawaii and reinforced his troops in the Aleutians. The Japanese might well have succeeded in taking the Aleutians, and perhaps gained a foothold on the Alaskan mainland.
From Alaska, they would have been able to launch major air strikes against targets on America's West Coast, such as the naval installations around San Francisco.
Ensign Koga force-landed his crippled Zero fighter on an island where it was quickly recovered and used for direct comparison with US fighters.. Saved many American and allied lives, once its weaknesses were discovered.
Your grandmother's testimony is interesting and important.
While researching this article, I discovered an Associated Press report from December 9, 1941 which stated that Japanese planes had flown over the San Francisco area.
The story said (I am paraphrasing) that, on the evening of December 8, 1941 -- the day after the Pearl Harbor attack -- air raid sirens wailed over San Francisco, and authorities ordered the city blacked out. Before daybreak, blackouts were ordered in nearly every city along America’s west coast.
The U.S. Western Defense Command announced the reason for the blackouts the following day. It announced that, around 6 pm on December 8, some thirty Japanese aircraft had been sighted flying inland near San Jose, about 50 miles south of San Francisco. Military authorities said the squadron split into two groups of 15 planes each, one flying north and the other south.
The southbound squadron vanished. The northbound squadron flew past San Francisco, veered over the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, then headed out to sea.
US fighter planes followed the intruders, but lost contact. The Japanese dropped no bombs. Evidently they were conducting reconnaissance.
Lieutenant General John L. Dewitt, who led the Western Defense Command, told the Associated Press on December 9 that the Japanese planes must have come from an aircraft carrier. The chances of finding the carrier were slim, however, as it could have been as much as 600 miles out to sea.
Historians today dismiss the December 8 alert as a false alarm, driven by hysteria. However, the report of enemy aircraft did not come from panicky civilians, but from the Fourth Army Interceptor Command and from General Dewitt.
I have to leave now, but I will try to find some time later to post the full text of the AP report. I found it in the Moberly Monitor-Index of December 9, 1941, at NewspaperArchive.com.
“Horrywoooood!”
Oh come now. If you want daring and selfless valor, look no further than Jimmy Doolittle's raid on Tokyo on April 18, 1942.
As for the left downplaying it because it makes us less evil, makes the Japanese less the aggressor, that has considerable merit, I think.
The captured Zero was a help, no doubt. However, once we were engaged in all-out war, it was only a matter of time till one was recovered.
I believe it is fairly well established that the Japanese attacks on the Aleutians were primarily a diversionary tactic. Which worked, as a lot of resources were diverted to Alaska that could have been more profitably employed in the Pacific.
One dropped in the Dundee area of Omaha, NE. There is a small brass plaque on the house nearest where it happened. It is also listed in the Smithsonian book about the balloon bombings. Nobody I have talked to about here in Omaha it knew about it.
I don’t think it is “caginess”. I think it is ignorance.
Let’s see, the Weyerhauser company owns the forest there, donated the land for the memorial, keeps the campsite up, probably paid for the new cairn and plaque, but is being self serving for putting its name on it.
I’d hate to live in your world, FRiend.
Apparently Weyerhaeuser donated the land around the monument to the Fremont National Forest in 1998 so they no longer own it. The original plaque was dedicated in 1950, had different language on it, and probably did not contain the modern logo. For some reason the plaque was replaced recently, perhaps when Weyerhaeuser was going to donate the land.
I did not know about the foight over San Jose.
December 9th? Perhaps some stringers from the Aleut invasion heading south to head off any reaction from the West Coast?
Grandma never said that it was directly after Pearl Harbor, but your information is truly interseting.
Dad used to tell of buckets of sand that had to be kept by the windows and of course the black out curtains. Cars had to had head lights covered with just pinholes for the lights. ciao Jeffrey
The gentleman in the next office from mine a few years ago, a Japanese person, was one of those who launched the fire balloons every day. It was his part of the war effort.
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