Ode to Battle of Aleutian Islands
Like most Americans this past weekend, I spent a good deal of time on the road (so much so that my editor was gracious enough to accept an extended deadline). I drove from Waco, Texas to Provo, Utah and back with a 1-year old in in the backseat. What a beautiful country!
I thought, as I drove thousands of miles to be with loved ones, about the Aleutian Islands campaign in Alaska during World War II. The Japanese had initially captured the Aleutians in 1942 and the campaign to recapture the islands finally ended (logistically) on May 30, 1943, with an American (and Canadian) victory.
The campaign to retake the Aleutians is sometimes referred to by historians as a “forgotten” campaign because it took place at the same time as the much more famous Guadalcanal battle. One thousand, four hundred and eighty-one American soldiers lost their lives, and another 3,416 were wounded (eight were taken prisoner) in on the Aluetians.
The logic behind a Japanese invasion and occupation of the Aleutian Islands takes one of two forms, depending on which historian you are reading. One, the Aleutians were merely a diversion, one meant to take some heat off of the Japanese fleet in the mid-Pacific. The other argument revolves around the idea that the Aleutians were a necessary bulwark for a Japanese military that was intent on establishing dominance over the Pacific Ocean and its lucrative trade routes. Not only would the Aleuts serve as a useful military base, but it would effectively sever the connection between the United States and Soviet Union, which were at that time staunch allies and enemies of the Japanese Empire.
At the time of Japanese invasion, in the early summer of 1942, most of the Aleuts were unguarded and a relatively small garrison of American forces was posted in the region. The Japanese took as much land as they could without engaging in heavy fighting with American and Canadian forces (the Soviets were too tied up at the time in Europe, and Moscow was still smarting from the whooping it took from Tokyo at the turn of the century).
The local indigenous population, which had much more autonomy than it does now, refused American help and, as a result, was rounded up by the Japanese military and shipped out to internment camps in Japan itself (read more about Japanese internment camps). The locals who managed to escape Japanese internment were rounded up by the American military and shipped off to internment camps in the lower 48. (If you are going to be neutral, you better be well-armed!)
The Battle of Attu was the deciding battle of the three-week campaign, and it was especially brutal because of the banzai attack strategy of the Japanese. Attu is the western-most and largest island of the Aleutians, and was considered to be of the utmost importance to generals on both sides of the war. As the Americans pressed harder against the Japanese forces that occupied the islands, the latter became increasingly desperate, and in a last-ditch effort to save their toehold on American territory, the Japanese launched the largest banzai attack of the entire war. The sheer violence of the attack caught the Americans by surprise and soon the Japanese had broken the former’s lines. Hand-to-hand combat broke out near the back of the line, and the Americans had to kill nearly every Japanese soldier who took part in the attack (roughly 2,400).
When it became clear the the Battle of Attu was over, the Japanese retreated from the Aleutian Islands and ceded the coveted ground to the Allies. Although there were plans to use the Aleutians to attack Japanese positions (and Japan itself), the islands were never used for such a purpose. Today, there is a mass graveyard in Anchorage for those killed in action (it had to be moved when the environment of the Aleutians began to eat away at the cemeteries built for the fallen). In 1987, the Japanese government sponsored a Peace Monument on Attu, to honor the dead on both sides of the conflict.
The American and Canadian soldiers who fought and died in the “forgotten campaign” can rest assured that their sacrifices, including the ultimate one, were not in vain. Without their willingness to fight hand-to-hand with the enemy in the confusing fog of the Aleutians, the trajectory of World War II may have been a very different one for freedom.
