During World War II, Japan Actually Invaded America

During World War II, Japan Actually Invaded America


By Sebastien Roblin, The National Interest


A Feint to the North




The Battle of Dutch Harbor





Invasion of the Aleutians


More than 1,400 Japanese infantry would land on Attu, the easternmost island of the archipelago. They rounded up the forty-five native Aleuts living on the island, their school teacher, killed her husband and sent the rest to internment camps in Japan where half would die before the end of the war. The Attu garrison was actually withdrawn briefly in August, a couple of months, then a larger force of nearly 3,000 troops was deployed there in October, where they set about building an airstrip.

Kiska Island, 200 miles southeast of Attu, had a weather station manned by a dozen navy personnel and their dog. A 500-man Japanese Special Naval Landing Force detachment killed or captured all but the chief petty officer, who eluded capture for fifty days on a diet of grass and worms before turning himself in. Over subsequent months, the garrison at Kiska would swell in number to more than 5,000 strong, and erect extensive fortifications and facilities, many of them underground for protection from bombing. Dozens of A6M2-N ‘Rufe’ fighters—floatplane variants of the Zero—were stationed there for air cover, while six H6K flying boats flew on anti-submarine and -shipping patrols.

The Japanese invasion led the U.S. military to forcibly evacuate more than 800 Aleut natives remaining on the other Aleutian islands to an internment camp in Juneau, Alaska. There they were housed in such deplorable conditions that more than a 118 died before the end of World War II, and many were pressed into uncompensated forced labor schemes. More than forty years later, Congress would recognize the injustice that had been done to the Aleuts by paying reparations to survivors through the 1988 Aleut Restitution Act.

Arctic Air War

American aircraft, warships and submarines soon descended on the Japanese troop transports and supply convoys supporting the garrisons at Attu and Kiska. On July 5, 1942 the submarine USS Grunion encountered three Japanese destroyers off of Kiska Island. She managed to torpedo all three, causing one to sink with 200 hands on board, then managed to dodge between two torpedoes fired in response and make her escape.

American air power reaped an even heavier toll. Over the following year, U.S. bombers and maritime patrol planes sank a destroyer, an oiler, at least five transports and a submarine in Kiska Harbor alone. However, American air raids increasingly were directed at the island garrisons themselves.

U.S. B-17 and B-24 strategic bombers began relentlessly hammering Kiska and Attu with bombs, flying a 1,200 mile circuit from Umnak island, braving anti-aircraft fire and enemy fighters.

U.S. troops also landed on nearby Adak island, 240 miles east of Kiska, and set up an airbase there to better harass the Japanese garrisons, allowing shorter-range P-38 and P-39 fighters to join in operations. A low-altitude raid staged from Adak on September 14, 1942 sank two ships, inflicted 200 casualties, and destroyed twelve floatplane fighters. The PBY Catalina seaplanes of the U.S. Navy’s Patrol Wing 4 were also impressed in the bombardment mission. The lumbering patrol planes would profit from the persistent fog for protection, ducking down through the clouds to unload their bombs before high-tailing for home, often holed up by enemy flak.

But terrible Aleutian weather, including sudden blasts of wind known as williwaws, would always pose a greater threat than flak or fighters. Out of seventy-two aircraft lost by the 11th Air Force in the second half of 1942, all but nine were due to environmental hazards.

Naval Gun Duel At Komandorski Straits

Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy was determined to set up an effective blockade of the Japanese islands. A force composed of the cruiser Salt Lake City and light cruiser Richmond, backed up by four destroyers, under RADM Charles McMorris set out to intercept one of the Japanese convoys. It made radar contact at 8 AM on March 27, 1943—not realizing that the Japanese convoy boasted twice the number of escorting cruisers.

As both sides could not call upon or carrier- or land-based warplanes, they fought one of the few long-range naval gunnery duels of World War II, exchanging hundreds of 8- and 6-inch shells over ranges as high as twelve miles—including 800 8-inch shells from the Salt Lake City alone. The American destroyers and one of the Japanese cruisers also darted closer to launch torpedoes, though none of them hit.

In the end, the American ships inflicted fourteen casualties on the Japanese cruiser Nachi, but the Salt Lake City was nearly crippled with the loss of seven sailors after being struck in succession by six 8-inch shells from the Japanese heavy cruiser Maya. The weaker American force disengaged at noon under the cover of a smoke screen, while the Japanese also withdrew, fearing the arrival of U.S. air support.

As a consequence of the inconclusive skirmish, the Japanese Navy ceased sending surface ships to resupply the garrisons on Kiska and Attu, and switched to submarine-only deliveries. This drastically curtailed the supply situation on the Japanese-held islands, and the garrisons began to suffer from low morale and malnutrition.

By mid-1943, the fate of Japan’s Alaskan outpost was sealed. As the blockade and bombardment further intensified, the stage was set for Allied amphibious landings that would finally eject Japanese troops from U.S. soil. The landing on Attu in May 1943 would face three weeks of desperate fighting that culminated in a terrifying, desperate last act of resistance. And the joint American-Canadian assault on Kiska Island three months later would conclude in one of the most embarrassing surprises of the war.


Image: Salt Lake City in action during the battle.​

This piece was originally published by The National Interest

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