Despite such challenges, the devastation at Pearl Harbor had taught US military leaders a costly lesson about underestimating the ability of the Japanese to attack American soil – a mistake no one wished to repeat. There were few defensive forces in the Aleutians when the war began, a consequence of a multilateral agreement signed two decades earlier. Under the Washington Naval Treaty, Japan agreed to limit construction of new warships in exchange for a pledge from the United States to refrain from establishing new sea bases or fortifying existing outposts, including the Aleutians. The treaty expired in 1934, but with America mired in the Great Depression, and military spending sharply curtailed, the War Department had few resources for boosting strength anywhere, let alone on remote islands in the northern Pacific.

By 1941, the island chain was under the auspices of the Alaska Defense Command, a modest collection of forces led by Major General Simon Bolivar Buckner of the US Army. Following the strike on Pearl Harbor, Bolivar pleaded with the War Department for additional strength, and by June 1942, there were some 45,000 troops in Alaska, backed by 140 bombers and fighter planes. Buckner deployed most of these assets on the Alaskan peninsula, but 2,300 soldiers were sent to the Aleutians, where they were to defend a new Army air base on Umnak Island, as well as Dutch Harbor, a naval facility on Unalaska Island.

******

The first half of 1942 was a grim time for the Allies after a series of demoralizing defeats and setbacks across the Pacific. Buoyed by his early triumphs, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander-in-chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet, devised a plan to deliver a decisive blow to his dazed enemy using Midway, a small but strategically important US island-base north of Hawaii, as bait. Yamamoto, an avid gambler, was betting a Japanese strike on the atoll would goad his counterpart, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, into committing his remaining aircraft carriers. With the American battleship fleet crippled in the December 7 attack, the carriers were the last vestiges of US naval power in the Pacific.

As part of his Midway plan, Yamamoto detached a smaller fleet comprising two light aircraft carriers and twenty-three cruisers, destroyers, and submarines to the Aleutians to raid Dutch Harbor. Yamamoto expected a brazen attack on the lightly defended seaport and subsequent occupation of other Aleutian outposts to induce Nimitz into sending part of his fleet into the northern Pacific. That would divide and weaken the American forces at Midway and leave the US aircraft carriers even more vulnerable to Yamamoto’s massive armada.

Two weeks before the Midway operation began, codebreakers at Pearl Harbor learned the details of Yamamoto’s grand plan, allowing Nimitz to turn the tables on his adversary. He dispatched three aircraft carriers to Midway, where their early arrival would surprise the Japanese, and ordered a task force of nineteen cruisers and destroyers into the Aleutians. The clash at Midway ended in a decisive victory for the United States after dive-bombers from the USS Enterprise and USS Yorktown sank four of Yamamoto’s aircraft carriers. The rout marked the turning point of the war in the Pacific.

None of that mattered to the fleet Yamamoto had sent into to the Aleutians. On June 3, the day before the Battle of Midway began, the first Japanese carrier planes arrived over Dutch Harbor. Tipped off by intelligence intercepts, American air defenses were waiting for them and damage at the base was relatively light. The bombers returned the next day with greater success, and landing boats filled with assault troops soon churned toward American soil.

The Japanese Occupation

The thousands of Japanese who landed on the islands of Kiska and Attu found them largely unoccupied. Attu, the most westerly of the Aleutians and some 1,000 miles from the Alaska mainland, was inhabited by just a few dozen natives, while Kiska, 190 miles closer to Alaska, was equally barren, with the exception of a handful of Army personnel manning a weather station. The Japanese secured both islands with ease, marking the first occupation of American soil by foreign soldiers since the war of 1812.

Construction soon began of airstrips on each island so land-based bombers could attack American outposts in the Pacific and disrupt critical sea lanes. With an American naval blockade expected to cut off sea access, the airstrips would also be necessary for airlifting supplies into the islands. That construction, however, became painstaking, as foul weather and shortages of labor and equipment hampered meaningful progress.

With their stores fast diminishing, the occupation forces were left in a precarious position. Though the Japanese never intended to use Attu and Kiska as springboards for attacking the US mainland, they did hope to fortify each island and block the Americans from using the Aleutians as a passageway to attack Japan. In March 1943, the Japanese organized a relief effort from the sea, but after radio intercepts revealed their supply convoy steaming toward the Aleutians, a small squadron of American cruisers and destroyers interceded. Early exchanges left the outnumbered and outgunned American ships battered by their foes, and the Japanese on the cusp of victory. Their ships were low on fuel, though, and with the admiral in command wary of a possible land-based air strike on his flotilla, the action was broken off and the transports steamed away, never to return.

Resigned to their fate, the Japanese occupation forces prepared for an American attack as officials in Washington debated the merits of launching one. The sparse number of Japanese in the Aleutians was no threat to the United States, but the mere presence of occupation troops on American soil carried symbolic importance. Powerful members of the US Congress began clamoring for action, and under a drumbeat of pressure, an operation soon formed to retake the Aleutians, beginning with Attu.

Operation Landcrab

During his tenure as head of the Alaska Defense Command, Buckner had made strides in building up his ground and air strength and establishing supporting infrastructure across the sprawl of Alaska. He yearned to lead the Aleutian campaign, but his superiors considered his Alaskan forces defensive in nature and ill-suited for an offensive operation. Instead, a newly formed division still training in California was picked to lead the assault.

The 7^th Infantry Division was formed in 1942. It was later converted to a motorized unit, and fitted with tanks and armored vehicles in preparation for fighting General Erwin Rommel’s panzers in the blistering climate of North Africa. After training in the desert for months, the division was reassigned to the Alaskan mission in early 1943 and converted once again, this time into a light amphibious force. The division commander, Major General Albert E. Brown, put the division through rigorous exercises on the California coast, practicing shore landings under the tutelage of the Marine Corps. Though the training was exhaustive, there was little in California to resemble the challenging climate and other extreme environmental conditions the men would face in the Aleutians.

The operation to re-take Attu began in May 1943, led by Vice Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid. With a formidable array of naval, air, and ground forces under his command, Kinkaid anticipated a swift victory. Against a modest number of occupation troops on Attu, the Americans would have an entire infantry division, backed by an aircraft carrier, nine battleships and cruisers, and nineteen destroyers.

Poor weather delayed the initial landings, but an impatient Kinkaid ordered the troops ashore on May 11. His naval guns were unleashed, softening up the enemy fortifications, and when the bombardment lifted, lead assault troops from the 7^th Division trudged onto the beaches. They met little resistance. With few coastal and antiaircraft guns, the Japanese commander, Colonel Yasuyo Yamazaki, had left the shoreline completely unguarded. His 2,400 men were entrenched in the mountainous high ground and snow-filled ridges, awaiting the American advance.

The ease of the initial landings raised hopes the island would fall in a matter of days, but once Brown’s infantry began moving off the beaches and further inland, they were slowed by some of the most inhospitable terrain in the Pacific Theater. Attu was thirty-five miles long and fifteen miles wide, with interior mountain ranges that sloped down into treeless lowlands covered by muskeg tundra. The bog-like ground was topped with a hard crust that would crack under heavy pressure and sink men or vehicles into waist-deep water. Infantry could advance on foot, but vehicles were out of the question, hindering the flow of supplies the farther the men marched away from the beaches. The only solution was to hand-carry crates of ammunition and rations for miles – a slow and cumbersome process that siphoned off available manpower from frontline forces.

The thick fog also limited air operations, leaving the invasion force with little close-in air support. Worse yet, the men were inadequately clothed, as heavy weather gear was largely unavailable, a result of early-war expectations that all operations in the Pacific Theater would be in the tropics. Lacking cold weather uniforms, the 7^th Division men suffered through the frigid and rain-soaked conditions on Attu while attired in light field jackets and leather boots instead of parkas and waterproof footwear.

Change of Command

From his island command post, Brown moved quickly to rectify whatever was slowing his men. With his lead forces blocked by Japanese defenders entrenched across the ridges, he ordered his reserves to land and reinforce those on the front lines. He also directed his engineers to build a road network that would facilitate the movement of supplies off the beaches, advising them to land ample supplies of material and road-building equipment.

Brown attempted to keep his superior, Admiral Kinkaid, apprised of the challenging dynamics, but shore-to-ship radio communications were spotty, and when Brown sent a detailed report by courier to the flagship, the report was lost after the aircraft carrying it crashed into the sea. That left Kinkaid blind to what was unfolding on Attu, and given the delays, doubts began swirling about Brown’s abilities. When Kincaid learned of Brown’s engineering requests and the landing of enough heavy equipment and supplies to last for months, he became exasperated with his ground commander, surmising he had shifted into a defensive posture and was simply fortifying his beachheads. On May 16, Kincaid took the extraordinary step of relieving Brown, replacing him with Major General Eugene Landrum of the Alaska Defense Command.

Once Landrum arrived on the island, it took little time to understand the challenges afoot. He continued with the measures Brown had ordered, and ground forces began making progress against their outnumbered foes. With no hope of reinforcement or evacuation, Yamazaki decided his only course of action was to attack the American lines with his remaining 800 men. In the early morning hours of May 29, he ordered his wounded to take their own lives, then drove his able-bodied men forward in silence, shrouded in darkness and fog. Their target was an American-held position known as Engineer Hill, where a battery of 105mm artillery guns had been placed. Yamazaki intended to seize the artillery and turn it on the American supply depots scattered across the beaches, clearing a path for his remaining men to capture whatever food and weapons they could carry into the hills and prolong the final outcome.

After subduing a handful of sentries, the men charged into the American lines with bayonet-tipped rifles and screams of banzai. There was little resistance, as most of the Americans had been ordered to a rear area where a field kitchen was offering hot meals. The Japanese poured through a gaping hole in the line and soon reached a field hospital, clearly marked with red crosses. Rampaging through it, the Japanese killed the unarmed medical personnel and bayoneted the wounded men inside.

Atop the hill, a scratch force prepared for the onslaught, with engineers, cooks, and clerks shouldering rifles to bolster the main defensive line. The dogged, outnumbered defenders pushed the Japanese back, forcing a retreat to the base of the hill. Yamazaki rallied his men for another charge, but by that time the hilltop had been reinforced and the Japanese were repulsed again. Yamazaki was killed, and the surviving Japanese turned to bushido, the ancient warrior code that deemed defeat and surrender greater dishonors than death. Each man took his own life, leaving few survivors.

Aftermath

The clash on Attu was dwarfed by later operations on Saipan, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and elsewhere, but the ratio of US casualties to Japanese defenders made Attu one of the costliest battles in the Pacific Theater. The island was held by just 2,400 Japanese, but nearly 600 American soldiers were killed in the fighting and another 1,200 wounded. More than 2,000 others suffered non-battle injuries, mostly exposure from the frigid climate. With seventy-one Americans killed for every 100 Japanese defenders on Attu, only on Iwo Jima did US forces suffer greater losses proportional to the number of troops engaged. For the Japanese, all but twenty-eight men died on Attu.

Given the struggles on Attu, and expecting substantially more defenders on Kiska, planners doubled the ground strength for the next operation, assembling more than 40,000 American and Canadian troops for the invasion despite the island’s diminutive size. There would also be far more intensive naval bombardments and air strikes than what were used against the Japanese on Attu.

On August 15, thousands of troops began streaming ashore, properly attired this time in heavy winter coats and arctic shoes. As with Attu, there was no resistance on the beaches, but the greater surprise came after lead units pushed into the mountainous interior and discovered the 5,000-man garrison had evacuated the island. The men had slipped away weeks earlier, undetected by American intelligence and reconnaissance.

Though their absence was an embarrassment to planners, it was a relief to the men who had heard such grim tales of the fighting on Attu. With the Aleutians now free of Japanese occupiers, Allied forces in Alaska were reduced in the months ahead and routed to the South and Central Pacific, where new offensives in New Guinea and the Marshall Islands were taking center stage. Attu was an invaluable lesson for US planners, though, as the skill and fanatic devotion of Japanese defenders there foretold the future of clashes across the Pacific. Indeed, unyielding Imperial Army forces clinging to their warrior code would fight to the bitter end on island after island.