Forgotten battles

More than 75 years after the fact, few Americans know that the Japanese army occupied U.S. territory during World War II. Even at the time, few Americans knew about it, even though it resulted in one of the most important American invasions of the war and one of the most costly battles for both sides.

Brian Garfield tells about it in his 1969 book The Thousand-Mile War: World War II in Alaska and the Aleutians, now mostly forgotten, like the battles themselves, but still worth reading.

The Aleutian Islands stretch so far into the Pacific that they cross the International Date Line, meaning that Alaska can be called both the most western state and the most eastern. Protecting all those islands proved an impossible task, although the severe weather, even in summer, helped. In 1942 the Japanese landed thousands of men on the islands of Kiska and Attu, viewing them as both a potential base from which to launch air attacks against the United States mainland and a means to prevent similar attacks by the U.S. against Japan. Conditions discouraged actually building much of a base on these islands, however, and the Japanese were preparing to withdraw when the military minds back in Washington finally decided to take the threat seriously and ordered an attack.

The invasion plans were something of comedy of errors. Garfield offers up the great line: "The War Department worked in mysterious ways its blunders to perform." In fact, much of this book proves humorous, as he devotes entire chapters to the dark humor of those Americans unlucky enough to be stationed in the Aleutians and ridicules generals who outfitted men for battle in the tropics, then sent them to Alaska.

The fight to reclaim these otherwise insignificant islands included, writes Garfield, "the last and longest classic daylight naval battle in the history of fleet warfare." That's a lot of qualifiers, but basically it refers to a sea battle involving just warships, not aircraft. Later he refers to the Battle of Attu as "the second most costly battle of the war in the Pacific," next to Iwo Jima. The invasion taught lessons that would prove valuable on D-Day.

As for Kiska, the bigger prize, the Japanese troops had evacuated under the cover of fog and darkness by the time the Americans invaded. The invaders found an island occupied only by a few dogs.

So why didn't this World War II campaign receive more attention? Garfield cites a couple of reasons. First, there were no Marines involved. It was the Army that invaded, and historically the Army gets less attention than the Marines.  Second, there were too many blunders. The generals and admirals preferred that it all be ignored.

Garfield is best remembered as a novelist, especially for Death Wish and Kolchak's Gold. This book proves he could write excellent military history, as well.