Forgotten history: The Battle of Kiska, 1943

[seamusTX]

In June 1942, Japanese forces took the island of Kiska in the Aleutian chain, part of the territory of Alaska, 1,400 miles west of Anchorage. The enemy built a hardened base there manned by 5,200 men.

On August 15, 1943, a massive force of 34,426 American and Canadian troops backed by heavy naval and air support made an amphibious landing on Kiska. 200 Allied troops were killed by booby-traps, "friendly" fire, or accidents.

The Japanese had withdrawn weeks earlier, after the Allies retook the island of Attu.

The Allies established a base on Kiska for a short time, then abandoned it.

Today it is the best-preserved WW II battle site, in one of the most inaccessible places on earth.


http://www.adn.com/2010/05/29/1299993/f ... a-one.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



- Jim

[pbwalker]

Thanks for sharing this! Far too often, people forget that there were several actual acts of aggression on US soil . Along with the explosive balloons, Santa Barbara, and Oregon, there were quite a few!

[seamusTX]

In view of the recent resurgence of interest in WW II ...

- Jim

[MoJo]

My first job after college was at the local newspaper. I became friendly with one of the editors who had fought in the Aleutian campaign and later the Battle of the Bulge. Two campaigns against two of our three enemies in WWII and both of them in freezing cold. How did he get so lucky?

[surprise_i'm_armed]

Thanks for sharing this! Far too often, people forget that there were several actual acts of aggression on US soil . Along with the explosive balloons, Santa Barbara, and Oregon, there were quite a few!

The Japanese sent explosive balloons across the Pacific, hoping to terrorize
the West Coast US population. The newspapers cooperated with the Feds in
keeping this quiet. After sending them over for a while, and never seeing any
news about them, the Japanese eventually stopped sending them.

Unfortunately, there was a Christian family out on a picnic, who found one of these,
and not knowing what it was - detonated it, killing multiple people.

Other acts of aggression close to home were the sinking of many vessels off the
Atlantic coast. The U-boat commanders would lurk offshore and could easily see
the silhouettes of the American vessels since the US coastline was ablaze with lights.

There were occasions where Americans on beaches watched American vessels sunk
by U-boats.

The U-boats made life miserable for Allied shipping until around mid-1943, when we
perfected sonar/radar, or both.

************************************************************************************************
With regard to Alaska, the US went on a massive roadbuilding campaign that was
performed primarily with black men from the Southern US. They were not used to the
cold, but carved a very long road from the Alaskan wilderness.

SIA

[seamusTX]

The war was nearly over by that point. It was one of the last gasps.

viewtopic.php?f=83&t=24691&hilit=+japanese+balloon" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

- Jim

[philip964]

When I was a child WW2 was always far away past history. After all they didn't have TV then and movies were in Black and White. You would always ask "what did you do in the war daddy". Dad would not want to talk about it. People didn't buy German or Japanese cars and you thought it was odd.

Then one day I realized that the war ended only five years before I was born. (yeah I'm a baby boomer) and that today it would be like the war had ended in 2006. Not really that far away. It put things into a totally different perspective.

Since then the war has captured my imagination, not age old history but, some thing much closer. Something much more complex than the John Wayne movies I saw as a child on TV.

As we approach the tenth anniversary of 9/11, the clarity of our effort in WW2 seem so much more positive, than what has happened since 9/11.
WW2 lasted only four years, and so much was done. Here in the tenth year of the "war on terror", I worry that we are no further ahead than we were, when it started, and the risks for the future seem worse than they were ten years ago.

Drop by the 9/11 site in New York some time an you will see what I mean. There isn't even a decent memorial there yet after all this time. Yeah I know there is one planned, but ...

[OldCannon]

I kind of "lived" at Shemya island (two weeks every six weeks) during my military job, at least while I wasn't in flight (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_Ball" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;). There are/were many fortified emplacements around the island, although no existing equipment like AA guns. There are several warnings along the beach though to be aware of unexploded ordinance.

[jimlongley]

I was an Army brat, born at the end of the war into a family with a long military tradition. At one point in my early teenage years, with the entire family gathered for an occaasion at my grandfather's house on Cape Cod, the phone rang and the caller asked for Colonel Longley, and we had to ask which one, as there were three present.

Interesting to me, in retrospect, is that I learned a great deal about military history, including my ancestors' involvement in it, from my Brigadier General grandfather, on my mother's side.

My father talked, jokingly, about his involvement in the Army before WWII, when he was commisioned and sent off to England as an advisor the the RAF, and took all of his uniforms and no civvies with him, and was not allowed to wear them as the US was not supposed to be doing what he was doing. It was late afternoon on Sunday December 7th, 1941 when his "batman", a teenage private who was killed a few years later on the beaches of Normandy, came charging in to his apartment yelling "Leftenant Longley, Leftenant Longley, they've bombed Pearl Harbor" and although he had actually lived in Hawaii as a child, he had to not only asked who "they" was that had done the bombing, but where in the world was Pearl Harbor. The next day he was ordered into uniform and never wore civilian clothes again until 1945.

My father held several joint patents in radio and his job, in England, was to optimize the infant RADAR system, which was not working too well, and bring back results of experiments with various frequencies and stuff, to the Pentagon. He phoned in some reports from a telephone kiosk near one facility and noted that the kiosk was leaning over just a little and that it tilted a little more each day. One day he arrived to find the bomb squad had cordoned off the block so that they could disarm the dud bomb that had hit right behind the kiosk and tunneled underneath it.

In that day and age, for most of the rest of the war he flew back and forth across the Atlantic, in a time when even Generals took ships, and all of his uniforms were tailored to cover his shoulder holster and .357 Magnum.

Those were the only things he ever talked about, despite that he eventually retired from the US Air Force, anything else I had to learn from his father in law, my Brig. Gen. grandpappy. My father flew missions over enemy territory testing airborne radar and radio control airplanes, and met and knew Joseph Kennedy before his fateful flight, but never a mention from him, although he did wear ribbons that my curiosity found were for being in air combat.

And my grandpappy knew, and taught me, quite a lot about the Alaskan invasion, so that when it came time, in school, for us to be taught about the war, and the teacher made the flat statement that the US was never invaded by enemy troops in WWII, I told her she was wrong, which made me even more unpopular with her.

[Oldgringo]

The ALCAN Highway was built by whom?

[seamusTX]

The ALCAN highway was built under the auspices of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Most of the labor was provided by enlisted men, many of whom were in segregated "colored" regiments, as things were done at that time.

http://web.mst.edu/~rogersda/umrcourses ... evised.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

This was one of the great efforts of WW II, also somewhat forgotten now. The U.S. did not have the logistical capability to defend Alaska from a determined attack before WW II. Airlift capability was primitive, and the weather in that part of the world made land and sea efforts excruciating.

- Jim

[Oldgringo]

The ALCAN highway was built under the auspices of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Most of the labor was provided by enlisted men, many of whom were in segregated "colored" regiments, as things were done at that time.

http://web.mst.edu/~rogersda/umrcourses ... evised.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

This was one of the great efforts of WW II, also somewhat forgotten now. The U.S. did not have the logistical capability to defend Alaska from a determined attack before WW II. Airlift capability was primitive, and the weather in that part of the world made land and sea efforts excruciating.

- Jim

We gave a winner, give this man a cigar! The word I was looking for was "segregated".

[seamusTX]

Colored units mostly provided unarmed labor before the end of WW II. Cf. Port Chicago disaster.

However, there is another largely unknown story involving armed colored or Negro regiments from the end of the War Between the States until WW I.

After that time, attitudes in the military hierarchy hardened and the role of black combat troops was limited.

- Jim

[The Annoyed Man]

Colored units mostly provided unarmed labor before the end of WW II. Cf. Port Chicago disaster.

However, there is another largely unknown story involving armed colored or Negro regiments from the end of the War Between the States until WW I.

After that time, attitudes in the military hierarchy hardened and the role of black combat troops was limited.

- Jim

I just finished reading "Crack! and Thump - with a Combat Infantry Officer in World War II" by Captain Charles Scheffel. In it, he describes how a black artillery battalion firing the 155 Long Toms saved his infantry company from certain annihilation under a German armored attack. When he discovered it was a black unit that had saved him and his men, he said he gave up his Oklahoma-born prejudices on the spot and asked to be introduced to the men who had fired those guns. While it is true that these units were segregated and commanded or overseen by white officers - perhaps the Tuskegee Airmen being the most famous - it was their excellence at whatever they dedicated themselves to which eventually overcame whatever institutional racism had existed in the military up until then, and caused the military to have a desegregationist influence on the post-war culture.

[seamusTX]

WW II was a leveling force, to the extent that men (and a very few women) from different backgrounds were forced to work together, in many cases at risk of their lives and in close quarters.

Certainly before then young men from different parts of the country likely would not have had contact with one another, or only in passing as tourists.

Racial integration still was not easy. Pres. Truman literally dictated racial integration of the armed services by executive order in 1948. The decision was not immediately welcomed in all quarters.

http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlesto ... chronology" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

- Jim