Then, after several days of scouring the island, they discovered that the Japanese had evacuated the entire garrison several weeks earlier, under cover of fog. The Japanese troops, greatly outnumbered, had withdrawn to high ground rather than contest the initial landings. Despite nationwide anger, American war planners at first paid relatively little attention to the Japanese garrisons at Attu and Kiska, as they were still reeling from the attack on Pearl Harbor and in the process of building up forces in the South Pacific and preparing for war in Europe.


Sources: A Soldier's Flag, Interrogations of Japanese Officials, Nihon Kaigun, Wikipedia. Within two days, U.S. forces secured the island and the Having learned bitter lessons at Attu, American commanders made certain that their soldiers had better equipment and proper clothing for the assault on Kiska, code-named Operation Cottage, where they expected to encounter several times as many Japanese troops as they’d faced on Attu. It has been thought that the object of the Japanese foray into the Aleutians was to divert U.S. forces from the enemy’s focus of effort at Midway. Note heavy arctic battle clothing (80-G-50232). To fuel Japan’s perception that it was threatened from the U.S. Northwest, American planes in the Aleutians conducted occasional bombing raids against Japan’s Kuril Islands, which lie between Japan and Alaska.Two years after the Battle of the Aleutian Islands, Japan formally surrendered to the Allies on September 2, 1945, effectively ending World War II.Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present.The Battle of Midway was an epic clash between the U.S. Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy that played out six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Aleutian Islands are a chain of high mountains rising our of the North Pacific between Alaska and Siberia. The U.S. Navy’s decisive victory in the air-sea battle (June 3-6, 1942) and its successful defense of the major base located at The World War II Battle of Guadalcanal was the first major offensive and a decisive victory for the Allies in the Pacific theater. In addition to running low on fuel and ammunition, the Japanese reportedly feared the arrival of U.S. bombers. The combined U.S.–Canadian force that landed on Kiska on 15 August found the island unoccupied.

Islets pop out of the water and then mysteriously vanish again. All Rights Reserved. It’s also possible the Japanese believed that holding the two islands could prevent the U.S. from any attempt to invade Japan’s home islands by way of the Aleutian chain.Americans were shocked that Japanese troops had taken over any U.S. soil, no matter how remote or barren.
But by January 1943, U.S. Army forces in the Alaska Command had grown to 94,000 soldiers, with several bases recently constructed on other Aleutian Islands. Most of the Aleutian Islands belong to the U.S. state of Alaska, but some belong to the Russian federal subject of Kamchatka Krai. On April 1, 1945—Easter Sunday—the Navy’s Fifth Fleet and more than 180,000 U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps troops descended on the Pacific island of Okinawa On June 15, 1944, during the Pacific Campaign of World War II (1939-45), U.S. Marines stormed the beaches of the strategically significant Japanese island of Saipan, with a goal of gaining a crucial air base from which the U.S. could launch its new long-range B-29 bombers On September 15, 1944, U.S. Marines fighting in World War II (1939-45) landed on Peleliu, one of the Palau Islands of the western Pacific. Volcanoes blow rings of steam. In 1942, after the Japanese took Attu, the island’s population of some 40 Aleuts were taken prisoner.Like the other volcanic islands in the Aleutians, Attu and Kiska appeared to have little military or strategic value because of their barren, mountainous terrain and harsh weather, infamous for its sudden dense fogs, high winds, rains and frequent snow.


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