Short Cut to Tokyo the Battle for the Aleutians

Ctft For JIM HUDELSON Grateful acknowledgment is made to The Crcnvell-Collier Publishing Company for permission to reprint certain sections of this book, which first appeared in Colliers Magazine. TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I The Invasion That Failed i II Our Unknown Front 31 III Mission Over Kiska 44 IV Three Stories 55 V Landbridge 88 VI Mummies, Volcanoes, Sea-Otters 102 VII They Came to Attu 1 22 VIII We Even Had a Tree ... 130 IX A Postscript 137 Cut . Jke MtVadion, Jkai halted History can turn on a very small hinge. The history of Alaska, and perhaps the history of the American continent, swung last June on a little handful of land based fighter-planes and bombers, appearing out of nowhere in the swirling Aleutian fog. . . . For the Japs were planning more than the capture o Dutch Harbor, on that fateful third of June. There is little doubt now that their grandiose scheme envisioned an actual assault, by way of Alaska, on our Pacific north west. The Japs wanted and, make no mistake about it, they still want to set foot on United States soil some day. It is more than a matter of military strategy it is an emotional desire, a deep-seated and fanatic ambition that colors all their national thinking. And our appar ently undefended Aleutians, which had served in pre historic times as a land-bridge for invading hordes from Asia, offered once again a logical avenue of invasion for these modern barbarians striking at our shores. It was to be part of a full-scale offensive in the Pacific. The Japs had devised a two-pronged attack a sort of one-two punch, a left jab at the Aleutians and a right cross to Midway. The blow in the north would fall first on Dutch Harbor. The Japs knewthey had not been SHORT CUT TO TOKYO poaching in the Aleutians all these years for nothing that our only shipping-route to Nome, to Bethel, to the whole west coast of Alaska, was through narrow Unimak Pass, between Unimak and Unalaska Islands. By taking Dutch Harbor, which dominated the pass, they could effectively bottle up half of Alaska. They could drive a thousand-mile wedge between the United States and Russia, thus cutting off any possible sea-lane for shipping supplies to Siberia, and at the same time protecting their own right flank from attack in the event of a Siberian offensive. Last but not least, they could operate against Midway and die Hawaiian Archipelago, as well as against the Gulf of Alaska to the east. It looked easy absurdly easy. They had been told that Dutch Harbor was our only fortified position in the whole thousand-mile Aleutian chain. The base was still partly under construction, garrisoned at the time by not more than a couple of regiments of ill-equipped and winter-weary troops and a few gallant Marines, de fended by a meager battery of guns After knocking this ripe plum from the tree, they were confident they could seize the Pribilofs to the north, attempt a mass landing on the Seward Peninsula and a penetra tion into the heart of Alaska. Or they could pick off Kodiak and then Sitka and Ketchikan and from Alaskas southeastern tip it was only six hundred miles, 1 L if u., mi