Bloody but forgotten WWII battle still haunts soldiers

http://www.wnct.com/ ^ | 5/28/18

[BBell]

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — William Roy Dover's memory of the World War II battle is as sharp as it was 75 years ago, even though it's been long forgotten by most everyone else.

His first sergeant rousted him from his pup tent around 2 a.m. when word came the Japanese were attacking and had maybe even gotten behind the American front line, on a desolate, unforgiving slab of an occupied island in the North Pacific.

"He was shouting, 'Get up! Get out!'" Dover said.

Dover and most of the American soldiers rushed to an embankment on what became known as Engineer Hill, the last gasp of the Japanese during the Battle of Attu , fought 75 years ago this month on Attu Island in Alaska's Aleutian chain.

"I had two friends that were too slow to get out," the 95-year-old Alabama farmer recalled. "They both got bayonetted in their pup tents."

Joseph Sasser, then a skinny 20-year-old from Cartharge, Mississippi, also found himself perched against the berm on Engineer Hill when a captain with a rifle took up a position about 10 feet (3 meters) away.

"I noticed about after 30 minutes or so, he was awfully quiet," Sasser said. "We checked to see if he had a pulse and if he was alive, and he was not.

"We didn't even know he had been shot," said Sasser, also 95.

American forces reclaimed remote Attu Island on May 30, 1943, after a 19-day campaign that is known as World War II's forgotten battle. Much of the fighting was hand-to-hand, waged in dense fog and winds of up to 120 mph (193 kph).

The battle for the Aleutian island was one of the deadliest in the Pacific in terms of the percentage of troops killed.

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

Appreciate your comments.

I just remembered one other fact of the rescue of the wife (both were weather observers). I know that the natives took her from her home and canoed away from the Japanese. However, I don’t think they got to American lines.

If I remember correctly, she had radioed her command post/weather base about the Japanese raid and perhaps a rendevous spot has been set up because I recall that one of our PBY’s or smaller seaplanes came in under the fog and got her to safety.

Lots of incredibly brave people on our side with stories yet to be told.

[ChildOfThe60s]

bttt

[Glad2bnuts]

Roosevelt and the upper crust of DC government, knew the date of an attack on Pearl. They were also reading cables. Roosevelt was one helluva manipulator, and the press covered for him just like today.

[Alas Babylon!]

Just about every war we fight we have to learn new—and old—lessons all over again.

[ASOC]

At the Ft Richardson National Cemetery, there are currently 217 Unknown Japanese soldiers from the Battle of Kiska interred.

Also many Soviets from the Lend-Lease air ferry operations.

[Mr Radical]

bookmark 4 later

[mosesdapoet]

Had an uncle who enlisted in 1940 wound up in Alaska made it through the Kiska Attu campaign only to get killed in an accident in 45 just before being discharged. Was looking forward to having him back when a Western Union messenger arrived with the telegram informing us of his passing. Bawled my eyes out. RIP Cpl Edward Boska USA his remains was transferred to Camp Butler Illinois National Vet cemetery.

[major_gaff]

My Drill Instructor was many things, sassy not among them. ;~)

[T-Bone Texan]

Is it me or are their ground squirrels in this iconographic photo?

Foreground, to the right. 2 of ‘em.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:First_flag_on_Guam_-_1944.jpg

[T-Bone Texan]

Planting the flag on Guam under battlefield conditions:

Ground squirrels in the foreground:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:First_flag_on_Guam_-_1944.jpg

[Verginius Rufus]

My father also fought on Guam (USMC)—earned a Silver Star and a Purple Heart. When I was a kid I heard stories about Guam but in his final years he would mostly talk about the fighting on Okinawa the next year.

[the_daug]

four is what I count

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

My father being from Massachusetts, I remember the incident where 2 or 3 German spies or saboteurs sneaked ashore in New England, deploying from a mini-sub or some such, with the goal of sabotaging infrastructure and/or gathering intelligence. If I recall correctly, they were all apprehended or killed rather quickly.

The "spy-ring" comprised three Germans and an American turncoat. They were discharged by U-Boot in Frenchman's Bay near Bar Harbor, Maine. They had $50,000 in genuine U.S. currency which represented a significant investment for the hard currency strapped Dritte Reich. They caught a bus on Route 1 for Boston, and hence to New York. (If anyone asked about their accents, they were instructed to say that they were Norwegian seamen.) The local sheriff's son noticed their tracks in the snow, and he and his father searched for them. They reported it to the FBI, who took the incident seriously.

In the event, the cunning spy-ring liked new clothes, good dining and Broadway shows a lot more than sabotage and spy-craft. The turncoat American got cold feet and called a high school friend who was working for the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover's G-men rolled up the invincible Nazi Supermen in no time. (The Brits would have turned them.)

The Germans were executed after a summary court-martial, having accomplished less than nothing, and the American, who turned them in, was imprisoned and repatriated to Germany after the War.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Touching

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Attu doesn’t appear to be that much farther away.

The Japanese began building an airbase on Shemya (I've been there) about 30 mile to the east. The Americans finished the base, and it was packed with P-38's and B-24's. There were 20,000 GIs there. They bombed Honshu around the clock. The suicide rate among the GIs was quite high. There's girl behind every tree. There are no trees.

[PLMerite]

Meerkats. Photoshopped.

[PLMerite]

Another major result of the Aleutian Campaign, was the shooting down and subsequent capture in flyable condition of a Mitsubishi A6M2 Zero fighter.

[PLMerite]

I heard about Shemya back in the 1980s, and they still referred to “the girl behind every tree.”

[lapsus calami]

 

 

The Aleutian campaign was a Japanese “Faint” to draw the Americans away from Midway Attack!

 

Yeah – in that it created worry that made us have to stretch and re-deploy resources we didn’t have to spare.

 

And no.

 

Imperial Headquarters nursed a conviction that the Aleutians were being built up as a jumping off point for an alternate invasion route to Japan and thought to establish a presence in the area for an outer defense perimeter of the empire to keep watch and guard against such a move – the inability to acquire any credible intel information to confirm or debunk Allied intentions only fed their paranoia. On our part, though the shorter distances involved made it a tempting alternative invasion route, that scenario had been studied and ultimately discarded as way too rough and difficult for such an undertaking. Also in the event that Russia came in to the Pacific Theatre against the Japanese, shipping bound from the West Coast to Petropavlovsk or Vladivostok would have to go through the area. Outside of perceived humiliation of having our turf being occupied by enemy forces, we couldn’t have the possibility of Jap bases sitting right smack in the middle of a line of communications and heckling our shipping – those guys had to go, one way or the other. Imperial Headquarters suffered from the same affliction that their counterparts in Europe did – highly trained and mostly competent personnel and accompanying resources wasted on goofy strategy ideas.

 

 

[lapsus calami]

 

 

Another example of gross misuse of talent and resources. Tanaka had been leading the same battle group with the same personnel from the time it was formed in the summer of 1941, training all the time and honing their coordination & tactics – they were very good and quite dangerous – only to be utilized as armed freighters to make milk runs in support of flawed strategy decisions. Tanaka hated it as an indignity, but suffered it because orders are orders. His downfall came when he made reports about all the stupid crap going on and criticized the overall strategy – up-talking to Imperial Headquarters was a no-no. Even though he was right, that wasn’t seen as his place to be doing – he was supposed to shut up, follow the orders, do what he was told no matter what he felt personally. And consequently ended up sailing a desk until the end of the war.