The Secret WWI Invasion That Nearly Changed Alaska
In 1918, Japanese troops briefly landed on Alaskan soil—a little-known incident during World War I.
At the tail end of World War I, while the world focused on the Western Front and battles in Europe, a pivotal and almost forgotten event unfolded in America’s backyard. As Russia dissolved into chaotic civil war following the Bolshevik Revolution, foreign powers took an unprecedented step: they sent troops to Siberia, hoping to influence the outcome, protect their citizens, and secure war supplies. Among the international forces was Japan, but in a move that stunned U.S. military authorities, Japanese soldiers briefly set foot in Alaska, creating a rare moment when a foreign army landed on U.S. soil in the 20th century.
The turmoil began in 1917 when Russia’s communist revolution forced the country to withdraw from WWI. Fearing that Central Powers like Germany might gain access to vast stockpiles of weapons and supplies that the United States and Allies had previously sent through the Russian Far East, the U.S., Japan, Britain, France, and Italy launched a joint intervention known as the Siberian Expedition. Their stated mission was to stabilize Siberia, rescue the Czechoslovak Legion stranded there, and safeguard Allied assets.
Japan, eager to expand its influence in Asia, committed much larger forces than its Western allies. In 1918, Tokyo dispatched roughly 70,000 troops—more than ten times the American contingent—to Vladivostok and points west. Distrust between the Americans and Japanese ran high. American commanders worried the Japanese might be using the operation as a smokescreen to conquer Russian territory.
As part of its logistical operations, Japan began seeking strategic staging areas for supplies and communication lines. That led to a request from Japanese naval officers to use Alaskan ports—specifically, places around the Aleutian Islands and the town of Nome. In August 1918, Japanese vessels docked at Unalaska, a remote but important harbor. For several days, their marines unloaded cargo, repaired ships, and even came ashore to negotiate provisions and communicate with U.S. officers stationed there.
The American ambassador to Japan, Roland Morris, raised concerns among President Woodrow Wilson’s cabinet. Though the landing was technically for non-belligerent purposes and Japan claimed it needed to protect its assets, U.S. officials feared the presence could evolve into permanent occupation, especially as Japan had tried to extend territorial control in Asia before. In American legal terms, the landings were “unauthorized,” but difficult to contest, given the necessity of close Allied cooperation and the logistical web spun by the Siberian intervention.
The episode remained shrouded in bureaucratic secrecy for decades. No shots were fired, and the Japanese soon left Alaska’s soil, but tension lingered. In diplomatic back channels, the United States issued forceful reminders that Alaska was off-limits, reinforcing its tenuous sovereignty in the far north. Japanese officers, for their part, later recalled the landing as a minor episode, but the U.S. military quietly documented it as one of the rare times foreign troops entered American territory after the Civil War.
The Siberian Expedition itself became an historical oddity—one of America’s few armed interventions in Russia, and a theater of action overshadowed by world events elsewhere. Nevertheless, the brief Japanese landing in Alaska during World War I stands out as a significant but nearly forgotten episode, one that almost no Americans today recall. It foreshadowed later strategic rivalries in the North Pacific during World War II and highlighted Alaska’s precarious status as a distant, overlooked, but geopolitically important frontier. The event remains an example of how global conflicts can bring foreign boots to even the most isolated corners of America, in ways that history textbooks seldom recount.
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