The Forgotten Japanese Horror of the Aleutians
During World War II, a Japanese invasion brought terror to Alaska’s remote Aleutian Islands—a little-known chapter in US history.
Most Americans are familiar with the main theatres of World War II: Europe, the Pacific, Africa. But far fewer know that Japanese forces actually invaded and held territory on US soil. In June 1942, at the same moment as the infamous Battle of Midway, Japanese troops landed on the Aleutian Islands of Attu and Kiska, two rocky, windswept outcrops off the coast of Alaska. For over a year, these remote islands were the site of occupation, combat, and civilian suffering—a chapter virtually forgotten outside of Alaska.
At that time, the Aleutian Islands were sparsely populated, mostly by indigenous Unangan people (often called Aleuts), who maintained subsistence lifestyles shaped by millennia of adaptation to the harsh subarctic environment. When Japan bombed the Dutch Harbor military outpost on Unalaska Island on June 3 and 4, 1942, it was mostly seen as a feint to draw US attention away from Midway. But the Japanese military had a bold second phase to their plan: taking Attu and Kiska, which they occupied on June 6 and 7. Suddenly, US territory was under enemy control for the first time since the War of 1812.
For the Aleut and mixed-race communities on Attu, the invasion brought disaster. Most of the island’s residents, 42 in total, were captured by Japanese forces. They—along with about 16 American civilians from Kiska—were taken as prisoners to Japan, where many suffered from malnutrition, exposure, and disease, and nearly half died before the war’s end. The remaining Unangan residents from other nearby islands, fearful of Japanese attack, were rounded up by the American government and evacuated to camps in southeast Alaska. There, tragic neglect, poor sanitation, and disease killed around a tenth of the internees. Their abandoned villages were plundered and left to rot.
The occupation itself transformed Attu and Kiska into battlefields and strategic outposts. Japanese troops fortified the islands, enduring months of isolation, misery, and American bombing raids. When US troops finally retook Attu in May 1943, the ensuing fight proved one of the bloodiest in the Pacific. In just three weeks, nearly 2,400 Japanese soldiers died, most in a final suicidal charge, while over 500 Americans lost their lives—the only US battle of World War II fought on incorporated American soil. Kiska, retaken soon after, was found deserted, as the Japanese cleverly evacuated under cover of fog.
Despite its significance, the Aleutian campaign is often overshadowed in American classrooms and film reels. For the Unangan, the war brought not only the trauma of invasion but also the devastating disruption of their way of life by both Japanese and US policies. Their forced evacuation and internment remained largely unacknowledged by the federal government for decades. It was not until 1988 that Congress formally apologized and granted restitution to surviving Aleut evacuees.
Today, the scattered remains of military fortifications dot the windswept tundra of the Aleutians, and Attu itself stands uninhabited, a stark monument to a forgotten front of World War II. Few Americans are aware that the country was invaded and occupied during the global conflict—and that civilians, especially Alaska Natives, paid a heavy price for that brief but traumatic chapter of US history.
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