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un mr tiumoia mvrr, Mrmy engineers relocated tram traces ana DUilt me new unageTwentv-five years ago on May 11U.S. troops stormed ashore at AttuEDITOR'S NOTE Georg NMeyers, sports editor of the Seattle Times, was a Gl-ser-geant correspondent for Yank, the Army weekly, when U.S. troops stormed ashore on the Aleutian Island of Attu. May 11. 194.1 to fight the only land battle of World War M on American soil On this 25th anniversary.he tells of the strange and hellish 19 day struggle that resultedin virtual annihilation of the 2.649-man Japanese force and loss of 500 American livesBy GEORG N. MEYERSWritten for The AssociatedPressSEATTLE, Wash iAPi -Twenty-five years ago today, the only land battle of World War II fought on American soil began —four days late.D-Day was May 7. 1943/ rThe troops were ready, though scarcely impatient They huddled in ships lying off Attu.the last misshapen blob in thenecklace of ugly islands stretching from Alaska's mainland almost to the Soviet Union But the fog was impenetrable Four davs the men waited«rThen, when the troops did go over the side into the bobbing landing boats, the weather was worse than everIt was a strange, disturbing sight Scrambling down the nets were tanned young men, trousers exquisitely creased, fresh from desert warfare training at Ft Ord, Calif —the 7th InfantryDivisionAttu is rock, reef and tundra, 17 miles bv 40 It is so close towAsia that only an artificial zig inthe international date line keepsit in the same day with San Francisco. Kain and the storms leave it eternally wet and nustvw rEven in May. ice crusts themponds at nightWhat brought that ill-equipped force to the remotest tip ofNorth America was a Japanese frustration Eleven months earlier. in a feint toward Alaska, Japanese planes bombed Dutch Harbor They were driven off by plant's from a secret American base at Cold Hay and Umnak Japanese troopships heading for the Alaska mainland turned back They unloaded at KiskaTime_ SGAHflO1964 U avid i« — n«4 ja vear of is-wthe Aleutian unoppost-dand Attu It took nearlyland hopping inchain—includinglandings at Adak and Amchitka —to mount the task of wresting Attu. part of the then Territory of Alaska, from enemy occupationIn the fog of May 11. 1943. nu m e r o u s amphibious landing boats lost their escorts and hit the wrong beach For the Yanks, there really was no right beach.Attu was an eerie spectacleFog swirled at the snowline on the sharply rising crags There.invisible, hunched the Japanese,with machine guns mortars and riflesPainstakingly, on the mossy bog. artillerymen set up 105mm howitzers, pounding shills blindly into the mountainsides Itwas like a Matthew Brads photograph of the Civil War Minutes after the first wave dug itself into the tundra, whitefaced (II's clustered, peering atan object on the moist earth It was a hand, all that remained of the first American struck bs a mortar shell from the mountain Young men who. days before, were laughing over a beer in the Ft Ord PX knew there was awar on.As wars go. it was a vest-pocket affair It lasted 19 days For 500 Yanks, history never” w ;will record a bigger war They died there Eleven hundred were wounded official military records, were 2.649 Japanese, onmoreBvwthereAttu Of those. 2.638 died,**'including their commander. Col, Yasuhiro Yamazuki Elevenwere taken prisoner The night before the landing, a handsome young captain from Ladysmith, Wis , enthralled an audience with hilarious tales ofwar maneuvers in Louisiana He was Regular Army, the type who adored military tactics andwlogic and was confident that they would make him indesUjuc•• tible. *On the morning of the invasion, a colonel jablx-d a tuyo-r at a relief map. at a rise cawed Holtz Pass * At 2 o'clock this afternoon ’ he said, I want mvmJeep right here.”Yard by yard, ravine by ra vine, crag by crag, the GI's evicted the Japanese from the snow crested skyline.wAt noon on the seventh day.they reached the summit ofHoltz Pass. No jeep ever mfcde it there. Neither did the colonel. He lay in a hospital ship /|t-shore.By then, the sleek desert troops from California had been joined by scruffy soldiers of the 4th Division, veterans of mortBis of battling mud, ram and w«ttd at other Aleutian outposts.The support troops slogged ashore in homely rubber shoe-packs Hundreds of the early invaders already were casualties, crippled with trenehfoot, victims of the soggy mass which Jije mud and tundra made of th^ir sharp-looking leather cornetboots.Day after day, subsisting on cold C rations, the Yanksdragged artillery pieces higher the slushy slopes, blazed 0Way with rifle fire, crawled InIrith bayonets and dug the Jad-from their tunnels, foxholnsISPORT SHORTS By THE ASSOCIATED PRESSTORONTO lt;APi — Al Sparks f Winnipeg retained his Canadian light heavyweight boxing title by outpointed Frankie Bullard of Toronto in a 12-rounder Wednesday night.BOSTON i AIM - The BostonCeltics, who regained the National Basketball Association championship this year, were congratulated Wednesday in the Massachusetts House by a roll call vote of 152-0and machmegun nests There came a night when all the surviving Japanese were squeezed into a pocket in a cove called Chichagof Harbor There Col Yama/uki posted an historic order: ‘‘We will attack and annihilate the United States forces.”This was launched the first of the suicidal “banzi charges” which later in the war became standard desperation tactics by tbe Japanese.In the foggy predawn. Japanese streamed from their hideaway. shooting and screaming, They swept through the Yanks' forward bicouac. firing wildlyinto tents, jabbing them withbayonets When dawn broke, the war of Attu was over.Japanese who had not fallen to American fire had clasped grenades to their chests and pulled the pin Among the identifiable bodies in that dreadful panorama was that of Col Yamazuki Another was the indestructible captain from Ladysmith Wis.Three months later, 30.000 American and Canadian troops stormed ashore at Kiska The only casualties were invaders who, in the fog. mistook each other for Japanese.But the* Japanese — 5.000 of them—were gone Under cover of fog, they had sneaked away.North America was free of its only foreign invaders in a centuryToday Attu is the site of a Coast Guard Navigational Station The cloud-shrouded battlefield is strewn with the rusted debris of a long-ago war On a ridge overlooking the foggy asea is the grave of Col Yamazuki marked by a plaque erected four years ago by mourners from Japan Only the falling-down iron huts decaying shell-casings and rotted boots memorialize the Yanks who fell there.Please Follow Smokey’swhichgatiorsamebondsunusuerallyweral t Thesvndilt;wvine .ThereceivBlytbciatesChaattcWH A I^o today der \ who ' side I Bill La.,chartat aB.C..Th.Bumwasa ho: his b fromInday.custtinatiHalt;ffitheJU Rasn ficial for n ate the s larat Set ler’s dates legisl Ed city crat senal Re Fairlmg I Hous for r trictLSIalllt;jiternfundUS.andEcoificeAlasThyearAlasProgft he pcct,surnmissIfosp• BaSocuWaslsuppm-kniPREVENT FOREST FIRES!’■ In 1etfth( mT
Newspaper Details
Daily Sitka Sentinel
Sitka, Alaska, US
Fri, May 10, 1968
Page 2
Full Page
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USA 21 Jun 2019
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