Thursday, November 4, 1943. Island hopping.

 A seaplane tender in Aleutian waters trains a 40mm battery on an unidentified aircraft, November 4, 1943.

The U.S. War Department concluded that attacking Japan from mainland China was impracticable.  Therefore, the island strategy was solidly recommended.

An uprising broke out at the Szebnie concentration camp in Poland following the execution of over 1,000 of its prisoners. The SS rapidly suppressed it and the inmates are shipped to Auschwitz.

The Red Army broke out of its Dniepr bridgeheads.

A newly arrived Japanese Imperial Navy task force consisting of ten cruisers and ten destroyers is spotted by the U.S. Navy near Rabaul resulting in Task Force 38 preparing to strike it from the air.

The Allies achieve full lateral communications through Isernia in Italy.

From Sarah Sundin's blog:

Today in World War II History—November 4, 1943: Plutonium processing plant opens at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, for atomic bomb development as the X-10 graphite reactor reaches criticality.

 

Sunday, August 15, 1943. Joint Operations.

U.S. and Canadian forces landed on Kiska and found it abandoned.

Canadian soldier looking down the sites of a Japanese light machine gun.

There were casualties.  Four American soldiers were killed by mines and 24 by friendly fire by troops operating in fog. The island was expected to be heavily defended and the Japanese withdrawal was a surprise.

Americans and New Zealanders landed on Vella Lavella in the Solomons.

U.S. troops on Vella Lavella.

The British took Taormina in Sicily. The U.S. conducted another amphibious landing on the northern Sicilian coast.

Karachev fail to the Red Army.

The Polish Uderzeniowe Bataliony Kadrowe raided Mittenheide.

Thursday, August 12, 1943. German withdrawals, Polish and Albanian raids, German reports, Pacific staging.

The Germans, in one of the most successful withdrawals of the Second World War, carried on with day two of its evacuation of Axis forces from Sicily.

Franklin Roosevelt broadcast a message to the Filipino people, promising to establish full sovereignty for the nation upon liberation from the Japanese.  The scheduled date for that was already July 4, 1946.  As it was, liberation of the island would not come until July 1945 and the scheduled date was kept.

The Polish Home Army executed Operation Góral and recovered a massive amount of cash being taken out of the country by the Germans.  On the same day, the Albanian resistance ambushed a German convoy successfully in the Kurtës Ambush

The German Sicherheitsdienst, the SD reported on the attitude of young Germans. Among other things, it reported:

Most boys and girls have not the slightest interest in becoming a member of the NSDAP. All attempts by the relevant authorities to get them involved have been in vain. For the boys it's the Wehrmacht which is now the thing not the Party.

And: 

The reserve shown towards the Party is also encouraged by the unresolved Party-Church question. Since a large section of youth, and above all their parents, are still loyal to the Church, remarks aimed at the "sacred beliefs which they have held hitherto" by Party comrades, cadres and HJ leaders have a negative impact. This is particularly the case at the present time because, as a result of the current war situation, young people too notice that the Church pays great attention, for example, to caring for the relatives of those who have been killed, and that the priests give clear answers on questions concerning life and the present time. In addition, rumors about alleged positive remarks about the churches by leading personalities, soldiers who have been decorated etc. have a big impact.

The SD and related organizations carried on a lot of secret polling of this type during the war. 

Things were happening in the North Pacific. 

USS Tennessee (BB-43) at Adak, Aleutians, August 12, 1943, just before the Kiska landings.

On the Eastern Front, Luftwaffe Hptm Hans-Ulrich Rudel completed his 1300th mission and his tail gunner OFw Hentschel’s completed his 1000th.

Wednesday, May 26, 1943. Edsel Ford passes. Canada rations, Barclay stays,

Today in World War II History—May 26, 1943: Edsel Ford, President of Ford Motor Company, dies, age 49; his father, Henry Ford, resumes the presidency. Canada begins meat rationing.

From Sarah Sundin's blog.

Ford, a major philanthropist, died of stomach cancer.

Edsel Ford with his wife Elanor.

Edsel had taken the company into aviation, over the objections of his father, which was foresighted at the time.  This allowed the company to engage in aviation manufacture during World War Two.

Like his father, his reputation in not wholly unblemished.  There are some reasons to suspect that he sympathized with the Germans in World War Two early on.

Edwin Barclay, the President of Liberia, visited President Roosevelt and spent the night, at the Executive Mansion, the first black to do so.  On the same day, Roosevelt ordered striking workers at rubber plants in Akron, Ohio to return to work.

U.S. Troops at Massacre Bay, Attu, May 26, 1943.

The Japanese attached Chinese forces at Pianyan in Hubei Province, but were repelled. the Japanese force of 4,500 men sustained 3,000 casualties.

The Germans ordered that concentration camp inmates cease being given sequentially numbered identification numbers in order that the number of murder victims could be concealed.

My father celebrated his 14th birthday.

Tuesday, May 11, 1943. Retaking Attu.

The Navy, supported by the Royal Canadian Air Force, landed elements of 7th Infantry Division on Attu in order to retake the Japanese occupied island.  The resulting battle was the only land battle on American territory during World War Two and the only battle between the US and Japan in the Arctic.

Fighting would cover two weeks with the Japanese putting up a stout defense.  The Japanese Navy formed a task force to relieve the island but the Allies took it before it cold depart Tokyo Bay.  Knowing that they would not be relieved, the Japanese forces went down on May 29 in a banzai charge.  Of the entire Japanese garrison of over 2,800 men, only 28 survived.

Casualties of the final charge.

The 7th Infantry Division was committed to the war in the Pacific for the balance of World War Two, and would have occupation duty in Japan and Korea after the war.  It was stationed in Japan when the Korean War broke out.   During the Korean War, the then under strength division took on an international character, incorporating very large numbers of South Korean troops, as well as Columbian and Ethiopian solders.

Secretary of the Navy publically stated that "Possession of Sicily by the Allies would obviously be a tremendous asset" leading to fears that he'd blow the success of Operation Mincemeat.  Instead, it convinced the Germans that he was trying a "smoke screen".

Monday, April 19, 1943. The end of the Warsaw Ghetto commences, SMERSH founded.

The final phase of the destruction and reoccupation of the Warsaw Ghetto commenced under SS Polizeifuhrer Jürgen Stroop.

Stroop was an unrepentant Nazi and was sentenced to death in a post-war war crimes trial in 1947, and then handed over to Poland, which also convicted him.  He was executed in Poland in 1952.

233 Belgian Jews bound for Auschwitz escaped when a raid by three members of the Belgian resistance attacked the train.  118 were able to ultimately escape.

Fourteen members of the White Rose resistance group are found guilty of crimes against the German state and executed.

The General Directorate of Counterintelligence ("SMERSH" СМЕРШ) of the People's Commissariat of Defense of the USSR came into existence, but secretly, and maybe actually earlier. It was a counterintelligence directorate.  Like most Soviet intelligence and counterintelligence agencies, it was sinister and scary by its nature, and average citizens of the USSR had reason to fear it, a fact that was compounded by circumstances inside contested and occupied regions of the Soviet Union which caused average Soviet citizens to collaborate with the Germans in large and small ways.

The British government removed the restriction on ringing church bells that had been put in effect when the UK was under threat of invasion.  The move marked the passing of that phase of the war.

RCAF P-40 being recovered at  Fort Greeley Kodiak Island, Alaska, on this day.  It had overshot the runway.

Friday, March 26, 1943. The Battle of Komandorski.

The USS Salt Lake City damaged due to Japanese fire.

The Battle of Komandorski, a battle with a deceptively Russian name, took place between the U.S. Navy and Japan.  The Navy intercepted a convoy of Japanese ships attempting to reach Kiska and engaged in a pitched surface action.  No ships were sunk during the battle, but the Japanese ultimately withdrew.

Today In Wyoming's History: March 26: 1943  Wyoming beat Oklahoma, 53 to 50, in basketball.

Tuesday, January 12, 1943. Landings at Amchitka, Operation Iskra.

The U.S. landed troops on Amchitka.  It was an unopposed landing, as the Japanese had chosen not to occupy it.  Weather was bad and unpredictable and the USS Wordon was swept into rocks and ultimately broke up.  Fourteen of the crew died and the commanding officer was swept off the ship, but survived, while it was being abandoned.  The Japanese learned of the landing several days later when weather cleared sufficiently for a scout plane to overfly the island.

USS Worden sinking.

The island was used as an airbase by the U.S. in spite of the horrible weather it experiences, and set the stage for the US assault on Kiska.

The island is large by Aleutian standards, consisting of 116 square miles.  Not too surprisingly, given its size, it was historically occupied by the Aleuts but there has been no population on the island since 1832.  It's tectonically unstable.

Because of its uninhabited status, it was chosen by the US for underground detonation of nuclear weapons in order to test seismic detection, with nuclear weapons being inserted in bore holes in 1965, 1969 and 1971.

The parents of the Sullivan Brothers were informed for the first time that their sons, who had gone down in action in November, were missing in action.

In our last entry we noted the ship named in honor of the Sullivan brothers, the USS Sullivans.  Oddly enough, it was in the news yesterday after taking a huge haul of Iranian AKMs that were being shipped to Yemen.

Winston Churchill departed for Morocco to meet with Franklin Roosevelt, who had left the day prior.  Their departures were obviously kept secret.

The Soviets launched Operation Iskra aimed at breaking the German's siege on Leningrad.

Pierre Laval concluded a deal with Nazi Germany, allowing the Germans to administer the Departments du Nord and Pas de Calais.  France, under the arrangement, also pledged to provide 400,000 skilled workers to Germany and to essentially provide the remaining elements of its navy to Germany.  France retained the policing role in the German administered territories.

President Roosevelt addressed farmers for Farm Mobilization Day.

January 12, 1943

All over the world, food from our country's farms is helping the United Nations to win this war. From the South Pacific to the winter front in Russia, from North Africa to India, American food is giving strength to the men on the battle lines, and sometimes also to the men and women working behind the lines. Somewhere on every continent the food ships from this country are the life line of the forces that fight for freedom. This afternoon we have heard from some of the military and civilian righters who look to us for food. No words of mine can add to what they have said.

But on this Farm Mobilization Day I want to round out the picture and tell you a little more about the vital place that American farmers hold in the entire war strategy of the United Nations.

Food is a weapon in total war- fully as important in its way as guns or planes or tanks. So are other products of the farm. The long-staple cotton that goes into parachutes, for example, the oils that go into paints for the ships and planes and guns, the grains that go into alcohol to make explosives also are weapons.

Our enemies know the use of food in war. They employ it cold-bloodedly to strengthen their own fighters and workers and to weaken or exterminate the peoples of the conquered countries. We of the United Nations also are using food as a weapon to keep our fighting men fit and to maintain the health of all our civilian families. We are using food to earn the friendship of people in liberated areas and to serve as a promise and an encouragement to peoples who are not yet free. Already, in North Africa, the food we are sending the inhabitants is saving the energies and the lives of our troops there. In short we are using food, both in this country and in Allied countries, with the single aim of helping to win this war.

Already it is taking a lot of food to fight the war. It is going to take a lot more to win the final victory and win the peace that will follow. In terms of total food supply the United Nations are far stronger than our enemies. But our great food resources are scattered to the ends of the earth—from Australia and New Zealand to South Africa and the Americas- and we no longer have food to waste. Food is precious, just as oil and steel are precious. As part of our global strategy, we must produce all we can of every essential farm product; we must divide our supplies wisely and use them carefully. We cannot afford to waste any of them.

Therefore the United Nations are pooling their food resources and using them where they will do the most good. Canada is sending large shipments of cheese, meats, and other foods on the short North Atlantic run to Britain. Australia and New Zealand are providing a great deal of the food for American soldiers stationed in that part of the world. Food from Latin America is going to Britain.

Every food-producing country among the United Nations is doing its share. Our own share in food strategy, especially at this stage of the war, is large, because we have such great resources for production; and we are on direct ocean lanes to North Africa, to Britain, and to the northern ports of Russia.

American farmers must feed our own growing Army and Navy. They must feed the civilian families of this country and feed them well. They must help feed the fighting men and some of the war workers of Britain and Russia and, to a lesser degree, those of other Allied countries.

So this year, as never before, the entire Nation is looking to its farmers. Many quarters of the free world are looking to them too. American farmers are a small group with a great task. Although 60 percent of the world's population are farm people, only 2 percent of that population are American farmers. But that 2 percent have the skill and the energy to make this country the United Nations' greatest arsenal for food and fiber.

In spite of the handicaps under which American farmers worked last year, the production victory they won was among the major victories of the United Nations in 1942. Free people everywhere can be grateful to the farm families who made that victory possible.

This year the American farmer's task is greater, and the obstacles more formidable. But I know that once more our farmers will rise to their responsibility.

This farm mobilization is the first day ever dedicated by a President to the farm people of the Nation. I know that the whole country joins with me in a tribute to the work farmers already have done, in a pledge of full support in the difficult task which lies ahead for farmers, and in a prayer for good weather to make farmers' efforts more fruitful.

Our fighting men and allies, and our families here at home can rely on farmers for the food and other farm products that will help to bring victory.

September 15, 1942. The Devastating Torpedo Run of the I-19.

USS Wasp after being hit.

The Japanese I-19 fired fatal torpedo shots at the USS Wasp and USS O'Brien, and damaged the USS North Carolina off of Guadalcanal in a single torpedo run of six torpedoes.

The USS O'Brien being hit, the Wasp is burning on the left.

The I-19 had a devastating career in the Pacific War until its luck ran out on November 25, 1943, when it was sunk by the USS Radford.

On the same day, Italian frogmen placed limpet mines on the British SS Ravens Point at Gibraltar, sinking her, but not beyond repair.

The United States Army Air Force bombed Kiska for the second day in a row.

Monday, September 14, 1942. Truman speaks.

Senator Harry S. Truman of Missouri delivered a speech on developments in the War Program.

The Japanese effort at Edson's Ridge on Guadalcanal draws to a close in a Marine Corps victory.

US bombers stationed at Adak bomb the harbor at Kiska, damaging two Japanese submarines.

Stalingrad experienced fierce fighting and. . . frost.

The Japanese reached Ioribaiwa Ridge and attack, but the Australians hold out.

The Chinese take Wuyi.

Day two of Operation Agreement proves an Allied failure.

The Yankees took the 1942 American League Pennant, beating out the Cleveland Indians.

Wednesday, July 15, 1942. Watery graves.

SS Pennsylvania Sun after being torpedoed by U-571 on this date in 1942.  It did not sink but was taken under tow at first and the proceeded under its own power to a U.S. port.  The U576 would go down off Cape Hatteras after being attacked by aircraft and a merchant ship.

The Soviets abandoned Boguchar and Millerovo as Case Blue advanced.

The Akutan Zero was recovered.

New Zealanders take the western edge of Ruweisat Ridge outside of El Alamein but British armor does not arrive as planned, and they are forced back in a pitched battle.  The Indians take the east end of the ridge.

The German armed merchant ship Michel attacks the British passenger/cargo ship SS Gloucester Castle sinking it off of the coast of Angola.  The attack was without warning and devastating, and it led to its captain, Helmuth von Ruckteschell being sentenced after the war to a ten-year sentence for war crimes based on the attack having been without warning on an unarmed ship.  Having said that, the ship did pick up survivors who were later interned by the Japanese.

The U582 sunk the SS Empire Attendant off of the Canary Islands, and the U201 sunk the SS British Yeoman.  Both ships had been part of the dispersed OS-33

Von Ruckteschell did not serve the full ten years as he died of a heart condition, while imprisoned, in 1948 at age 58.

The submarine USS Grunion sank Japanese submarine chasers Ch-25 and Ch-27, and damaged the Ch-26, in an attack on their anchorage at Kiska.

In an odd event, two B-17s and six P-38s went down in Greenland when they ran into bad weather and had their communications jammed by U-boats. All of the crewmen survived and were rescued.

Friday, July 10, 1942. The Akutan Zero.

In the Aleutians, a PBY pilot spotted a nearly intact Japanese Mitsubishi A6M Zero on Akutan Island.  The aircraft would be recovered and rebuilt, with lessons learned from that instrumental in learning how to take on the advanced Japanese fighter.

The discovery was due to the crew of the PBY having becoming lost and having to reorient themselves before flying back to their base at Dutch Harbor.  The route took them over the downed aircraft.

The island had been evacuated, with its mostly native population having been removed the month prior. They would not return until 1944, although many chose to go back to the island.

The discovery was a major loss to the Japanese.

The A-26 Invader flew for the first time.

The first flight.

The twin-engined attack aircraft would remain in service until the late 1960s.

British forces launched an offensive on Italian forces outside of El Alamein, gaining ground.  By "British" we mean Commonwealth, as in this case the advancing troops were South African and Australian.  The battle at El Alamein was from a British prospective an international affair.

Two more ships of the harried convoy PQ 17 are sunk, this time by U boats.

Bombardier, the Canadian manufacture of snow machines (and jet aircraft), was founded.  The company, named for its founder, came about due to a tragedy when Jospeh-Armand Bombardier's two-year-old son was not able to reach the hospital due to snow blocked roads, and died of appendicitis.  This inspired Bombardier, who had made snow machines as a hobby before, to start making heavy snow machines commercially.

The Orson Wells directed tragedy, The Magnificent Ambersons, was released.

Friday, June 12, 1942. Day of the Submarines.

Anne Frank received a diary on this day for her 13th birthday.

The U.S. Army Air Force bombed Polesti, Romania in a mission which saw 13 B-24s fly from Fayid Egypt to an intended landing in Iraq.  Four of the bombers made emergency landings in Iraq, and two in Syria. The ones in Turkey were interned. 

The bombers were actually in transit to China.  This was not part of Operation Tidal Wave, the famous low level raid that was also performed by B-24s.

On the same day, the Army Air Force raided Kiska for the second day in a row.

The Germans breakout in Libya and close to within fifteen miles of Tobruk.

The British launch Operation Harpoon in a desperate effort to resupply Malta by sea.

The Soviet Navy resupplied Sevastopol by sea, brining in 2,314 additional soldiers to the defense of the besieged city.

The Japanese submarine I-24 sank the SS Guatemala off of Sidney.  The I-16 sank the Yugoslavian flagged Supetar, the I-20 the Panamanian flagged Hellenic Trader, and the British Clifton Hall, all cargo vessels, in hte Mozambique Channel.

The German U-77 sank the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Grove off of Baria, Libya.  The U-124 sank the SS Dartford off of Newfoundland, the U-129 sank the SS Harwicke Grange off of Puerto Rico, the U-158sank the US SS Cities Service Toledo,an oil tanker, off of Louisiana.

The USS Swordfish sank the Japanese transport ship Burma Maru off of Cambodia.

George H. W. Bush graduated from Phillips Academy, turned 18 years old, and enlisted in the U.S. Navy on this day.

The recently completed Grand Coulee Dam was photographed.

Grand Coulee Dam, Washington.

Casualties of War. The Attu Islanders and their island.

Attu woman and child, 1941.  She'd never see another summer on her home island again. By Malcolm Greany - https://www.flickr.com/photos/12567713@N00/2667001144/sizes/o/in/photostream/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17118121

On June 7, 1942, the Imperial Japanese Army landed on Attu Island, ferried there, of course, by the Imperial Japanese Navy.

Attu is part of the Aluetians.  It's 344 square miles in size.  For comparison's sake, that's a little bigger than Molokai in the Hawaiian Islands, and a little smaller than Kauai.  

It's relatively large, in real terms, 35 miles by 20.

It has an Aleutian climate, with average temperatures below 60F in the summer and in the mid 20s in the depth of winter.  It's coldest temperature ever was -17F, in 1902, and the hottest temperature ever, 77F in 1925.

The island has been inhabited since antiquity, and it's estimated that prior to contact with Europeans, the island had a native population between 2,000 and 5,000 souls.  Archeologists believe that settlement came from the east, not the west, even though it's the closest of the Aleutians to Asia and very distant, today, from the nearest Alaskan settlement of any kind.

It's one of the "Near Islands", as its near Asia.

Attu, along with the other Near Islands, seems to have first had settlements about 3,000 years ago, surprisingly late if it's considered that the arriving populations had spread throughout North America far before that.

The first contact with  Europeans came from Russian fur hunters in 1745, when they actually went to Attu after being confronted by a large body of armed natives on the first island they attempted to land at.  The first Russian contact on Attu violent, withe Russians taking an old woman and a boy hostage, oddly keeping the boy as an interpreter, although it has to be presumed he spoke no Russian.

A few weeks after that, the Russians raided an Attu village and killed fifteen men, with the purpose of the raid to take Attu women as sex slaves.  The location has ever since born the name Massacre Bay.

In 1750, the Russians introduced Arctic Fox to the island.

The Russian presence caused the decline of the local fauna rapidly, a devastating event for the natives, and the Russians also introduced disease, playing out a story that is often associated with the European conquest of North America. By 1762 the population was estimated at about 100 natives, which would mean that the population decline had been unbelievably massive in just a twenty or so year span.

The decline in fortunes for the Russians on the island meant that it thereafter largely skipped the Russian colonization of the Aleutians, to the extent it could be called that, and it remained free of Russian economic control.  The Russians reappeared in the early 19th Century, and the Attu population remained very small.

Christianity was introduced at least as early as 1758, but a chapel was not built until 1825, with a Russian Orthodox Priest being assigned to it, along with other island churches in 1828.  He made his first visit to the island in 1831.  By 1860 the native population had rebounded to 227 plus an additional 21 individuals who were "Creole", i.e., of mixed heritage.  When Alaska was sold to the US in 1867, services to the island dropped off massively, and by 1880 the population had declined by half.  Nonetheless, visitors to the island in the early 20th Century, who were few, were impressed by how happy the residents were and how clean the two villages were.  In the 1920s the sod structures were replaced by the natives with wooden ones, with imported wood, which included building a wooden Russian Orthodox Church in the 1920s and a school, without a teacher, in the 1932.  The teacher first appeared in 1940.

In the 19th and 20th Centuries, and indeed before, the men worked as trappers part of the year and moved to the hinterlands to do that.  Again, in the 20th Century, visitors were uniformly impressed by how happy the people living on the island were. And why not? Free of the chaos of the outside world, living a natural life, and with a Christian world view, they were as close to living in a paradise on earth as any people could be.

And then the Japanese came on June 7, 1942.

The Japanese removed all of the Attuans and kept them on Hokkaido.  By the war's end, half of them had died.  The US retook the island itself in May 1943.

The survivors wished to return to their homes when the war ended, but the US government did not allow them, garrisoning the island instead for a long range navigation site.  Truly, the government really did not have an existential right to deprive the Attuans of their home, but it did so.

The U.S. Coast Guard left in 2010.

In 2018 the descendants of the dispossessed Attuans were allowed to visit Attu.

Saturday, June 6, 1942. The Japanese land on Kiska.

Events from the Battle of Midway continued to play out, as Sarah Sundin details on her blog:

Today in World War II History—June 6, 1942: In Battle of Midway, SBD dive bombers from US carriers Enterprise and Hornet sink Japanese heavy cruiser Mikuma. Japanese occupy Kiska in the Aleutians.

As she also noted, the Japanese diversionary and precautionary action in the Aleutians continued. 

Japanese after landing on Kiska.

The only American presence was a small Navy weather station which was manned, at the time, by ten men.  One man escaped the assault, two were captured, and the balance killed.

Friday, February 13, 1942. Deciding to build the AlCan.

As we noted in our companion blog for this day, Today In Wyoming's History: February 13: 1942, it was a day of some momentous and long-lasting events.   

African American engineers working on the Alcan.  Note the very high boots.

1942  US and Canada agree to construct the Alcan Highway.  This is, of course, not directly a Wyoming event, but it is significant in that it represents the ongoing expansion of road transportation.  A highway of this type would not have even been conceivable just 20 year prior.  It also is a feature of the arrival of really practical 4x4 vehicles, all Army vehicles at that time, which were capable of off-road and road use for the first time. Such vehicles would become available to the public at the conclusion of World War Two, and would provide widespread, easy winter access to much of Wyoming for the very first time.

1942  All Japanese nationals employed by the Union Pacific Railroad were dismissed.

The AlCan is still with us, of course.  It was once one of my goals to drive it, and while that desire has waned over the years, I'd still like to.

The impetus for building the road was the fear that the Japanese would attack Alaska, which was accessible only by sea and air from the lower 48 states and which had no long roads connecting it in any fashion to the lower Canadian provinces.  If attacked, it was featured, it was not possible to supply the state.

Linking up the road as it was built in both directions.

Construction commenced on March 9, 1942 and was completed on October 28, 1942, an amazingly short amount of time, but then it was hardly a highway in the modern sense.  Being completed in the fall, as it was, use of the highway didn't start until 1943.

Alaska was incredibly remote at the time.  With a population of only 73,000, half its residents at the time were natives, many who had very little contact with European culture.  Prior European penetration into Alaska had come from Russians interested in furs, Canadians interested in furs, and then Americans interested in furs and gold.  Logging had commenced, and during the Great Depression an intentional effort had been made to resettle some displaced farmers to those regions of Alaska temperate enough to engage in crop agriculture.  Fishing was also an industry.  Oil was not, having not yet been discovered there.  It was not a conventional tourist destination.

In context, fears that the Japanese would land in Alaska were accordingly not as farfetched as they would seem to today, and likewise fears that they would land in Australia were not either.  Indeed, the Japanese did land within air striking distance of parts of Australia, and they did land in the Aleutians, albeit only as a diversion.

Fear of the Japanese had obviously also extended to the point where employers felt free to fire Japanese nationals in the country.

On the same day, the Germans completed the Channel Dash successfully, although both of their battleships had been damaged by mines.

The Battle of Palembang began on Sumatra and the Battle of Pasire Panjang began in the struggle for Singapore.