After a trip to Alaska in the late summer of 2019, I checked out this book we'd seen in all the bookstores for tourists up there. I thought I knew the landscape and major theaters of World War II pretty well by now, but I discovered a significant gap in my knowledge from reading this excellent history, written fifty years ago.
It turns out that the war against Japan in the Pacific had a brutal early phase in the far North Pacific, involving troops, airmen and sailors of both nations (and Canada) fighting for precarious footholds on the western islands of the Aleutians.
In 1942, Japan successfully invaded and held two bases on Siska and Attu, remote Bering Sea islands where the abominable cold, fog and wet weather made operations almost unbearable for the armies, navies and air forces of both sides.
Despite the difficulties, American forces re-took both islands in 1943, and through command inexperience and blunders learned important lessons which informed American strategy, tactics and equipment worldwide for the rest of the war, particularly with respect to cold weather operations, amphibious invasion strategy and tactics, and the use of forward air controllers as a key part of tactical air support for ground forces.
A very interesting military history about a part of the war most of us know little or nothing about, in part because it was deliberately never publicized to the American public, due to the early mistakes, problems and losses involved. Highly recommended.
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