Nisei in Alaska & Native American contribution

Condensed from Yankee Samurai, by Joseph D. Harrington

With Attu secured, Kiska was next in the Aleutians.  An exercise in total futility ensued.  More than 29,000 US troops and 5,000 Canadian ones were assembled, plus some Eskimos and Alaska Scouts.  Nobuo Furuiye served with the Canadians.

The invasion of Kiska was preceded by a fiasco called “The Battle of the Pips”.  A Fire Controlman who served on the battleship Mississippi during the shoot-up said, “We fired a million bucks worth of ammunition into a rainstorm!”

For the Canadians, the taking of Kiska was a biter blow.  Don Oka was with the Alaska Scouts.  He stood offshore in a ship, listening to the tremendous firing ashore.  Tad Ogawa, Ted Ishida and Shigeo Ito also participated.  All were certain, from the noise, that a battle as bloody as Attu was taking place.

None was, the Japanese had left.  But, they did leave the Nisei a gift however, a cave full of food with a sign in Japanese that said: “Help Yourself.  This is not poisoned.”  John White’s (Nisei commander) men did not seal the food caves.  Instead, according to Shigeo Ito, “we partook voraciously.  Such things as tsukemono, Mandarin oranges, nori, bamboo shoots, and so forth.”  White said there was “lots of rice, clams, and canned meat.  The Nisei were their own chefs and our intelligence detachment became the most popular unit in the command.”

Shigeo Ito was among those that returned to the US with some of the prisoners taken at Attu, while the more experienced  men were sent elsewhere.  Yoshio Morita was one left behind, but he didn’t mind.  Yutaka Munakata, head of the translation section at MISLS, expressed gratitude for having “huts to sleep in, warm clothes and wholesome food.”  He had a pretty good idea where Nisei who left Alaska were headed and malaria, dysentery and dengue fever did not inhabit the Arctic.

#############################################################################

Contributed by Pierre Lagacé – video about the Alaskan campaign!!

Excellent addition for this section!    CLICK HERE!!

Native American civilian contribution

In early June of 1942, six months after Pearl Harbor formally jolted the U.S. into World War II, the Japanese mounted another surprise bombing attack—this time, on Dutch Harbor in the remote Aleutian Islands of Alaska.

After U.S. forces drove out the Japanese, it became clear to military leadership that the vast and forbidding 6,640-mile coastline of northwest Alaska needed to be patrolled for the duration of the war. Turning to the Indigenous communities for help, they soon found volunteers from local villages willing to join the newly formed Alaska Territorial Guard

More than 6,300 Indigenous men and women, ages 12 to 80, stepped up. These unpaid sentries became the eyes and ears of the U.S. military in western Alaska.

###########################################################################

WWII female pilots now banned from burial at Arlington Cemetery ____

http://features.aol.com/video/group-heroic-wwii-pilots-are-now-banned-arlington-national-cemetery?icid=aol|carousel|dl1

##############################################################################

Cold Humor –

Sign reads: “TREE – only one on Attu”

“Are you sure it’s worth it, Joe?”

#########################################################################

Farewell Salutes – 

Ronald Abbott – Rutland, VT; US Army Air Corps, WWII, PTO, 11th Airborne, G-2 / CIA

Raymond Clark – Wellington, NZ; RNZ Air Force # 4211662, WWII

Thank You Veterans for walking the walk.

Raymond Delano – Lee, ME; US Army Air Corps, WWII

George Dunn – Ottawa, CAN; RC Navy, WWII, HMCS Antigonish

Calvin Lien – Edwina, MN; US Navy, WWII

Andy Morales – Longwood, FL; US Army, Iraq, Sgt., 143rd Sustainment Cmd., KIA

Frederick Robins – W. AUS; RA Air Force, WWII, Catalina pilot

Isadore Troise – Wilmington, DE; US Army, WWII, ETO, MIA/POW, 16th Cavalry Recon, Purple Heart

Ennis Warren – Mobile, AL; US Army Air Corps, WWII, ETO, B-17 top turret gunner

Wayne Watson – Riverside, CA; US Army, Vietnam

##############################################################################