operation landcrab (11. 593)

Concluding on this day in 1943 with US troops retaking the remote Aleutian island, the Battle of Attu, American and Imperial Japanese soldiers encountering one another in snowy conditions, was engaged nearly a year after the unopposed landing of a battalion of the Northern Army infantry, who wanted to establish forward airbases on this strategic location and create a barrier between the US and Russia, should the Soviets decide to join the fight against Japan. Only one of two sites on American soil invaded during the war and the only land confrontation, authorities were too late with orders to evacuate this most westerly part of the island chain and the forty-eight residents, mostly Aleut natives, who survived the annexation were imprisoned in a camp on Hokkaidō, where nearly half died. The fighting, beginning two weeks prior, was brutal and both sides sustained heavy casualties, with the Japanese forces suddenly attacking the Americans in a last ditch push with a large banzai charge (taken from the battle cry’s invocation of “long life” for his Majesty the Emperor and considered one method of gyokusai—shattered jewel, an honourable suicide) at Massacre Bay with nearly all of the troops killed. After the prisons were liberated, none despite a desire to return home, were repatriated and Attu became host to a series of navigation and ranging stations, eventually decommission in 2010, making the island the largest uninhabited area of the United States.