Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 170 - The Aleutian Islands Campaign

Episode Date: August 23, 2021

Support the show get bonus stuff: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Sources: https://www.nps.gov/aleu/learn/historyculture/index.htm https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/museums/nmusn/explore/photography/wwii/wwii-pacific/aleutian-islands-campaign.html https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/aleutian-islands-attack-1942 https://www.warhistoryonline.com/today-in-history/forgotten-campaign-wwii-aleutian-islands-campaign.html https://www.historynet.com/battle-of-the-aleutian-islands-recapturing-attu/

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the

Legion of the Old Crow today.'s podcast i am joe uh he with the fucked up voice and with me today is liam very sexy uh you you got on the mic and i was just like oh who's this mystery boy you know what was funny do you want to tell them how you got the injury joe yeah i will uh so i was recording this morning with uh hell of a way to die uh and i i ruptured my let know um i realized i sound like i i watched this for the last time yeah i i uh i watched a lot of friends growing up and it reminded me of when phoebe got sick and she had the the phlegmy voice but what actually happened to me is i was doing brazilian jiu-jitsu yesterday and a large man crushed my larynx um it hurts quite a bit just just to speak

um but i'm gonna get through it because you know you know why liam you know why some motherfucking professional and i got an energy drink which will burn the whole way down i hadn't even thought oh oh my sweet baby boy delicious now liam you've been on board for what like two months now yeah we could say that sure why not um i don't know time time doesn't matter to me anymore um actually we're recording this on the 17th and i'm not sure when we'll come out but uh but I forgot my book came out today congratulations because I've lost track of time so badly like the last two weeks

have just been absolute madhouse for me in between writing and grad school but I'm proud of you go buy Joe's book yeah please buy the book it's called A Call to War it's part two of the prisoner's dilemma and I hope

you enjoy it also I don't want to take too much credit for the research paper because I haven't gotten a grade on it yet it could have sucked but you know since you've come on you've shot some ideas my way which is always great thank you and I think this is the first idea you

gave me and that is the illusion islands campaign Liam this is the first idea you gave me, and that is the Aleutian Islands campaign, Liam. This is actually one of my favorites, real talk, because it's just so damn weird. And I remember, was it Arma, like the first Arma that had an Aleutian Islands mod? Probably. Honestly, I'm not an Arma geek. I'm a squad geek, but Arma has mods for everything.

So almost certainly. Now, generally, America's military history, especially modern history, has occurred far from its shores. Now, while this is a very good thing if you happen to be American, also if you want to make the entire world hate you, it is also a very good way to play the away team, we should say, in some circumstances, in most situations. You ever see the t-shirts that say, Camo, America's Away Colors? I have, and I hate them more than I can describe. I'm going to buy that for your birthday. Thank you. My birthday just passed. passed you're gonna be waiting some time um yeah don't worry about it now one of the things that this actually does um is like it leaves the home front free of the

stresses of conflict other than like you know having a whole lot more jobs and factories and stuff as you turn up moms. And worrying about your husband, because you don't know where he is. Yeah, I mean, it depends. Maybe he's a shitty husband. Yeah, maybe you're rooting for him to be a POW just so you don't have to deal with him. Yeah, the best marriage counseling happens in POW camps.

That's what I always say. I see, oh man, salmon fishing in the yemen no okay so it sucks all right but okay the premise is that there's this like rich middle eastern ruler who like wants to bring recreational fly fishing to his country to like unite them and like there's a subplot where like the heroine is dating this special forces guy and then he goes missing

and then at like the denouement of the movie he comes back and she's got all these feelings and like then she's like and whatever the movie's like 8 years old I'll spoil it and then she leaves him for like a fish biologist who's the whatever, the movie's like eight years old. And then she leaves him for a fish biologist who's the hero of the movie. I'm just glad that a fish biologist could be the hero of a movie.

You don't hear that happening very often. I'd leave my girlfriend for Ewan McGregor. Yeah, fair enough. He's a smoke show. My personal favorite coming home from war is Homeland. And it's not because it's a smoke show. My personal favorite coming home from war is Homeland. And it's not because it's a good show. It's because your husband comes back and almost becomes a suicide bomber. You know.

As one does. War changes a man. Yeah. I mean, we all go through phases. Who doesn't remember their suicide bomber phase? Mom, it's not just a phase. I'm going to blow up the mall. It's like a devil lock, but it's a whole jacket that you wear only once.

Who doesn't enjoy a good tailored suit? Now, there's a reason. This is the reason why not the suicide bomber, the fly fishing, but fighting wars away from home is the reason why that there's only been one instance since the war of 1812 that part of the united states has come under enemy occupation and i assure you it is way dumber than you probably think it is that which of course brings us to the illusion islands um now i'm gonna have to ask a lot of people to forgive my ignorance on this one i did know that there's obviously island chains off of alaska i mean i didn't realize how remote they were like i mean alaska's already remote like they're just in the middle truly of nowhere

it's always hard i mean it took a lot for me to kind of like conceptualize how like truly far away i am from the mainland of the united states right like i'm just charting like i'm going to armenia very shortly and like i'm looking at the the various flights i have to take in order to get there like jesus christ i have to fly seven hours just to get to another american airport holy fuck what lax uh i'm going to seattle yeah lax was like the original stop but uh i would have to wait in lax for a day for my next flight to qatar and i was like no so you're gonna overshoot armenia and then yeah double back basically there's i think the only like major airline that has like that if you get to western

europe for the most part you can get flights into eurovan uh mostly from france uh but uh it turns out qatar is is the most reliable way um it's like a two a three hour flight um but yeah so the flight like 16 hours to get there though but you know like when you're looking at things like that you kind of forget truly how remote some parts of the United States are or what some parts didn't used to be part of the United States are. I'm going to talk a little bit about the Aleutian Islands because how remote and inhospitable some of them are are pretty important to the story. There's a reason why one of the islands we're going to talk about is uninhabited. Now, the Aleutian Islands is

a chain of five different island groups with 300 different islands, some extending over 1,000 miles away from Alaska itself, which is already out there quite a bit you know um now most of these a lot i don't want to say most are uninhabited mostly because even the uh the the

natives who are used to a very very hard hardscrabble existence were like yo fuck that no no i i like i like mountains i'm tired of eating whale others are home to mostly very small populations of native people it's a collection of different tribes many of them are the Unagans I believe it's pronounced sorry y'all

others are different tribes and they've had very minimal contact with the outside world previous to most of everything we're going to talk about um now the islands are significantly closer to russia uh or at least russian territories and those were the first outsiders that the native people came in contact with uh in case people are not aware russia owned alaska before the united states did 1867 seward's folly yeah let's talk a little bit about that um now the russians saw this as an area for settlement uh which failed miserably uh for

obvious reasons even for russians this place sucked to live in um and they're you know and when people think of russians they think of people that can live through like any kind of cold or miserable environment and russians russians got to the illusions uh because kind of like most settlements right it was kind of a little bit of a lie to get people out there uh they got out there like i am going home um and you know obviously some of this had to native people uh not wanting people to settle on their islands because why would they? And the two sides occasionally started killing one another. Eventually the Russians fucked off

though this mostly occurred in A2 Island which is one of the biggest and had one of the larger populations of the island chains. Now outside the Russians, the islands are mostly ignored by various colonizers and cartographers moving through the area.

That's rude. Mostly because they took one look at them like, that does not seem worth it. Look at this hunk of shit, you guys. Yeah. You know, because even places like Alaska throughout all of us, nobody was aware they were sitting upon oil. Because why would they, right? So they're like, ah, Alaska Alaska this massive expanse of nothingness and snow well done boys

but eventually Russian as would be the case Russian Orthodox missionaries you know stayed there for quite a while and they did the normal colonizer type shit like introduce an alphabet push their religion on to them but you know

they also got smallpox vaccinations onto the islands so you know you yeah some old they didn't genocide them so they have that going for them and this is mostly because of russian colonizers have a tendency to just marry into whatever native tribes they they move into uh and they also adopted a lot of their their cultural practice when it came to hunting and, you know, not dying while living on the islands. They were forced to have more

of a symbiotic relationship. Yeah, you might describe my colonizing strategy as any holes of gold. Yeah, sure. I mean, obviously they didn't have this attitude in all of their territories Siberia, Chechnya

various other places but you know I guess what I'm trying to say while desperately attempting to move on is for all of all of the colonialism we have talked about this show

this is the least bad. That will change drastically. Don't worry. I felt comfortable holding a gold choke. It won't involve the Russians, if that makes you feel any better. A little.

Now, all of this eventually changed. Small side note here. Nothing to do with anything, but I do have to point this out the eastern islands of the Aleutian island chain were explored by a guy named James Cook now James Cook is much more famous in my opinion

for going off to the Hawaiian islands and getting stabbed to death on Valentine's Day in 1779 yes something that we all celebrate to this day that's truly what valentine's day is about um then of course uh in 1867 the russian empire sold their claims uh over alaska to the united states for the small sum of 2.7 million dollars now this is normally one of those like, well, with inflation, that's like $20 billion.

It's not. It's like a little over $100 million. It's still nothing. Yeah. It costs slightly more than the cost of a single American F-35 jet. Objectively better, too. I would rather have an Alaska for sure now the reasons for this are all very stupid

for one as we've pointed out already nobody knew that Alaska would be worth vast amounts of money at some point this is also after the Crimean War and Russia was pretty broke and needed that money even if it wasn't that much the Russian settlements in Alaska never really took off

and supplying them was a massive pain in the ass and made them make constant like just drain on their finances. Not to mention as you can imagine this being post Crimean War Britain and Russia weren't cool. And you know

Britain was just over the border in Canada and could pretty much just walk in and take it over whenever they wanted. So Russia decided to pawn it off for some chump change. We already made the joke that it was called Seward's Folly because everybody thought it was a giant waste of money. Suck it, I guess. Yeah, sorry.

NORAD sends its regards, I guess. Yeah. What do we replace NORAD with its regards, I guess. Yeah. Or replace NORAD with. Whatever. Just massive amounts of oil wealth. And all of the horrible things that comes with it. And Caravelle. Now, like the U.S.

Or, sorry, like Russia. The U.S. didn't really do much with the islands. They didn't really do much with Alaska at the time, really. Right. But specifically, barely nothing with the islands they didn't really do much with alaska at the time really um right uh but specifically barely nothing with the islands it took decades for them to even build a hospital or a school out that way not even really wanting to bother the natives that much which is progressivism in the u.s at the time for us boys yeah that they don't even want to fuck with you is really as good as it gets uh in late 1800s

united states um it wasn't until the 1920s the native peoples of the island were extended u.s citizenship um and this only happens because everyone else considered a american native were also extended american citizenship um which thankfully nothing bad happened to get to that point, right? Yeah, I don't know. That is a discussion for a different series. Bad things. Now, things in Alaska may have changed in the middle years. For the islands in the Aleutians, they really didn't.

They probably couldn't really tell you the difference between the Russians and the Americans at this point. right but but leading up to world war ii uh the u.s hadn't even really bothered to map all the islands they had bought a couple decades before well that's what a dick what do you think the u.s geological survey is there for i mean remember these are these extend a thousand miles outside of Alaska. I don't care. Get an intern to do it. It is the 20s and 30s. Get an intern to do it. Flying a plane out that way is like just rolling a dice if you're going to fucking die or not.

Now, the U.S. military was thinking of some like an attack on these far-flung islands uh was not really such a a threat because why would you know that's right pretty much everybody assumed and rightfully that an attack would happen on the hawaiian islands uh because that's where the fleet was sure um before uh world war ii there was like a couple thousand soldiers stationed in various parts of alaska mostly in dutch harbor i think they had like four planes maybe two of them worked like nobody really gave a shit but obviously that would change um eventually the the military started moving more and more and more soldiers into the area, mostly around Cold Bay and Dutch Harbor on the island of Unalaska. There was some naval air stations, some army air bases as well, because Air Force doesn't exist yet.

Though in an area as large as Alaska is, it's really hard to consider this like a large military force at all right just based on sheer size and like we talked about before kind of half jokingly how hard it is to fly out there it's not really much of a joke um the whole area is known for like someone called pea soup fog virtually year round so driven through that wouldn't recommend it yeah like it ate planes alive back in the day and and pilots specifically like crashed constantly so yeah a lot of their planes are always out of service also people just get lost and crash into things there's no really like no gps you have to like i fuck everything and if you can't see anything you're kind of screwed um now the most reliable unit of the

u.s military around this time or would be eventually shipped into the alaskan area around this time was the navy's north pacific uh force known as task force eight commanded by robert fuzzy theobald what yeah um now his direct boss is chester nimitz who commanded the pacific fleet from the oahu island from the place of the nice climate yeah yeah he's not gonna go to fucking the illusion islands are you kidding me it's like no if you do you'll be in honolulu you stupid bitch it's nicer here even when it's raining bombs uh no no small side note here old fuzzy uh as like people actually called him fuzzy i did not make that up uh would actually become one of the architects of the conspiracy theory that fdr knew about the pearl harbor attacks and let them happen oh okay he wrote an entire book about it um

and now uh i should point out since i brought up, there's no evidence that this is real. It really seems to me that people are grasping straws about how the U.S. managed to get caught off guard by the Japanese. Like most conspiracy theories, this one based on racism. How did white people get fooled by these wily Asians? It's pretty much what it boils down to. Like, it couldn't possibly that they were competent at their job. Like, pretty much what it boils down to. It couldn't possibly be that they were competent at their job. They had to be an inside job.

A lot of what you see whenever it comes to stuff like that is racism or anti-Semitism most of the time. Oh, yeah. I will give them credit. I didn't hear Jews come up once. Yeah, we were there. We financed the whole thing. It was this goddamn insider japan it was the

the insider jewish japanese alliance yeah they're they're nice most of the time they bring good food now while the u.s involvement in world war ii obviously started in december 7th 1941 when they attacked pearl harbor which yes we will eventually talk about though i keep saying i need to go to the monuments and stuff before I truly do that. That's been a huge pain in the ass, so give me some time. Well, meanwhile, not a whole

lot was happening in Alaska as the war unfolded across the Pacific Ocean. But by spring of 1942, there were 45,000 American servicemen in Alaska, 13,000 of whom were stationed on the partially fortified islands of Unalaska and Umnak. The only heavily fortified areas were Dutch Harbor, which I assume were defended by a relatively small force of Discovery Channel cameramen and the cast of Deadliest Sketch. Seriously, that's the only reason

why I've ever heard of that place. In summer, and I use that term loosely in regards to the Aleutian Islands. But it's less cold. The average temperature is like 38. It sounds like white-collar weather to be quite honest. Yeah, one of those fucking people.

Now, it was in the summer that the Japanese invaded, and we'll obviously are going to talk about that whole thing, but we need to also figure out why exactly they invaded two tiny islands out in the middle of fucking nowhere that offer them literally nothing.

Because, and this is true, to this day, nobody is sure why. Blood, lust, blood, lust, blood, lust. There is a lot of different reasons that people throw out. There's some combination of them that makes sense. The best anybody can come up with in regards to the invasion of the Aleutian Islands is that the Japanese are hoping that it would act as a distraction. And I mostly believe this one. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the commander of the Japanese fleet, who obviously commanded the attack on Pearl Harbor,

decided to attack the islands to convince the United States that the main Japanese thrust would be against America's west coast. He wanted to lure U.S. ships from Pearl Harbor, the one still there. Then he would strike at midway in the central pacific his real objective now yamamoto figured the americans would rush to defend the illusions realizing that like oh oh god they're actually attacking the united states again like there's gonna like our worst case scenarios after pearl harbor they're actually gonna invade right um now realizing that this was the move the u.s fleet would then run back to pearl harbor because they realized like oh they're just invading the illusions

not invading the mainland alaska who gives a shit about the illusions um then yamamoto would spring his trap and intercept the u.s armada at midway and kill it famouslyously a disaster for the U.S. So wait a second. Yeah, turns out the exact opposite of that. Scoreboard, scoreboard. Now, as some people are probably aware, this was never going to work as the U.S. had long since cracked the Japanese codes and were ready for them at midway,

making all of this totally pointless. U.S. Admiral Chester A. Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific, had received word of Yamamoto's plan in late May, a few weeks before the invasion would touch down in the Aleutian Islands. Nimitz knew that Yamamoto had ordered Vice Admiral

Boshiro Hasegawa's task force consisting of two small aircraft carriers, five cruisers, twelve destroyers, six submarines to the Aleutians. Now, here's the hilarious thing that I pull out of this that nobody is... that I didn't see anybody else kind of like spell out. Is that Joe Cain original?

Yeah, this is my critical analysis of these historical materials. The U.S. knew that the Japanese were going to invade and then simply let them do it because they knew that they'd be stuck on the aleutian islands like good luck motherfuckers like it's not like they're planning on invading alaska like that was the one thing the u.s is worried about like mainland alaska right like oh you're you're going that we don't we legitimately do not give a fuck uh go there and freeze to death get killed by the

hurricane force winds that occasionally just sweep through the islands for no reason before us on and so forth yeah they it was they they like congratulations you've played yourself is what it boils down to a quarter in your ass because you played yourself if you will theobald the commander of task force eight would eventually sit around and do nothing during the invasions. But he did so, well, one, because he was ordered to, and also on purpose. His job was to make sure that the Japanese simply didn't try to invade mainland Alaska

or actually take Dutch Harbor or something important not to protect any of these outlying islands. He was given explicit orders like, no, no, no, you just let them do what they want out there they're not gonna like there's not there's no food there's no resources like just leave them alone right let them burn them it's like when a child has a temper tantrum yeah yeah now or get Japanese by her by caribou hurricane whichever caribou hurricane yeah it's that that's the alaskan diy sharknado

uh the japanese of course had no idea their codes had been cracked and thought this plan was clearly going to succeed oh poor babies uh i was talking about that with the uh whatever the nazi melting plane it's like it would fly if you gave it a chance. They were equally convinced that they had the most up-to-date intelligence on the islands that they could possibly have before they ordered their attack. Their intelligence actually ended up being as wrong as it possibly could have been. For starters, the Japanese were operating under the idea that the american

aircraft were stationed on kodiak island which is 600 miles away from where they actually were then they were then like the best part was is they also forgot to look at i don't know weather charts or i imagine this is not going to go well for them joe what is the weather like in alaska mad google just comes back don't do it don't fly over the illusion islands weird um now the illusion islands like i said were pretty well known for being cloaked in fog nearly eternally like a very weird silent hill level um this would be very important to know about if you were say deploying carrier-based aircraft to attack Dutch Harbor. So on June 3rd, when the Japanese did just that.

I was going to ask, what were the Japanese about to do, Joe? They began what was known as the Battle of Dutch Harbor. Things got pretty hilarious very quickly. As soon as they deployed off the carriers, the planes got lost in dense fog that just cloaked the entire area. Most of these pilots got lost and crashed into the just cloaked the entire area. Most of these pilots got lost and crashed into the ocean and died. It's nuts how you warned me about that exact thing.

Because like, if you crash into the ocean in Alaska Me personally? It's just me. You and me. Joe and Liam's Friendship Express. If you are flying an aircraft in 1942 yeah it's just me um you and me joe and leo's friendship express if you are flying a aircraft in 1942 and you go down in arctic waters you die in seconds i don't know if anybody's aware of that survival suits really aren't a thing yet um you just die

you die horribly um but by around 5 a.m a whopping 17 surviving planes finally found dutch harbor at which point they became shocked they were then attacked by american interceptor air force uh planes that were stationed right there and waiting for them which were much better than flying in the fog uh because they did it the time. They were stationed in the fucking Aleutian Islands. Now the pilots were pretty scared, but they had to actually get rid of their munitions because they wouldn't have enough gas to get back. So they just like jettisoned their

bombs into random places, strafed some buildings and hauled ass back to the aircraft carriers. Big move. Yeah. The next day, the Japanese planes tried it again. This time the weather cooperated with them much better than the day before, and they did blow up or at least set fire to the Dutch Harbor oil reserves, and they killed about 100 people, which, you know, dick move.

Dick move. Yeah, you know, it's unfortunate that... You know what? I'm not going to finish that sentence. I'm going to move on. Yeah. Though, now, the U.S. Air Force is... Now, I use the term Air Force. I'm going to move on. Yeah. Though, uh, now the U S air forces not use the term air forces.

It's the army air corps. It's easier to write, um, in the area immediately chased the jets off or the, the planes off. They did not have jets. Um, and then,

uh, they found the, uh, the Japanese fleet, right? They're like, Oh shit, there they are.

Right. That's a decent sized fleet for, you know, attacking the illusion islands. Uh, and then they were, the, right they're like oh shit there they are right it's a decent sized fleet for you know attacking the illusion islands uh and then they were the problem was they didn't bring any like torpedoes or anything uh that they could use against those they can deploy from from their planes they're going to double back to dutch harbor rearm then attack the fleet and they lost it in the fog too um whoops now two there's also uh the at the same time this is going to happen the japanese

are supposed to invade the island of adak and they just didn't why nobody's sure why yeah uh well also going uh building off the idea of really bad intelligence the japanese are the idea that there's an american base there and there wasn't. Ah. Like, yeah. So I guess it's a good thing they didn't. They've been very disappointed. Once again, America number one. Two days after the attack on Dutch Harbor, Japanese troops landed and occupied the western Aleutian Islands of Kiska and Etu.

There they faced no resistance whatsoever. Kiska was completely uninhabited with the exception of a 10-man Navy weather team and a dog named Explosion. Hell of a day. Now, the weather team did not put up a fight. It's kind of unclear if they're...

Yeah, it's a weather team. Actually, funny story. In the Air Force, the weather teams are like special operations. Yeah. These guys were not, though. There's some... I'm talking about modern day, obviously, not back then. But it's kind of confused if they were armed in any way, but they surrendered.

But that didn't stop the Japanese from shooting two of them dead. Aerographers mate first class William House decided fuck that shit and took off running into the tundra where he spent 50 days hiding from Japanese patrols. Holy shit. Over a month living on mostly plants and worms.

And then he decided to turn himself in because he weighed 80 pounds and was about to die. But he did survive, so he's got that going for him. And they did take explosion POW, which is unfortunate. That sucks. Until every dog comes home. That's what the POW flag means.

Now, on A2, they, again, did not run into any resistance because nobody was stationed there. But it was populated. There's a native population of about 45 guys along with a married couple of white people. The Joneses. We're doing exactly what there?

Well, the husband was the radio guy. He was their main way to communicate with other animals. Okay. So was he military or just like a guy? He was just a guy. He was just a dude. He was an amateur

ham radio guy. Oh, Jesus Christ. Alright, so small behind the scenes glance of the lines led by Donkeys Pie, I guess. I lost power yesterday while we were recording and we had to stop uh and because of

our time difference we had to wait an entire day meaning this is officially the longest podcast episode i've ever made my throat has gotten worse uh um and i i really hope i don't lose power again. I love accidentally living in a place that has having rolling blackouts without telling me. I've lost power every day this week for at least like three hours a day. It's great. But we left off with some poor radio guys. The radio guy on A2 Island getting captured. And the dog. Don't forget the dog.

Explosion was on Kiska. Oh, okay. Explosion is safely a POW on the island of Kiska. And I do get to say, we get to talk about him again later. The Joneses, however, the married couple of A2 uh not so much uh charles jones the husband with the radio operator decided that you know it's probably not in his best interest that uh the japanese have this radio right um so he broke it uh and then when the japanese ordered him to fix it at gunpoint he refused so they So they shot him. Oh, damn.

Rude. Yeah. Yeah. Japanese Imperial Army, sir, you are canceled. Now, the Japanese then decided that these natives, the Alaskan natives, also the one white lady now, about 45 people, were so liberated from their imperial oppressors on the island. They didn't need to be on the island anymore. You see, Liam? What? So they stuffed everybody onto a boat and sailed them back to Japan,

where they were probably placed in a concentration camp and died. Wow. Yeah. About half of them died uh so thanks thanks for the liberation uh and also guys this is not the only time i have to bring this up unfortunately this is the part where i say wait it gets worse um so as most people um who have you know are at least american uh and actually probably most people know this by now. During World War II, we had a little thing called Executive Order 9066,

which was signed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and singled out, quote, resident enemy aliens, their language, not mine, in the United States during World War II. Now, this forced 120,000 or so Americans of Japanese descent into concentration camps. Yes, that is the correct term for those. In a chapter of American history, overshadowed and largely forgotten, this order also impacted native Alaskans of the Aleutian Islands. Now, following Japan's aggression, the U.S. military decided to forcefully evacuate indigenous people from their homes, detaining them in camps in the Alaskan panhandle on the mainland. I didn't know any of that.

I did not either. That's fucked. I mean, I'm not surprised, but that's fucked up. Yeah. but that's fucked up. Yeah. They then destroyed their villages and a scorched earth policy meant to prevent the invading Japanese troops

from using their housing. Now, in all, 881 Alaska natives of various tribes are forced into these camps. These camps are incredibly unsanitary in Southeast Alaska, and they were held there throughout the war. In case you're wondering, these islands would be liberated in 1943.

These people will not be released from camps until after the war, which was two more years. And I assume these are basically the exact same camps the Japanese were given. Given. Yeah. Held in. I shouldn't say given. Put in. were given given yeah held it i shouldn't say given put in um honestly i think it this is based on environment alone these camps were significantly yeah i was gonna ask i know about japanese camps

in washington state were they also in alaska or just like washington oregon california oh the camps that the alaska natives are put into work i was asking about were there did they share with the japanese or the japanese kept it and like the pacific northwest no no that they were kept mostly in the pacific northwest california yeah ironically um small side note here for uh for you know the people to this day will defend fDR's order putting Japanese people in concentration camps. You know where they weren't put in concentration camps? Hawaii. Despite the fact that this is the place that was attacked.

Because this might shock you, they're a rather large portion of the working population here. And if they threw them all in camps, they wouldn't have a workforce. So clearly the worry that there might be a sleeper agent wasn't actually real it was just racist yeah now one

fish and wildlife service member recalled nobody was allowed to bring any more than one suitcase of possessions troops then set fire to villages that had been inhabited just a day before rather than leave them to the Japanese. As the National Park Service writes, the internment camps of the

alut evacuees were forced to live in were, quote, abandoned canneries, a herring psaltery, and a gold mine camp. Jesus fucking Christ. Rotting facilities with no plumbing, electricity, or toilets. They had very little potable water no warm winter clothing in alaska and subpar food 10 of all native evacuees died jesus so yeah

greatest country on earth baby yeah that's right uh and remind remember uh we had granted them uh citizenship in the 20s so those are american citizens cool and that makes it extra evil right like that this is even like the the dreaded outsider they're like no those are just americans bro like come on man uh now obviously the capture uh of part of the united states so close to home scare the living shit out of civilians uh not so much the government uh thinking a real japanese invasion of the united states was actually possible because they made it onto some shitty rocks outside of alaska it was mostly just embarrassing for the government because they had admit that the japanese took him obviously they're not going to point out in the news like, no, no, no.

We saw this coming. We cracked their codes. We actually won the situation because, you know, it's secrets and stuff. But on a long enough timeline the government was kind of worried the Japanese might be able to get their shit together to like, you know, maybe

put up some kind of airstrip out there bomb targets in alaska maybe invade uh mainland and uh mainland alaska which could then you know uh they'd be able to attack the pacific northwest yeah uh the rising dawn um and another thing was like america was shipping a fuckload of stuff to the ussr uh and this is directly in the way now uh so like the idea they might be able to station permanently stationed some submarines or something out there was a pretty big worry uh and the japanese were were actually worried that the the us might use this as an invasion route to japan like a like an air bridge despite the like the us

pretty much dismissed that immediately uh as an idea because flying through there is such a pain in the ass. Now, remember, as ridiculous as this sounds now, at the time, the Japanese were kind of blitzing across the Pacific. While we had won some naval wars, the Japanese still pretty much held everything that they had previously controlled. They had stormed through, taken the Philippines, taken everything you know especially that the u.s controlled in the area they bombed fucking pearl harbor uh you know famously they did do that yeah uh like general uh boulevard buckner who was at the time head of the alaskan defense command worried that if they got a foothold in here like well enough they might actually be able to bomb the west coast which is kind of fire it was never going to happen or again yeah they kill like four whole people uh and honestly the only reason why that

didn't keep happening is one of the best uh psyops campaigns the US ever launched was refusing to yeah and the Japanese are using regular newspapers to see if they'd worked and since they didn't see anything pop up in any newspapers like huh I guess the fuckers fell into the ocean or something but

yeah they were worried that they might be able to get their shit together and turn these rocks into something useful. This turned out to be the case of someone giving their enemy far too much credit, which is, if you look at recent American military history, is not something we do anymore. We do the opposite of that. We will be greeted as liberators, Joe. And we couldn't possibly be beaten in anything ever. Never. Nope.

Now, back on the islands, Japan realized quite quickly that this place fucking sucked. The sun rarely emerged from behind a thick layer of relentless fog, rain, snow, and hurricane. Yeah. emerged from behind a thick layer of relentless fog, rain, snow, and pea soup fog and hurricane force winds that were known as willy waws. We're doing this right now. The willy waws were frequent and

hard to predict. They would just randomly get blasted with 60 mile an hour winds. They were just being outside like taking a dump. Yeah, you just get heated off a cliff just surviving there was a challenge now the funny part is they probably would have known that had and and maybe known some ways of surviving now the u.s for all of its horrible bullshit like they had an entire scout unit made out of Alaska

natives that were from the area so they're like hey white guy if you do that you'll fucking die and we're like oh okay thanks no problem cracker now this is because now this is all made much, much worse.

It's a lot of stuff my donkey's brought. That's right. Because when Japanese soldiers made it to the islands, like this invasion force, they were, in effect, abandoned by the Japanese military. Oh, dick move! This is something that they did with frightening regularity good luck don't forget to die for the emperor y'all um now this is because the route the japanese

navy had to take to supply these guys what had to have just been drawn on a map by someone who never intended on using it um now the supply base that would be supplying the illusion islands bases that the japanese had set up was uh in paramushiro island which is in the carills islands situated 1200 miles north of tokyo and another 650 miles away from a2 yeah that's not very helpful yeah this is this is a supply chain that, like, is, remember, constantly being blown up the whole time. Because, like, pretty soon after the war begins, the Japanese realize, like, oh, they could just bomb us at will. Because when there's a will, America will blow it up. Now, in addition, because of the horrible, horrible fog and the oceans around Kiska in particular, we're full of just like horrifically dangerous reefs that we haven't killed through climate change yet.

That like the supply ships had to go another 400 miles around just to get to Kiska. Yeah. So after a while, the Japanese are like, you're fucked. Yeah. I get if you're a Japanese admiral, just be like that. Those guys, they'll be fine. Good luck eating your shoes, homie. Now, this became much worse again when America rolled out the plan to deal with the invasion in the meantime, which was letting the Japanese be on these islands because we knew they sucked.

We had to do something. So the Army Air Force and the Navy's pilots decided they would just constantly and around the clock bomb the ever-living dog shit out of them without rest. Oh, yeah. Yeah. The Navy also launched several different blockades against the two islands, making supply even harder. They sank so many supply ships outside of these islands. The Japanese are like, yeah, we're going to stop sending them. We've been out of the sea for so long just to die.

And the Japanese really had no answer for this. The only U.S. ship sank during this time was the USS Grunion, which if you remember, Liam, horrific name, but if you remember from our episode about torpedoes, that's the one that sank itself. That's the only one that was during this operation. RIP USS Grunion. Participation medal.

Yeah, like it sank like five fucking transport ships before it accidentally yeeted itself into oblivion he's not bad yeah right i mean i'm sure that doesn't like help their frozen corpses at the bottom of the sea but you know whatever now of course eventually the japanese will get fucking crushed at midway and slowly the u.s would start to turn its attention towards these miserable little outposts on the edges of the Japanese Empire in Alaska.

They believe that the last place that the first place they should strike, sorry, is Kiska because they figured that like it was supposed to be the bigger of the two garrisons and they're like, well, we need to take this one out first. So they secretly sent soldiers to an island

50 miles away called Amchitka thinking they'd be able to like kind of act as a scout slash buffer like to keep an eye on them however however the soldiers like the japanese immediately realized this place fucking sucks um they began to get murdered by the environment by the next day uh This is because they decided to deploy soldiers to a remote Alaska island in January. With, I assume, not adequate cold weather gear.

Oh, you know it, baby. You said you'd buy flip-flops, right? Because I got my flip-flops and my swim trunks. I heard we were hitting the beach. It's just 90 mile an hour wind comes in. This unit had just come from fighting in the Pacific Islands.

That sucks ass. Hold on to that too. Once again, it gets dumber. As soon as they landed on this island, they were battered by those willy-waws that we talked about, which completely destroyed their landing craft and trapped them there.

And then they got battered by a blinding blizzard for two weeks. It's like, I'm going to fucking shoot myself. I hate this place. Yeah. Can we just let Japan have this one? Like, come on. Now, meanwhile,

Buckner green-lighted invasion plans of Kiska put forward by two generals, Eugene Landrum and Charles Quillette. There's going to be a lot of names in here to be thrown around. Really, the only one of these two you need to remember is Landrum. Okay. Now, their plan was favored by Buckner because they had previously been stationed in Alaska and kind of knew how to survive and operate this environment. So, of course, the War Department rejected it.

And more importantly, they rejected Landrum to be a commanding general. So for people unaware, the War Department is now the Department of Defense. They instead installed a guy named General Albert Brown along with his 7th

Infantry Division. You want to guess where they just came from that prepared them for Alaska? Give me Wake Island. North Africa. Fighting Erwin Rommel. That's the same thing, right? It's both barren. It's fine.

One of these is actually an Arctic desert. One of these that you were just in, gentlemen, fine. One of these is actually an Arctic desert, and one of these that what you were just in, gentlemen, is the kind of... Boo! ...which you find is interesting under gunfire. Someone pushing their glasses up their nose as they get fucking mortared. That's me. I'm literally doing that right now.

Don't mortar me. Me too. Pretty much everyone involved argued that putting Brown in charge was really, really stupid, but the War Department didn't care. Also, by the end of February, the plan was changed to instead invade A2 first, without much change in planning.

Now, this is because they assumed A2 was the smaller island, garrison-wise, having only been garrisoned by 500 men, mostly badly armed Japanese Marines who had been kind of starved at this point. Everything about that is wrong.

For one, the Japanese had around 2,600 men on the island. They were heavily armed, equipped, and well-led. They were motivated, they had food, and they had artillery. This force was commanded by a guy named Yasuhiro Yamasaki, who had arrived about a month earlier

on one of the few transport ships that didn't get blown up oh and uh yeah uh everybody was like oh fuck the colonel made it but my new shoes didn't shit that was my food supply could we eat the colonel um now he arrived about a month earlier to take command of the garrison i'm assuming the outgoing commander was very happy with that deal uh and he was warned ahead of time that like hey when the americans come you're on your own so like you need to think of something right that's good advice i guess of course yeah like you don't need to worry about reinforcements because they're not coming um meanwhile brown was busy being a fucking idiot uh pretty much every planning meeting devolved into arguments uh with everyone else uh this included when he

was offered to go out into a flight uh to like visually scout out the area that he would be operating in just to see just like the the terrain uh he refused scouting lap yeah yeah he refused that's good for intel then he ordered the wrong clothing for his soldiers now it was it wasn't like tropical clothing he didn't fuck up that bad but it was

absolutely a real dick yeah it was not the last it was not the right clothing that you'd want to be wearing in the illusion islands um in may of 1943 the u.s finally launched its invasion force against a2 to the surprise of i assume general brown found out that their just general knowledge and understanding of the area was terrible. Now the basic amount of scouting you want to do in any amphibious landing is like, what do the beaches look like a beach?

Yeah, exactly. You've nailed it. And you haven't spent one single day in the military. Brown landed his first invasion force on a rock shelf facing a direct cliff. It was not a beach at all.

We're not just going to point to a hawk our way up there? They were not prepared for that. Thankfully for them, the Japanese had no plans of defending the beaches. So they were able to walk in unopposed with the only real enemy being the island itself, which ended up being a fucking hell of an enemy all right good to know yeah now reading about alaska i assume these guys have to deal with like snow and ice would be their

main terrain problem right um no that would eventually be a problem this is the only arctic battle that the united states and the empire of japan would have um but the main hazard was actually something called muskeg have you heard of muskeg i don't know what the hell what the hell that is i'm afraid to ask so i never heard this shit before it's a thick decaying layer of plant plant matter that covered everything on the island and just smells like rotting shit. Oh, so ice moss. Sure.

It's just like a thick layer of decaying dead plants. Cool. It sounds fun to throw. I'm assuming it has to be dead algae or something. I don't know. But it's slimy and slippery as ice. So as soon as soldiers would step on them with their boots that were not prepared for this kind of thing, they'd start slipping and falling on shit smelling dead plants and fall off a cliff and die.

Death boss. And there's like falling hazards at every direction. It's like more. I'm pretty sure more soldiers tripped and fell and died within the first day than were killed by the enemy. Might I say, what a hell of a way to die. Boo. Ironic, because that song is for the airborne. Now, also, the army planned for snow and ice.

If I was playing this, it was for snow and ice like you know let's say if i was playing this like it was probably snow and ice there we need we need to give you sleds like to move your artillery or whatever sure okay well the sleds that were made for snow and ice would not work in muskeg making them completely useless okay so we're over so far yeah uh so now brown's plan after that was to just abandon the artillery on the beach and try to fire it from there. It didn't work great.

On the south of the island, the soldiers discovered the area was, in fact, defended, much to their chagrin. They tried to scale the cliffs, they found, and movement was found pretty much impossible. Soldiers would slide down sheer icy slopes someone called them human toboggans

before they plummet to their death and then the Japanese started shooting at them and probably my favorite part of this entire thing is a guy named Colonel Edward Early commander of the 17th infantry now not because he was good at his job but because he

got what was coming to him. Oh, so this was a promotion by demotion. Permanent demotion. Ah. Now, he ordered his soldiers over the next five days to continuously and without break, assault

Japanese positions in what could only be described as human waves. Which is not really something the US did in World War II you know that was long gone and each time these waves are beaten back because the Japanese were dug into

the cliff sides each position supported the other and any way you went in any of the valleys you were immediately surrounded on the high grounds by Japanese soldiers. They planned this out. They knew what they were doing. Right.

Now, military historian Brian Garfield in his book, The Thousand Mile War, World War II in Alaska and the Aleutians, said, quote, Japanese entrenchments dominated all approaches, and Americans had to cross open slopes with no cover. The Japanese guns were linked along the summits and at the military crest a few feet below the skyline. Fog hid the Japanese while it revealed the American lines.

And when the thog thinned, the Japanese used smokeless gunpowder that could not be seen by the Americans below them. The soldiers discovered that the weather also played hell with the radios. The dense fog would block radio signals and stuff like that. So Early found out his radio didn't work and decided that he would just have to go walk

up to the line and talk to his commanders. His lifeless body was found a short time later after being shot the face i love a good commander death uh soldiers don't win very often but when we do it's good now uh almost as soon as early was replaced his unit broke through the line uh within that same day. So this is definitely a him problem. I'd say so, yeah. Yeah. Now,

this was done because they had to clear every single nook and cranny that the Japanese were dug into. So it was really brutal close-in fighting. There was like bayonet fighting, people getting beaten to death with rocks and shit like that. Yeah. Ugh. I love that.

That's the problem with an enemy that doesn't retreat when he's supposed to like you guys hey asshole we beat you fuck off no but soon actually funny story we will get into something that kind of existed in

that conversation wheelhouse a little bit later on. But soon every American advance would end up like the southern one. The Japanese were dug in on top of every valley and would not withdraw like a normal person thought they would. Remember, this is a lot of this time. A lot of these units came from Europe, so they never fought the Japanese before. Right. So they're like, well, the Germans would have retreated by now. Well, they're not German.

Good news. This is German. Good news. This is worse. Good news. I hope you enjoy cave fighting. Instead, they would hold their ground and force each position to be taken one by one. In many cases, the Americans would get so close, the Japanese would throw English curse words at them that they had learned. That's a culturalowabandeng? And they would shit talk each other

while trying to murder one another. So, like, someone remembered a soldier saying, you go home, you go home and you die. And then, I guess the American learned how to say, bitch, suck my dick in Japanese. Just hurling a grenade.

I love it. It's just the most soldier thing you could possibly learn. And I say this about the Japanese as well. It's like, you're going to learn one thing about the language of the person you're fighting. It's absolutely going to be how to shit talk them. It's like when you look up, when you're learning a new language, you go to dictionary and immediately go to the curse words yeah that's exactly what like they both did with a little handbook that they got um and i don't know if like the japanese understood them i'm gonna assume probably not uh japanese is very hard language but i don't like the fact there's some cross

cross uh cultural uh yeah exchange you exchange along with them bayoneting each other as they did this. Truly, bridges were built that day. Now, if that wasn't bad enough, and it's pretty bad, soldiers were getting wounded and dying even when they weren't

fighting. In one case, in between firefights, half of an entire scouting battalion made up of mostly Alaskans, like native Alaskans, actually got frostbite, which tells me that the frostbite numbers for the mainland American soldiers were much, much higher. The guys from North Africa were probably worse, yes. Yeah, they weren't doing good. Now, eventually, General Brown was fired. And as fitting as that is, now, as fitting as that is, we're all happy General Brown got fired. It was not as that is, now as fitting as that is, we're all happy General Brown got fired.

It was not for the reasons, the various reasons, he should have actually been fired for. Now, Did he integrate an army in it or something? How dare you? Now, Brown's boss is a guy named General John DeWitt. Now, he is a guy that more Americans should probably know

about he should go down in history as the guy who came up with the idea for the japanese concentration camps in america because he did he literally wrote the report for it in 1942 titled final report japanese evacuation from the west coast 1942 he went so far as to say that Japanese should never be allowed to move back to the coast and should stay in camps after the war. Yep. Yep. Now, he was technically Brown's boss. And this would be really the only combat command he would ever have

because he's a concentration camp guard. He's the American SS. Right. Dick. But yeah, this is one of the few combat commands he had and he fired Brown. Now the reason for that was because he had promised the Joint Chiefs of Staff that A2 Island would fall in three days and

it had not and Brandon made him look bad. That's the only reason he got fired. Don't fuck with the money, I suppose. Yeah, don't fuck with my career. I'm busy over here building concentration camps and you're over there making me look bad. Can't you see I'm busy?

Now, Buckner, who was a couple hundred miles away on a different island, met with DeWitt. He realized that he wanted to fire Brown, so he settled up alongside, like, hey, I got this guy, General Landrum, you should pick him. And then he finally got General

Landrum. This is the original guy, right? Yeah. Landrum was the Alaska guy, yeah, okay. Yeah, and DeWitt agreed. So the guy who should have had the job in the first place finally got the job. Unfortunately, it took the guy that built America's concentration camps to step it into the right thing

it's almost a happy ending yeah yeah meanwhile the island slowly began to fall soldiers in the front line had to withstand bitter cold and temperatures without the benefit of any shelter the sick and missing soon began to multiply

as soldiers slipped and fell into places they would never be seen or found to support the infantry landrum finally ordered the artillery to get off the fucking beach where brown had landed it which meant that it had to be manhandled strapped to people like they're pack animals and hauled up cliffs no thank you. Imagine doing that like 28 below. No, dude. Kill me. Kill me. I'm deserting. If it makes you feel any better, a lot of people did that. A lot of people shot

themselves in this situation. Yeah, that's fair. Yeah. It's like, good news, you're getting artillery support. What's the bad news? You are the artillery support. You're the artillery support. And then when the artillery started actually being fired like round after round had to be like the artillery men would like toboggan

down the cliff faces grab more rounds and climb back up fuck no now the sun finally appeared through the fog that enveloped A2 since the battle had begun with the weather improving the sun finally appeared through the fog then enveloped a two since the battle had begun, uh, had begun with the weather improving dozens of army air corps planes bombed

and strafed the enemy camp at the, uh, at the installation known as Chickahawks Harbor, which is like the main garrison for Japan. Now this bombardment was so, uh, thorough that one Japanese officer penned in his diary quote i am suffering from diarrhea and i feel dizzy it felt like the barracks blew up things shook and rocks and mud

fell all and flew all around me strafing planes hit the room next to me and my room looks like an awful mess from the sand and pebbles and shit this shit sucks ass like you're constantly firing liquid diarrhea into a chamber pot that then is blown up all around your room oh it's rude if nothing else

if there's one through line of soldiers fighting throughout history it doesn't matter what army you're in what time you're in you're gonna get diarrhea time you're in. It's just you're going to get diarrhea. It's going to be miserable. Thank you for recording it for posterity. Yep. By the end of May, Yamasaki

only had around 800 soldiers left. They were trapped in one final area called the Buffalo Ridge. His back was against the wall. He had nowhere to go and there was no reinforcements. That meant only one thing. Hey, that charge! That bonsai charge.

It's real, baby. At 3 a.m., the terrifying cry of bonsai. Yeah, like, come on, man. Can't you wait till I have my fucking coffee? It's like the big shift toilet winds are like in 70 miles an hour. It's 30 below. And you fucking hear bonsai. Like, no, go home.

Someone along the line is like, this watch couldn't possibly get worse than the bushes yell bonsai at you. I hate this fucking place. Fuck this goddamn island. You know, getting stabbed by an angry man with a sword would hurt really bad all the time. But like getting, it's like stabbing your toe when it's cold out, right? It hurts way worse. I imagine if that's the same for getting stabbed by an angry Japanese guy with a sword.

And I choose to believe it does. I'm with you. That's a dick move, man. Now, I almost called him Banzai. Yamasaki uh his band of merry men and crawled up very very close to the american perimeter before launching into their charge and they pretty much punched straight through the perimeter because people had no fucking idea what was

happening but it's cold out yeah uh everyone just like huddled like i've i've been on guard duty when it's cold and miserable and dark, and I'm not watching. If the Taliban wanted to murder me, they could have just walked up and beat me to death because I wasn't paying attention. The only thing I was worried about was staying warm. Right.

Now, these guys ran straight into B Company, the first battalion of the 32nd Infantry, which is coming off the front line. They just left the perimeter. They're going back to the rear to get their first hot meal in a month. And then we're confronted by screaming, sword-wielding Japanese soldiers.

Hold on, man. I just want some fucking coffee. Now, a lot of these guys caught by complete surprise, realized they were not gonna fight and just ran uh some people tried to shoot it out uh while trying to get away yamasaki's men slashed and bayoneted their way through the thinly held line uh anybody who was caught wounded was executed as they went though a few smart soldiers just fell to the ground and played dead true fucking kings

of the situation. Like, I'm too cold for this shit. I'm just gonna lay down under this bush so they don't see me. But soon, the element of surprise ran out, and the charge actually ran into a prepared defensive position and got torn to shreds. It's generally what happens when you

charge a machine gun while armed with a bayonet and a sword. Good. Good. Fucking dicks. The survivors, Yamasaki not among them as he was killed while charging a machine gun nest with a sword, had another way out. Soldiers gathered in a gulch

near a place called Engineer Hill and one American soldier had a very interesting eyewitness account to what had to be the weirdest thing he's ever watched in his life. A sergeant watched his Japanese soldiers primed hand grenades by slapping them on their helmets and then put them under their chin and held them until they exploded. Yeah. Only 20. He's like, I was very confused that I watched them explode.

And I realized that that was human bodies exploding uh and he watched as like 200 dudes did this just one by one popping into pieces um right only only 28 soldiers survived uh just i assume refusing to do it or not having the balls to do it i know i fall into both of those camps. I mean, granted, I guess putting a hand grenade under your face is a very good way to make sure you die. You're not going to accidentally live through that one.

Now, at this, the battle was over and America had won. They had reclaimed A2 Island. So what was the cost of the U.S US Army's first amphibious assault? Well, quite a bit I'm going to wager.

A whole lot. 3,829 casualties 549 of them killed 1,148 wounded 1,200 frostbite victims Holy shit. Over 600 from various sicknesses

and exposure to the cold. And they assume around 318 suicides. Goddamn. Yeah, just doing a fucking VA speedrun on this one. There was also just untold amounts of combat fatigue and accidents. Did you just say VA speedrun?

I sure did. Ha ha ha. untold amounts of combat fatigue and accidents. Did you just say V.A. speed run? I sure did. Just absolutely. I mean, like I said, the Japanese garrison, only 28 of them walked out of there alive. Right. So in proportion to the number of troops engaged to casualty rates, this would rank as the second most costly American battle in the Pacific theater, second

only to Iwo Jima. But we generally don't talk about it because it makes us look very stupid. But you know what makes us look even dumber? Kiska. So after taking A2, the Joint Chiefs directed their attention to Kiska Island.

American intelligence estimated that the Japanese troop strength on Kiska was going to be around 10,000. Holy shit. And we saw what like 2,500 did, right? Right. Now, aerial reconnaissance

showed that things were not going to be good on the island. The Japanese had dug a labyrinth of hardened tunnels and bunkers throughout the high ground. They were going to be walking into a fucking meat grinder, and the Americans were determined not to make the same mistakes that they had on A2, so they waited for reinforcements.

How fucking dare they? I'll just pump the brakes a bit on that one. Okay. Now, they did wait for reinforcements. They eventually got 35,000 soldiers prepared to storm this beach. They're also joined by Canadians on this one.

So you guys own part of this too. They're like a Canadian special operations group before they really had one of those. This is before the SAS and everything. But once again trapped within thick layers of fog, they were supported by massive amounts of airstrikes, artillery strikes, and full broadsides from the U.S. Navy. This island got rocked to shit.

So this is serious. Yeah. We're being serious now. I would not want to be on this island while this shit was going on. But either did the Japanese, because they weren't there. Oh. It was empty. It was a completely empty island. Soul force, baby.

Now, that did not stop once ashore. Soldiers found themselves getting shot at, seemingly at random intervals by snipers or the occasional burst of machine gun rounds, and no matter what they did, they could not pinpoint who was shooting at them. Well, the entire Japanese

garrison of Kiska had fucked off three weeks before and nobody had noticed. The US and the Canadian forces invaded a completely uninhabited island. On July 29th, 1943... So where were the shots coming from? Oh, those were...

They were shooting at each other. Yeah, I figured that uh but the thing was is like we'll get there but i don't want to ruin it so on july 29th 1943 the japanese forces on kiska executed probably one of their most tactical moves of the entire war and in regards of like not killing themselves um they wired Kiska city, otherwise known as their main camp with demolition charges and destroyed supplies, ammunition and buildings during the night.

While us battleships that circled Kiska were diverted by radar blips. They had mistakenly interpreted as a Japanese evacuation fleet. There were real evacuation fleet of eight warships pulled right into Kiska Harbor. And in less than an hour, the entire force of that was actually only 5,000 men, climbed aboard vessels and drifted off silently under the cover of darkness. Fucking bastards. During one attack, the Americans did discover the lone occupants of the island.

Explosion! The POW dog was still alive! Hell yeah! I love a good POW rescue. That was actually the point of this. Operation Enduring Explosion. However, allied commanders refused to believe that they had been dumb enough to invade an empty island. So for eight days, soldiers continued their advance, pausing only to occasionally shoot at one another on accident or step on booby traps left behind by the Japanese.

In all, 24 American soldiers were killed by friendly fire, four by Japanese booby trap, and a couple other car accidents and stuff. Another 121 became sick or wounded, and then another couple dozen were

hurt where they slipped or fell. Man, war is dumb. War is dumb as hell. And then things are made even worse when the USS Abner Reed hit a sea mine, killing 71 sailors. In the end of what was called Operation Cottage, 92 men were dead and 221 were wounded. But they got explosion back. They did rescue explosion. But they got explosion back. They did rescue explosion. It was all worth it.

I really wish I knew what happened to that dog later on but I couldn't find anything. I assume he just retired a hero. He had a POW ribbon and everything. Now we will end with the best part. The Americans knew it was empty but they refused to accept it. Intelligence pointed out

to the US command by late July, way before the invasion, that the island was almost certainly abandoned, and this was just ignored. Now, I got this from the Canadian National Defense University. Quote, Starting in late July, however, air photo interpreters began to note curious observations.

Routine activities on kiska appeared to be diminishing significantly and almost no movement could be detected within the harbor bomb damaged buildings and craters on kiska's airfield are left completely unrepaired air crews also reported greatly diminished anti-aircraft fire eventually tricking down to nothing on july 28th radio signals from kiska ceased entirely to many intelligence analysis the mounting evidence suggested that the japanese had somehow slipped to the naval blockade and evacuated kiska uh it was it sure seems that way joe yeah uh the more evidence you need is this big empty island um literally the only good thing that could come out of this is the refinement

of the amphibious landing tactics. It would be used throughout the Pacific Island and eventually Europe. Thomas Kincaid, the idiot who ordered the invasion of the empty island, and remember almost lost, only stayed fired for like one month. Thomas Kincaid is pretty much a

naval hero. This did not slow down his career at all. Good for him, I guess. Really the only person who faced any real career repercussions, again, temporarily, was General Brown. He was fired and sent back to the States, and most people assumed he was going to sit out the war on a training command.

But in 1944, when the army apparently fired everyone else in order to get back around to him he ended up commanding another division in Europe yep and that is the Illusion Islands campaign so

this is I think the first episode mainline episode that we did that was your suggestion was everything that you hoped it would be or was it worse it was dumber it was dumber therefore better it was dumber it included two different kinds of concentration camps and a dog and a dog it's everything that honestly this this episode is everything this podcast is and it includes a really good donkey we haven't done we even have like a serious good individual donkey in a very long time uh this time we got two of them we got general brown and we got admiral

kincaid who of course killed hundreds of people through negligence and suffered no consequences whatsoever usa usa that's truly the officer's creed um Now, Liam, we do a segment on this show called Questions from the Legion. If you would like to ask us a question from Legion at any point, donate to the show, slide into our DMs on Patreon. I assume they're just called messages there. Or Discord or email or our Twitter DMs, whatever. And we will answer on the show now we actually answered this one uh once a long time ago uh you are not on the show yet and it is what is a conspiracy theory that you believe in um i've got a good one i've got a couple actually shoot you go first all right

so uh my first one is that the Michael Jordan did retire secretly. They're both sports. Oh, is that because the gambling debt retired because of the gambling debt? And then we're 100% believe that. And the NHL changed the expansion rules of the draft and paid off referees specifically so that the Golden Knights could get to the Stanley Cup final in their first year because the NHL knew that in a non-hockey town, you saw how the Atlanta Thrashers did. You guys remember the Atlanta Thrashers having had hockey expansion in the South and Southwest not go so well.

They wanted to ensure that the fan base would be good. It was the same reason the Stars immediately left. They left Minnesota and immediately won a title. I mean, that happened to the Aval would be good. It was the same reason the Stars immediately left. They left Minnesota and immediately won a title. I mean, that happened to the Avalanche, too, but the Avalanche just had a very good roster. And Colorado has winter. Yeah. I don't know.

Checkpoint, the Arizona Coyotes have been incredibly successful. Yeah. Oh, the Yotes. Yotes here, baby. They're the next team to relocate. I hope Quebec enjoys their second team. Let's see. I think the one I pointed out

last time was the Swedish Prime Minister was almost certainly assassinated by South Africa. Yeah. And I think this time, I'm going to say the coup in Turkey a couple of years ago was almost certainly an inside job by Erdogan.

Oh, it was a false flag, yeah. For sure. I don't have a lot of evidence for that other than how stupid it was, which I know in our show, we should know that there's probably more to it. But I strongly dislike erdogan and the turkish military so yeah uh i'm not biased in this let's see um what's another

good one my opinion on jfk is that he didn't act alone but it wasn't the cia or the mob or no it was the mob you mean you mean shooting jfk i don't know i i have i i'm one of those people that i don't believe in a lot of conspiracy theories uh because unfortunately a lot of conspiracy theories are in their nature anti-semitic um but i also strongly disagree with most conspiracy theories that people think that the u.s government is capable of like some overstretching conspiracy simply because like i worked for it and they're the dumbest fucking people on earth like like the u.s government couldn't roll out a health care website but also they did 9-11 and the secret never

got out like come on come on um but yeah i definitely believe that the coup was faked and uh that's about it it's only one i could think of off the top of my head um i know a lot of people have asked me about the the chechen apartment bombings in russia uh and if it was the fsb because we've done the chechen wars and honestly that's something i'm gonna have to look into whenever we eventually tackle the second Chechen War. So get back to me on that one. Also, I'm just going to assume I'm never going to be able to go to Russia, which is unfortunate.

Yeah. But as always, thank you for joining us, Liam. Plug your show. Well, there's your problem. It's a leftist podcast about engineering disasters that in itself is an engineering disaster. And we have a live show coming up on September 3rd. You can buy tickets.

You can buy live stream tickets at caveat dot NYC. I'll make sure I put the link in the show notes. And I'm actually going to try to get that. I don't know. I'm not sure what the time difference is. I'm going to be in Armenia when that's going on, but I will try. And everybody else, you try as well. Oh, yeah.

Buy my books. Buy his books. The first two books of the Victory or Death series are out. The Prisoner's Dilemma and also A Call to War. Buy them. They're very cheap. And yes, I get money from them. Otherwise, I would not make them that cheap.

I'm just trying to make it accessible. And until next time, don't invade Alaska. Also, concentration camps are bad. Concentration camps are bad. Many people are saying this. Ice. Until next time. Later.

Bye.