[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 77 (Wednesday, June 12, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5448-S5449]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS

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                   ALEUTIAN CAMPAIGN OF WORLD WAR II

 Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I submit the following newspaper 
articles commemorating the 60th anniversary of Aleutian Campaign of the 
Second World War and the veterans who served there. This campaign was 
the only action actually fought on American soil during the war. The 
men who served there endured not only the horrors of combat, but also 
one of the harshest environments on Earth. Fighting and, in many cases, 
dying, to prove that

[[Page S5449]]

Americans are dedicated, at all cost, to the principle that no corner 
of our country, no matter how remote, will ever be ceded to our 
enemies.
  For those who wish to learn more about the Aleutian Campaign, I 
recommend ``The Thousand Mile War'' by Brian Garfield. It illustrates 
the strategic importance of the battles of Dutch Harbor, Attu, and 
Kiska. Garfield has vivid descriptions of the long, hard campaign to 
push the Japanese off American soil.
  I ask to print the aforementioned articles in the Record.
  The material follows:

             [From the Anchorage Daily News, June 3, 2002]

Memories of War: Sixty Years Ago, Bombs Fell on Dutch Harbor and Turned 
                       Alaska Into a Battleground

                          (By Gabriel Spitzer)

       To Japan during World War II, the Aleutian Islands looked 
     into North America. It was on the Aleutians that the enemy 
     set foot on American soil for the first time since the War of 
     1812.
       Sixty years ago, on the morning of June 3, 1942, 16 
     Japanese fighters and bombers streaked eastward toward Dutch 
     Harbor, off Unalaska Island. Bombs rained down for about 20 
     minutes on the Navy facilities there. The next day the 
     Japanese forces returned in greater numbers. By the end of 
     the second day, 35 American men were killed and 28 more were 
     wounded.
       Johnnie Jenkins, a 25-year-old Navy mess cook, was in his 
     barracks the morning of June 3 when the explosions woke him. 
     He said he jumped from bed and threw on his clothes, one shoe 
     on and the other in his hand.
       ``I stood in the doorway, and I saw a Japanese plane coming 
     in with a rising sun on it,'' said Jenkins, now living in 
     Anchorage. ``Lord, my heart started pumping and I was so 
     scared. I thought, this is it. I just froze right there.''
       Jenkins, who is African-American, looked around for cover.
       ``I saw a white fellow in a foxhole, and he stood up. I ran 
     over there. He said, `You can't come in here, I'm from 
     Alabama.' I said, `I don't give a damn where you're from. You 
     move on over!' And he did.''
       One of the many civilians at Dutch Harbor was 22-year-old 
     shipwright Bob Ingram, now living in Fairbanks. Ingram was 
     getting ready for an ordinary day of work when the bombs 
     began to fall.
       ``Somebody yelled `air raid'. We saw airplanes, quite a few 
     in the sky,'' he said.
       ``Somebody said, there's been a number of men killed, and 
     they're going to need caskets. Now, if there's one thing you 
     don't need during an air raid it's caskets. But we wanted to 
     help. So we started to make caskets out of plywood, 2 feet 
     square and 6 feet long.''
       As inviting as the Aleutians may have seemed on the map, 
     the Japanese quickly found them an inhospitable invasion 
     route. Often bathed in fog and pounded by frequent storms, 
     the islands proved difficult to scout and navigate. This, 
     coupled with American intelligence reports, led to victories 
     for the United States but not before Japan had occupied two 
     Alaska islands and drawn American forces into one of the 
     costliest battles of the Pacific theater.
       Japan had little intention of actually invading the U.S. 
     mainland from the Aleutians. Instead, it hoped to occupy a 
     few islands in the North Pacific to solidify its naval 
     perimeter and protect itself from American incursions by sea 
     and air. It also hoped to pull America's might away from its 
     main objective, the South Pacific, Hawaii and perhaps 
     Australia.
       The Dutch Harbor raid was a diversionary tactic, meant to 
     draw attention from Japan's assault on Midway Island, planned 
     to occur at the same time that American forces were 
     distracted by the attack on Alaska.
       But unknown to the Japanese, U.S. code breakers had cracked 
     the enemy's top secret ``purple code'' and were able to 
     prepare for the attacks. U.S. soldiers at bases throughout 
     the Pacific were put on alert.
       One of them was Marine Corps Pvt. Howard Lucas, stationed 
     on Kodiak Island.
       ``We were ready for somebody to come up over the hill and 
     get us,'' said Lucas, 79, who lives in Palmer.
       Lucas spent two weeks on alert 24 hours a day, manning an 
     antiquated World War I-era water-cooled machine gun.
       ``It was scary,'' he said. ``But they never showed up. 
     Nobody knew what they were going to do, the Japanese 
     included, I guess.''
       By the morning of June 3, the fog of war, both literal and 
     figurative, had wreaked havoc on both sides.
       That day, planes on the Japanese carrier Junyo never 
     reached Dutch Harbor, grounded by weather. At the same time, 
     a radio message warning American forces of the impending 
     attack failed to reach its destination.
       In the two days of bombing and the days immediately before, 
     the weather made a mockery of both sides' battle plans.
       Historians estimate that both sides sustained more 
     casualties related to the weather than from actual combat. 
     American forces lost four times as many planes to weather-
     related accidents as they did in battle.
       Although U.S. casualties greatly outnumbered Japanese 
     losses at Dutch Harbor, by the end of the assault Japan was 
     on its heels. Its attack on Midway proved a major defeat, and 
     American intelligence had foiled Japan's naval ruse.
       Rather than abandon the Aleutian campaign, Japanese forces 
     occupied the western islands of Attu and Kiska. On Attu, 
     1,200 Japanese troops surrounded and captured 39 Aleut 
     villagers.
       On Kiska, the invaders found only a weather station 
     guarding the island. Still, scores of Aleuts and about a 
     dozen white Americans were captured in the attacks and spent 
     the rest of the war as prisoners in Japan.
       Drafin Delkettie, one of the few living members of the 
     celebrated Combat Intelligence Platoon, Alaska Scouts, was 
     stationed on the island of Amchitka, about 40 miles east of 
     Japanese-occupied Kiska.
       During that time, Delkettie, who lives in Anchorage, 
     experienced what the soldiers at Dutch Harbor felt.
       ``They bombed and strafed us every morning at 10 a.m. and 
     every evening at 6 p.m. They never missed it by a minute. 
     Sometimes we played pinochle or something, waiting for them 
     to come,'' he said.
       Which didn't make it a game. ``No matter where the bombs 
     are falling,'' he reflected, ``It's scary.''
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             [From the Anchorage Daily News, June 3, 2002]

                War Came To Alaska . . . Sixty Years Ago

       It was early on a Wednesday morning, that day of June 3, 
     1942, when war came to Alaska.
       Sixty years have passed since then. The war has come and 
     gone. But the memories are seared deeply in the minds and 
     hearts of those whose lives were touched by the long fight 
     against enemies of freedom.
       World War II began officially for the U.S. on Dec. 7, 1941, 
     with Japan's surprise air attack on Pearl Harbor in the 
     territory of Hawaii.
       It was six months later that Japanese bombers delivered the 
     first bombs on the territory of Alaska, attacking Dutch 
     Harbor and nearby Fort Mears--timed to coincide with Japan's 
     assault on Midway, far to the south in the Pacific.
       Today's anniversary of the start of the battle in the 
     Aleutian Islands--the only action actually fought on American 
     soil during the war--is a reminder that American soldiers, 
     airmen and sailors put their lives on the line to drive enemy 
     forces from Attu and Kiska.
       One of those, Army Pvt. Joe P. Martinez of Company K, 32nd 
     Infantry, was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for 
     gallantry above and beyond the call of duty.
       Despite facing what the War Department called ``severe 
     hostile machine-gun, rifle and mortar-fire'' from both flanks 
     and from enemy forces protected by snow trenches ahead of 
     him, Martinez used his automatic rifle and hand grenades to 
     lead repeated charges up a rocky, knife-like ridge to a snow-
     covered mountain pass.
       Just below the rim of the pass, Martinez encountered a 
     final enemy-occupied trench and while firing into it was 
     mortally wounded. But soldiers following in his footsteps 
     then were able to capture the pass, described in the citation 
     awarding him the nation's highest medal as ``an importance on 
     the island.''
       The war is decades in the past now. Old enemies have become 
     friends.
       But Alaskans of today should never forget that in the 
     Aleutians, now a proud part of the 49th State, young 
     Americans gave their lives years ago to drive invading forces 
     from our land.
       It's worthy of remembering on today's anniversary of that 
     first raid on Dutch Harbor.

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