The Storm on Our Shores

by Mark Obmascik

  Not long after, in the new year of 1943, more mail arrived. This time it was not a package from her husband, but an impersonal military envelope. Taeko braced herself. The Japanese military custom was to send a personal item from a soldier before a battle that could prove fatal.

  Taeko opened the envelope. It contained a lock of Nobuo’s black hair.

  Somewhere in the North Pacific, Nobuo had been informed by his commanders that his days were numbered. Under orders, he had taken a knife or a scalpel or scissors and sheared off a personal memento for his wife. She could not imagine his dread. She could hardly bear her own.

  Taeko had a toddler at home and a new baby on the way. She struggled with her current pregnancy. She had no job or any independent means of support. Her husband was far away. He had been denied the officer rank and paycheck he clearly deserved. She didn’t know when, or whether, he would return. Was she supposed to feel grateful that some military commander she did not know had ordered her husband to mail home a tuft of his hair?

  Weeks of silence followed. No mail, no news—nothing. It was as if her husband had fallen off the face of the earth, which, in many ways, was exactly what he had done.

  Nobuo Tatsuguchi was training for Attu.

  Natives called it the Cradle of Storms, the place where weather was born. The births were almost always ugly. The westernmost island of the Aleutian chain of Alaska, Attu was home to some of the world’s worst weather. It snowed eight months a year. The remaining four months of summer were thick with rain and snowmelt. In fact, Attu enjoyed, on average, only ten days a year of clear skies. A volcanic fortress at the intersection of warm Pacific Ocean currents from Japan and icy northern currents from the Bering Sea, Attu was almost always shrouded in fog. The rare exception came during williwaws, the unpredictable blasts of hurricane-force winds that rocketed down the island’s 3,000-foot mountains to the rocky shores. Williwaws were the one natural force that could clear out the fog for a few minutes. When the 80 mph gusts subsided, though, the fog crept back. Some days it was so thick a man could stretch out his arms and fail to see his hands. The wind and fog and cold and rain and snow were so relentless, and so brutal, that not a single tree survived on Attu.

  This was where Japan decided to launch its ground war against the United States.

  To an Imperial Army general poring over maps in a comfortable office in Tokyo, invading Attu almost made sense. The island was closer to mainland Asia than mainland North America. It was the midpoint between Nobuo Tatsuguchi’s Army barracks in Hokkaido, Japan, and Anchorage, Alaska. In theory, Japan could use Attu as a forward base to launch attacks against mainland Alaska before leapfrogging down the Pacific Coast to the Boeing bomber plant and Bremerton Navy Yard in Seattle, then on to San Francisco and Los Angeles.

  Attu offered defensive benefits, too. A persistent Japanese worry was that Russia was about to join military forces with the United States, but Attu offered one way to split the Allies. Some Imperial Army commanders feared the United States could use the island as its own forward airbase to support and supply counterattacks on Tokyo. Those generals wanted to militarize Attu before the United States did.

  These were all just theories, though. In reality, the harbors of Attu were too rocky and treacherous for regular military ship traffic. For fighter pilots, Attu was a nightmare of relentless fog, ferocious winds, and six feet of annual snowfall. The few places on Attu flat enough for an airstrip were comprised mainly of muskeg, a swampy and spongy earth that could hardly support the weight of a concrete runway, much less heavy planes full of troops and munitions. Attu had no full-time electricity or phone service, no paved road or vehicles, no water treatment or sanitary sewer. And then there was the remoteness. Attu was as far west as New Zealand, so far out that mapmakers actually curved the International Date Line around the island just to keep North America on the same calendar page. The island was three time zones from the Alaskan capital, Juneau, which was more than 2,000 miles away. It was hard to imagine a place with less strategic value for any conquering force.

  However, the Japanese believed Attu did possess one distinct advantage. It could serve as a decoy.

  Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto had concluded his country could not win a long war against the United States; America’s factories and natural resources were simply too great for the emperor’s forces to keep pace. The only chance for Japanese victory was to strike swiftly and prevent the United States from regrouping. Though Pearl Harbor was a crucial first step, Yamamoto knew the U.S. still had enough surviving warships to threaten the balance of naval power in the Pacific. Yamamoto hoped that if Japan could target and destroy the United States’ four remaining aircraft carriers, then Washington would have little choice but to sign a peace agreement with Tokyo. Japanese resolve to wipe out the aircraft carriers was only strengthened four months after Pearl Harbor, on April 18, 1942, when Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle launched his B-25B from the USS Hornet in the West Pacific and led fifteen other bombers on a daring air raid on Tokyo. Doolittle’s bombs did little damage to any military target, but shocked the Japanese, who for the first time had reason to question the ability of their leaders to keep them safe. Yamamoto knew that Japan needed a second, decisive strike, and soon.

  Yamamoto launched an elaborate plan to lure the remaining U.S. aircraft carriers into the Central Pacific, near Midway Atoll, where Japanese forces would surprise, cut off, and destroy them. The Battle of Midway was supposed to deal a death blow to the U.S. naval threat in the Pacific. Yamamoto knew victory was not assured. He wanted to boost his chances with a feint, a surprise, a faraway sneak attack that would distract the Americans from the true Japanese plans.

  The answer was Attu.

  9

  * * *

  Conquered

  The Imperial Army pushed up the hill with guns drawn and nerves on edge. It was June 7, 1942, and the Japanese were mounting another sneak attack on the United States. This time the assault came by land. Their target was Attu.

  Nobuo Tatsuguchi remained in training in Hokkaido as a Japanese unit had landed a few hours earlier on the rocky northern shores of the Aleutian island. The attackers faced no gunfire and found no signs of U.S. defense. Surely, they thought, the Americans must be girding for battle just on the other side of the ridge. This was the first time in more than a century that anyone had seized U.S. soil, and the Japanese expected blood.

  At the crest of the hill they braced for the enemy. Reports warned them to be prepared for fog and foul weather, but this was a rare sunny day on Attu. From the heights, the soldiers could see for miles.

  What they spotted below was a settlement of nine wooden houses. All had red roofs and white walls. Scattered in between were a few barabaras, the traditional mud-and-sod homes of the Aleutians. On one end of the village was a Russian Orthodox church, with a cross atop a cupola, and on the other was a schoolhouse with a shortwave antenna rising above.

  It was a Sunday morning, and every resident of Attu was attending Divine Liturgy at the church along Chichagof Harbor. When they heard a strange roar, worshippers rushed the door to find a Japanese fighter plane buzzing their village. From the hill beyond the church, soldiers charged. Villagers marveled at all the commotion. Attu had only forty-seven residents, half of them children, and altogether the villagers owned more fox traps than guns. With 1,100 troops, the Japanese could have conquered Attu Island with a bullhorn.

  On the hillside above him, six-year-old Nick Golodoff watched the soldiers slip and stumble down the ice and snow and spongy earth. He thought it was madcap comedy. Then he heard a loud series of pops. Mud splattered around him. The Japanese were shooting at him. He ran for his life.

  As soldiers tripped, their guns discharged accidentally. Bullets ricocheted all over the hillside. With nerves already on edge, some troops mistakenly believed their comrades’ misfires were coming from an unseen enemy, so they sprayed more gunfire down the mountain. The Japanese charge was so frantic, so disorganized, that
one soldier was wounded by friendly fire and another was killed. The casualties only increased the frenzy, but for no good reason. Not a single Attu villager raised a weapon in defense. Most Attuans had never seen so many people at one time in their lives. Terrified, they ducked below tables, dived into storage cellars, or just stood paralyzed by fear. When one young villager asked the Attu chief, Mike Hodikoff, if he should shoot back at Japanese invaders, the chief waved him off. Surely, the chief told the Attu villagers, American troops would be on the way soon to defend them. A few minutes later, the chief’s wife, Annie Hodikoff, was shot in the leg.

  Five minutes passed, then ten, but there was still no sign of any American defenders. The Japanese launched a house-by-house search for villagers. They found Alex Prossoff and his wife, Elizabeth, hiding in the crawlspace beneath their home. At gunpoint, the Prosoffs were ordered out. Alex was handed a note in English saying the village would be destroyed by bombs and gunfire unless all residents surrendered immediately. Alex yelled to the barabara behind his house, and out walked six-year-old Nick Golodoff. He was terrified. He raised his hands in surrender. He was marched to the schoolhouse, where, after a time, he was reunited with his distraught mother and father. Six men fled to the hills, but they were rounded up and held at gunpoint in the schoolhouse, too.

  At a house on the edge of the village the invasion turned frantic. For the prior ten months the only non-natives living on Attu were Foster and Etta Jones. Foster worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs and forwarded four weather observations a day via shortwave radio to the U.S. Army and Navy bases at Dutch Harbor, Alaska, 850 miles to the east in the Aleutians. Etta was the island’s schoolteacher.

  At the moment, however, they were preoccupied with survival. Bullets pummeled their house. Windows shattered. The Japanese assault was so fierce that the chimney began to collapse, sending rocks tumbling down the flue and into the living room. At the start of the attack, Foster had been transmitting his regular 11 a.m. weather briefing. He sent out a few words about temperature and visibility, but concluded with ominous news: THE JAPS ARE HERE. They were the last four words Americans heard from any citizen of Attu for the remaining three years of World War II.

  As the shouts of soldiers drew closer, Etta gathered all the weather reports and letters she could find and thrust them into the fire. Foster smashed his shortwave radio, then walked outside to surrender. A Japanese officer stormed the house and jabbed a bayonet at Etta’s stomach. “Do not cry,” he demanded, “do not cry.”

  Etta was ordered outside. She found her husband already there and surrounded by four soldiers with bayonets. They were forced into the schoolhouse with all the Attuans, including the chief’s wife, whose gunshot wound in the leg was being treated by Japanese soldiers. Several officers spoke some English. They talked of their families and military time already served in China. They seemed civil.

  Officers had confiscated the Joneses’ house for themselves, which meant that Foster and Etta were ordered into an empty cabin. When Etta didn’t walk fast enough to suit her guard, the soldier rammed her to the ground with the butt of his rifle and then thrust his heel onto her stomach. During that short walk Foster was knocked down three times by soldiers. Eventually Etta and Foster stumbled into the dark house, where they huddled together in the dark but remained too stoic and scared to discuss their likely fate.

  The next morning officers rounded up Foster and hustled him to another building for interrogations. After finding his smashed radio and a few unburned weather reports, the Japanese had concluded that Foster was a military man. Foster denied it. The Japanese pressed it. They demanded that Foster repair the smashed radio. Foster said he didn’t know how.

  Exactly what happened next remains lost to the fog of war.

  Japanese interrogators and many villagers said a despondent Foster slit his own wrists. Etta and other villagers said the Japanese put a bullet into Foster’s skull. Either way, a few hours later, Etta Jones was ushered into the interrogation building and shown her husband sprawled on the floor in a pool of his own blood. He was dead. She was devastated. (Decades later, Air Force historian John Haile Cloe found records from the 1948 disinterment of American bodies on Attu. They indicated that Foster’s forehead was pierced with a bullet hole.)

  Foster was sixty-three and Etta sixty-two. They had been counting the months until retirement together. They both earned it. A native of Vineland, New Jersey, Etta had devoted herself to the good of others and had labored for the past twenty years as a schoolteacher to the Eskimos and Aleuts of the Alaskan bush. She had learned to cook walrus and seal. She knew how to turn her dogsled team by yelling gee and haw. She grew accustomed to the remoteness of the wilderness. Her mother mailed letters to her at Thanksgiving that did not arrive until Easter.

  And then there was the cold. Living in lonely outposts like Kaltag, Tatitlek, and Kipnuk, Jones learned how to collect drinking water by cutting ice blocks from the local river and stacking them in her backyard. In her cabin, tea water stayed fluid until the temperature outside dropped to minus 60. The painkiller in her medicine bottle didn’t turn solid until minus 72. To go outside on a typical day in the winter, Etta wore: wool tights that reached to her ankles; two pairs of home-knitted, four-ply wool stockings; corduroy trousers; a wool jumper; ankle-high slippers of wolf skin with fur on the inside; boots with soles of moose hide; a reindeer parka with fur hood; fur cap with earflaps; and wool gloves covered with fur-lined moose-hide mittens. For a mere trip to the outhouse, she might wear less, but only if she moved with haste.

  Luckily, she didn’t bear all this hardship alone. In the Arctic Brotherhood Hall of Tanana, she had danced with a hardscrabble miner from Ohio who had snowshoed twenty-eight miles just to make the night’s festivities. He regaled her with stories of the Klondike gold rush and fed her Alaskan blueberries the size of California strawberries. He was so flinty he had once shaved a dime to fill a fellow miner’s tooth cavity. Etta and Foster Jones married at age forty-three. They were too old for children of their own, but too big-hearted to resist the children of others. Etta taught young natives how to speak English and mark time in increments more frequent than tide changes and whale migrations. Foster built and operated shortwave radios, which played music for villagers and relayed weather information to the government in Fairbanks and beyond. Together Etta and Foster formed a formidable team on the tundra.

  For the past ten months Etta and Foster Jones had lived with forty-five native Aleuts on Attu. It was a subsistence community. Villagers lived on seal, sea lion, seaweed, and, especially, salmon. In winter the men trapped blue fox, which they traded for flour, sugar, and tea. Extra pelts were sold to help support widows and the elderly. While Etta worked with the island’s twelve school-age children, Foster forwarded four weather observations a day to the nearest inhabited island, Atka, 500 miles to the east, and Dutch Harbor, the larger town and military base. Several times Foster recorded wind speeds in excess of 100 mph; at least twice williwaws had lifted him several feet off the ground. For their work Etta and Foster Jones were paid $280 per month. Because Attu had no restaurants, bars, stores, or anything else to spend money on, the Joneses’ savings for retirement grew steadily.

  “We like Attu,” Jones wrote her sister. “It grows on one, and the people are fine. There is no drinking, and that means much in a native village. Consequently, there is no fighting. All is peace and harmony.”

  Change lurked offshore. Twice in the winter of 1941–42, villagers trapping foxes on the uninhabited southern side of the island had spotted boats with Japanese flags. The Japanese continued on without making contact. At that point, villagers knew that Japan was at war with the United States. Still, nobody thought much about the war with Japan. In fact, when a friend warned in a letter of the Japanese war threat, Etta was blunt. “We laughed at them,” Etta said. “What would Japan want with Attu?”

  On the day after Foster Jones was buried in a blanket in a seven-foot grave behind the Russian Orthodox
church, soldiers ordered the Attuans to gather around the island flagpole to watch the raising of the Japanese flag. Even before the invasion, villagers had a long-standing contempt for the Japanese, mainly centered around old fox-trapping disputes. Now the death of Foster Jones, the shooting of the Attu chief’s wife, and the ransacking of the village homes all combined to turn the contempt into hatred. Out of earshot of their captors, they mocked the Japanese flag, with its red rising sun over a white background, as a meatball, and as a target.

  Villagers prayed for a rescue by American troops. None came. Three days after the red-and-white flag had been raised over Attu, the United States Navy denied the Japanese had even set foot in the Aleutians with this public statement: “None of our inhabited islands or rocks are troubled with uninvited visitors at this time.” The lies continued another two weeks, until June 21, when the United States finally admitted, two weeks after the fact, that it had lost part of Alaska. For the United States War Department, Attu was too inconsequential to defend, but it was too embarrassing to admit having lost it.

  To native Aleuts, Japanese commanders were surprisingly tolerable. When some soldiers stole food from Attuans, officers ordered it returned. Native homes were fenced off, but that was mainly to protect the prisoners from their captors. Neither Aleut women nor their husbands or fathers reported any sexual mistreatment. Some soldiers shared sake and beer with the villagers. A few even took Attu children on hikes and boat rides. Several photographs of Japanese soldiers playing with Aleut children were used in Tokyo for propaganda purposes. One picture reprinted in many Japanese newspapers showed Nick Golodoff, with a grin and some flowers, riding piggyback on a smiling Japanese soldier. The picture put a happier face on some ugly truths: At age six, Nick wasn’t even the youngest prisoner of war taken by the Japanese—five other Attuans were younger. At the same time, under Japanese control, a sixty-year-old former Attu chief, John Artumonoff, died of apparent natural causes.