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The attack on Pearl Harbor and beginning of the Pacific Theater in World War II, coupled with Japanese threats to mainland Alaska along with the rest of the United States West Coast, had already made the construction of a defense access highway to Alaska a priority.
The Japanese occupation of Attu (Operation AL) was the result of an invasion of the Aleutian Islands in Alaska during World War II. Imperial Japanese Army troops landed on 7 June 1942, the day after the invasion of nearby Kiska .
The Japanese planned to occupy islands in the Aleutians in order to extend their defensive perimeter in the North Pacific to make it more difficult for the U.S. to attack Japan from that area. The air raid on Dutch Harbor was conducted to support the invasions on Kiska Island and Attu Island by the Japanese military under Operation AL.
The Aleutian Islands campaign (Japanese: アリューシャン方面の戦い, romanized: Aryūshan hōmen no tatakai) was a military campaign fought between 3 June 1942 and 15 August 1943 on and around the Aleutian Islands in the American Theater of World War II during the Pacific War.
The Battle of Attu (codenamed Operation Landcrab), [4] which took place on 11–30 May 1943, was fought between forces of the United States, aided by Canadian reconnaissance and fighter-bomber support, and Japan on Attu Island off the coast of the Territory of Alaska as part of the Aleutian Islands campaign during the American Theater and the Pacific Theater.
A contemporaneous newspaper report compared the attack to the Battle of Port Arthur in which the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked the Imperial Russian Navy, triggering the Russo-Japanese War, 37 years prior. [165] Modern writers have continued to note parallels between the attacks, albeit more dispassionately. [166]
The Japanese consequently stepped up their fortifications on Kiska, but abandoned the island on July 28, having never finished construction of the airfield. Allied forces, unaware of the Japanese withdrawal, arrived in force on August 15. In an operation that cost 200 men to a variety of causes including friendly fire, the island was occupied ...
Captured Japanese photograph taken aboard a Japanese carrier before the attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941 (U.S. National Archives, 80-G-30549, 520599) A series of events led to the attack on Pearl Harbor. War between the Empire of Japan and the United States was a possibility each nation's military forces had planned for after World War I.