19421776 Club
Japanese troops land on Attu and Kiska; American soil is occupied for the first time since 1812
The 301st Infantry Battalion met almost no resistance on Attu, where the island held 45 Unangax villagers, a radio technician, and his schoolteacher wife.
Six months after Pearl Harbor, the United States was still absorbing shocks when, on June 6 and 7, 1942, Japanese forces came ashore on the American islands of Kiska and Attu in the Aleutian chain off Alaska. The 301st Independent Infantry Battalion landed on Attu against almost no resistance — the island held 45 Unangax villagers, a radio technician named Charles Jones, and his wife Etta, a schoolteacher. Jones was killed almost immediately after the invasion; the surviving villagers were shipped to a prison camp near Otaru, Hokkaido. It was the first foreign occupation of American soil since the War of 1812 — a fact the American press did not miss…
