August 10, 2023 • 47 mins
Alaska is known for its stunning beauty, harsh climate, and remoteness -- but it was also the site of an intensely strange series of battles between the Japanese and US militaries. In today's episode, Ben, Noel and Max explore how two of the world's most powerful militaries fought over three small islands off the Alaskan coast... and why the battle almost became forgotten in the modern day.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. Let's hear it for our super producer,
Max the Great North Williams. What do you think that works?
Speaker 2 (00:38):
It works? It all works. I am from the most
northern state out of the three of us. You're a Michigan.
That's the correct term, isn't it.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
That's hilarious.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
So it was good for the michig.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
You're no Brown, I'm ben bowling today we are. We're
doing it with the help of a researchers social you,
Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
The Michigan Michigan Max and.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
The Michigan or Williams doing some uh doing some double duty. Here.
We are continuing our weird mission, our don Quixote esque
qixotic mission, to do an episode about every single state
in these United States where punch and windmills whenever we
get the chance. Well, that's on them from punching giants anyway. Yeah,
(01:28):
jousting them.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Yeah, we're all completely mad. We're insane people.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Anybody who says they're not completely mad is lying to
themselves or to you.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Correct. So where are we going Alaska.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Oh nice, nice, nice, I'm sorry, I'll ask her where
we're Oh Alaska, I don't even know. She's great, but
it's true. We are going to Alaska, which is huge.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
It's mad, big, y'all mad, big giant land masks much
bigger than Vatican City six hundred and sixty three thousand,
two hundred and sixty eight square my else over a
fifth of the side of the entire contiguous these United States,
which is three million, one hundred and nineteen thousand, eight
(02:10):
hundred and eighty four point six nine miles.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Take a breath square six six nine. Nice. Let's let's
not forget Thiku.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Mex left the sixth nine of their own purpose man
for effect.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
We're having a cloud outless moment. I feel so seen,
you know what. By way of segue, max mentions was
also big. World War Two. World War two, as any
history buff knows, began in nineteen thirty nine.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Also known as the Gnarly War.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Yes, also known as World War two the warranning. It
ended in nineteen forty five. As of now twenty twenty three,
as we record, World War two is currently the deadliest
and most destructive war in history. Full stop yeah, short
of like another nuke being detonated. It will probably you know,
hold that title simply because the nature of warfare has
(03:03):
just changed. It's a lot more targetable, it's a lot
more precise. Uh.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
This was a ground conflict, you know, with people murdering
each other with with guns. And then of course you
know the big ones, the big boy, the little man.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Big man, little boy, uh fat fat boy, little man
fat Uh No, little little boy.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Of fat man. That's rat Man. Yeah, that's right. Big
ups to Robert oh Oppenheimer. Anyone seen Have you seen
it yet? Whether have you seen Oppenheimer?
Speaker 1 (03:33):
I've read a lot about it. There's an excellent graphic
novel called Trinity. Yes that actually you remember this because
Matt Frederick and I. Matt introduced me to it and
we had we got a wild hair where we're going
to try to make a podcast out of it. But
from what I hear, Christopher Nolan basically nailed it.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
There is a documentary that's available right now on the
Criterion channel called The Day After Trinity, and that refers
to something that Oppenheimer said in an interview when he
was asked about the idea from the president at the
time of stemming nuclear proliferation or you know, kind of
pulling back nuclear you know, armaments or whatever. And Oppenheimer said,
(04:11):
where many years too late? That should have begun, that
effort should have begun the day after Trinity, which of
course refers to the test of the nuclear bomb.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
I want to shout out friend of the show, friend
of ours, Patrese, who lives in Australia, who had this
great suggestion talking about Oppenheimer movie, had this great suggestion
of doing an MCU approach to all these physicists and
nuclear related scientists. And I think stuff will get real
spicy when they get to Parsons, you know sex call
(04:44):
it guy. Well, moving on, right. War is hell. It
drives many innovations, but it also shows humanity the worst
of itself. More than fifty nations getting tangled in the conflict,
more than one hundred million souls are deployed. Books and
books and books have been written about World War Two,
(05:05):
not to mention the fact that films about World War
Two still come out continually every single year. Saving Ryan's
Privates no, sorry, the version Saving Private Ryane.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Yeah, storming the beaches in Normandy. All of that good, Yeah,
is Dunkirk World War two? Is that World War One? Yep,
Dunkirk is two and also an excellent Christopher Nolan film.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Oh yeah, a look at Christopher. So what we're saying
is it's easy for some of these conflicts and some
of these stories to get lost in the mix because
so many crazy, terrible things happened. And here is something
that you may not have known. I certainly didn't until
Max asked us about it. Noel, there were World War
two battles fought in Alaska, and of course, just to
(05:53):
be just so nobody else has to have this emotional
roller coaster that I had, Moose were not part of
the battles.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Yeah. I've always would loved the idea of like moose,
which is its own plural of course, being you know, armored,
like some sort of attack bear. You know situation.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
I told you when I got back because I had
to go to a producing show called Missing in Alaska
and spent like two weeks or a little more than
two weeks I think, in that state right as October
was coming, and Moose run the town. This is something
a lot of people who don't live in Alaska don't know.
(06:32):
Alaskans have a hard time celebrating Halloween because moose like pumpkins,
and they will just go and eat the jack of
lanterns and beat me here, Max, fucking no one can
stop them.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Yeah, they're massive. Yeah. If you if you kill a
moose in Tears of the Kingdom Legend of Zelda, it
nets you three pieces of prime meat.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Oh how many? How many pieces of prime meat do
other animals?
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Typically only one?
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Okay, So Zelta gets it, Nintendo gets it.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Nintendo also got World War Two because it's always, I mean,
this is not really the point of today's episode, but
I always I think that both of us find it
fascinating how Japan is one country that had to just
reinvent itself entirely, you know, essentially after having its old
way of life annihilated by a nuclear weapon. And they
did so with Gusto and and and repurposed themselves as
(07:25):
this incredibly important cultural, pop cultural mecca, you know, for
for everything from toys to manufacturing to just culture, yeah,
design all of this.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Nintendo was a playing card company. That's that's a success story.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
All right.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
So what we're saying is history of World War Two.
It's just shock full of terrible battles, lots of place
names that become legendary. We mentioned Dunkirk, but what about
Omaha Beach, Guadalcanal, Okinawa. To your point, there are three
names you may not have heard of at all, islands
off the coast of Alaska, adat Atu and Kiska. They
(08:05):
are part of the story of what's called the Allusion Campaign.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Yeah, the Elusive Allutian Campaign, a chain of small islands
known as the Aleutian Islands that separate the Bearing Sea
to the north from the main part of the Pacific
Ocean to the south. They form kind of an arc
to the southwest and then northwest for around eleven hundred
(08:30):
miles or eighteen hundred kilometers from the very tippity tip
of the Alaskan Peninsula to the Atu island that you mentioned.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Ben As the moose flies indeed, or.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
As it you know, gallops.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Yeah, the moose in Alaska can fly. If you have
never been to Alaska, just take that on. I think
you're thinking of Rocky as opposed to Bullwinkle. Oh maybe yet.
There are also a lot of costumes on the moose's
very popular. It's it's the it's the annual moose Cosplay festival.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
That's what you go mainstay on the wall of hunting lodges.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Yes, yeah, oh gosh, yeah. So Americans, the American forces
starting nineteen forty two, they struggle to take control of
two of these islands, Atula and Kiska. And not only
do they confront the Japanese, but they're really fighting two
different battles. Not only are you fighting human enemies, but
(09:30):
shout out to Jack London from to build a Fire,
you're fighting one of mankind's eternal enemies, the climate that
you were not evolved to exist in, the bitter bitter cold.
It is incredibly cold. And the story of this battle,
the series of conflicts, the defense of American soil. As
(09:51):
you point out, Max, it has largely disappeared from the
collective consciousness, which is why if you go to the
Library of Congress you're going to see titles like World
War Two's Unknown Campaign, because there hasn't been a film
about this yet. And this is making me think it's time.
(10:12):
It's time that we open up the pitch process for
ridiculous studios again.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Yeah, maybe we can bring in Nolan to the process.
He seems to be down for this type of content.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
So tell us a little bit about the Aleutian Islands. Man, what,
I've never been to those islands, but they're part of Alaska.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
No, but you may have heard of a chain of
volcanoes in the Pacific known as the Ring of Fire.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Correct, Johnny Cash.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Those are in fact a continuation of the Alaskan Allusian Range,
which are in fact underwater.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
And of course, the Johnny Cash song Ring of Fire
is entirely about the likelihood of volcanic explosions and earthquakes
in the Pacific.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Think about it. Read the lyrics the very least, the
volcanic explosion of love.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
There we go, and most of these islands do show
their volcanic origin. You can see evidence of that, and
some of the volcanoes on those islands remain active today,
thinking specifically of the Shishaldan volcano, which is near the
center of Unimak Island. The shores are not your typical
(11:23):
tourist destination.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
They're rocky.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
It's dangerous to approach them by water because the land
rises abruptly from the coast to these big, big mountains.
There's not really a fun beach, is what we're saying.
Oh and for eight thousand years, nobody lived there except
for Aleutian people.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
That's right, the Aluits also known as the Unangan. They
were the only occupants of these islands, and by the
time Russian explorers hit the scene around twenty five thousand,
Unang and indigenous people dispersed to occupy the whole of
(12:07):
the Aleutian Islands.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Yeah, and in seventeen forty one, Russian forces send two
dudes to explore the area. One is a Danish guy,
Vitus bearing.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Bearing Straight named after Hi might sound familiar. Yeah, I
didn't look it up, but that hasen.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Yeah, right there, It's like who invented the saxophone. So
there's another guy, Alexei Chirikov, and he is Russian, and
they're kind of doing like a maritime Lewis and Clark thing.
So their ships become separated in a storm, and this
(12:45):
leads Cherikov to quote unquote discover several of the Eastern Islands.
I'm saying quote unquote discover because, of course, for almost
ten thousand years other people were living there and they
were continually discovering where they lived. So Bearing quote unquote
discovered several of these Western islands. Things are well for
(13:07):
our buddy Vitas. He he dies during the voyage. The
crew survives. They come back to Russia. They say, you guys,
you know, we love fur coats, and the Russians are like, yeah, man,
we're Russian. Fur Coats are one of our you know,
they're one of our big things. And they say, there
are so many furry animals out there, we should go hunting.
(13:30):
So hunters come from all around Siberia flock toward these islands.
They move across the Aleutians to the Alaska mainland, and
this is where Russia gets its foothold in North America.
And they do this in a bloody parallel of what
US colonists would later do. They slaughter the Anangun people. Yeah. Yeah,
(13:52):
that's sort of the vibe of, you know, folks coming
into areas that they would like to think they discovered,
right and then just contending with the inconvenient fact that
they're already, like, you know, people hanging out there. Let's
tell Hey, let's tell Max. We hey, Max, we discovered
this studio.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
I'll slaughter you, I believe it. Yeah. The door locks
from the outside. Well, yeah, Max is a bloodthirsty conqueror. Yeah,
as well. As a crack producer.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Yes, and the first Nation's folks living there, the Unongun
who were not slaughtered, were enslaved or they were forced
to relocate. Eventually, Russia sells the islands and the rest
of Alaska to the United States in eighteen sixty seven.
And the street name for this was Seward's Folly or
Seward's ice box, because literally everybody else in America I
(14:43):
thought it was the dumbest idea.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
Oh random history fact right here. When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated,
it was a three prong assassination attempt to get Lincoln,
Andrew Johnson, and Seward. Seward actually got the attack happened
john and the attack didn't happen, but Seward survived the
assassination ten So that's his other footnote in history. That's
(15:06):
a smaller one behind he bought Alaska, Max with the facts.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
That seeking in the ponds backs and he's fallen.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
Lol.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
It's just for you right now here with the fact.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
So in nineteen forty two, you might have heard of
a little thing called Pearl Harbor. Six months before that,
that fateful Japanese attack that really kicked off World War
two in earnest in Hawaii, the Japanese were eyeing the
Aleutian Islands.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
They were Yes, this is very true. And once they
reached the island chain this archipelago, the Japanese started conducting.
Japanese forces started conducting airstrikes on Dutch Harbor, which was
the site of two US military bases. They started this
on June third and June fourth. Then they made landfall
at Kiska Island on June sixth, and then uh, just
(16:05):
a day later, they make landfall on Atu Island, about
two hundred miles away. They quickly establish pop up military
bases on both islands. Does it feel like some of
these indigenous names, you know, for these islands that obviously
descended from the people who lived there, were possibly inspiration
(16:26):
for some Star Wars things. Yeah, I know, that's a
good call.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
It island just really feels very much in the Star
Wars universe. The Japanese garrison their forces there, established military
bases on both Kiska and Atu Islands, and very similarly
(16:52):
to other islands in the Aleutian chain, Atu and Kiska
didn't really represent much of a military stronghold strategically speaking, right.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Yeah, I would agree with that. Man because they didn't
have a ton of resources. They're rocks in the far North.
They had a lot of harsh weather. It was they're
out of the way, they're out of the way, they're
out of the main way of the conflict. That they
have a lot of crazy storms and fog and rain,
(17:21):
and you know, it snows a lot. If you ask
historians after the fact, you'll hear a lot of them
argue that Japan seized those two islands because they wanted
to divert attention during the Japanese attack on Midway Island,
which was occurrying June fourth through seventh in nineteen forty two,
(17:42):
and so they were trying to get the US Navy
to misdirect its forces a diversion right right. And they
they also thought, apparently, and this makes sense, that holding
those islands could stop the US from invading Japan's home island,
because once you get to that top of the globe,
(18:03):
Japan is a lot closer to the Aleutian Islands than
we might assume.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Does it make sense maybe that the Japanese would have
targeted these island chains because it was something they were
kind of comfortable with in terms of you know, military operations,
you know, because it's similar layout to their home turf.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Yeah, it's similar, it's easier to get to. It's also yeah,
it goes into kind of the island hopping strategy. But
they are again the Bearing Sea and the Sea of
Altast separate them, but they're they're very close, you know
what I mean.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
Yeah, And jumping real quick, there is this interesting thread
that I've really been kind of pulling on in history,
and we've actually talked about it a number time. I
kind of think this is like part three or four
of a series that we have, which spoiler there's another
part or in works where it's like this fear of
Japanese invasion on the West coast of America. It was
(19:03):
never really a thing that was ever actually that close.
But you know, we have the fire balloons, we have
the guy who tried to fire bomb Oregon. Japan was
always trying to keep this narrative going like, hey, America, we're.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Not that far away, watch out, yeah, which is like.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
I mean, there's not really any proof that they ever
got to the point where they thought invading the US
was feasible because it's so far.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Well, yeah, and we should draw a differentiation there between
US the whole thing and continental US because Hawaii is
in the middle of the ocean. So from a strategic standpoint,
Pearl Harbor, the Pearl Harbor attack makes sense for Japan.
(19:44):
It would have been much more feasible than attacking SA
San Francisco anyway.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
But it was a big deal to have the Japanese
occupying any portion of American soil, no matter how out
of the way.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
One hundred percent. Like philosophically speaking, yes, how dare the
uh so? They know it's remote, they know it's barren,
but they're saying Japanese troops are on US soil, they're
occupying US land, and they stoke this fear amongst themselves,
not without some justification. They say, look, these forces might
(20:20):
this might be the first step in an attack on
Alaska or you know, even the entirety of the Pacific Northwest.
And the press is drumming up a lot of bloody
headlines about this. But the people in charge of the
American war effort, from what I understand, man, they're still
trying to figure out how to survive Pearl Harbor exactly.
(20:44):
That's that's you know, mission critical, that's like item number
one on the to do list, right right, and so
their attention is already kind of in a couple of
different places. Japan occupies these islands for months, and for
a while for the first few months, all the US
(21:04):
military does is sort of fly by and bomb stuff occasionally,
sort of an effort to show that they are doing something.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
In the meantime, the Japanese soldiers who have garrison on
these islands are doing a bang up job of getting
very cozy, relatively as cozy as you can get in
these very harsh climates. The Japanese Navy is keeping them
stocked with you know, snacks of their war snacks, and
also you know, arms.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Of cose and ammunition and fuel.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
And all that kind of stuff. So by January of
nineteen forty three, the US has sort of beefed up
its Alaskan Command to the tune of around ninety four
thousand soldiers. They've set up several bases around and on
other Aleutian islands, and on January eleventh, troops from that
Alaskan Command make landfall on Amchitka Island, which is about
(22:00):
fifty miles from Kiska Island, one of the two main
ones that the Japanese are occupying.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Yeah, and this is where we have to introduce US
Navy Rear Admiral Thomas C. Kincaid, And I want to
stop and say, you know, thank you to all our
veterans to Nina. And yes, we have not ever been
members of the Navy. And I will never not think
Rear Admiral is low key hilarious.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
It's funny, yeah, Ian. Yeah, A lot of a lot
of military terms associated with leadership do kind of have
a little bit of a teh quality to them. So
you guys cool by jumping real quick.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
I got some pretty intense facts right here. The temperature
currently on ODD two station in Alaska, yeah, is fifty
three degrees.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
We're recording this in August.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
Fifty three below, just fifty three degrees, and in Kiska
it is supposed to get up to fifty five today.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
Boiling global boiling.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Yeah, oh right, but that's not insane, right, that's what
we're talking, Like fifty three it's cold, but it's not like.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
It's the height of August. So it's the heighth of August,
so it'd be one of the warmest months in the
Northern hemisphere. That's about as hot as it gets, even
with all the hard work we've done throwing all those
pollutants in the air. Everybody get back to the coal
exactly because it's still it's still too chilly in Alasco anyway. Sorry, so,
(23:23):
US Navy Rear Admiral Kinkaid, No, why are we introducing
this guy?
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Well, because he set up a blockade of Atu and
Kiska to help kind of stem the flow of those supplies,
those snacks and armaments and all the other goodies that
the Japanese are supplying to the occupiers there. And on
March twenty sixth of nineteen forty three, the Japanese ships
that are afloat in the Bearing Sea try to get
(23:52):
around the blockade and deliver some supplies. In real this
is very Star Wars he too, remember that whole Star
Wars movie that's just about the blockade. Oh yeah, really
really powerful stuff. You know. No, it's not that movie
has always eluded me as so like talky you know,
government ye stuff. Which movie is? I think it was
the Phantom Menace that starts.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Off with with like all the alien guys talking about
in the brockade a brockadeh. I barely remember the fanom
did you ever hear this theory that and this is
this really interesting fan theory.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
That it was attack of the Clones. Actually that was
broad attack of the Clones.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
Sounds like that because they go get the clones because
they need to break the blockheads. Okay, hello, this is
future Max here, I the guy producing the episode, not
on the recording. Yeah, I led Noel Stray He's correct.
It is the Phantom Menace, not Attack of the Clones.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Uh. To be completely honest, I don't know the plot
of either of those movies. I've seen them.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
I've definitely seen them, but I don't know. I don't
know if you really remember anything else about the movie.
But I want to add this a dendem in here.
So there's that solved it that way was terrible to remember.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
Here's the question. Have you guys ever heard the theory
that Lucas originally wanted jar Jar Binks to be revealed
as a Sith lord?
Speaker 2 (25:11):
Yep? Is that true? Yeah? That's well, that's it's true.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
That's a theory. Okay, but it's like one of those things,
you know, wait until two am watched the YouTube documentary, Right,
it's way too long.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Maybe maybe he pivoted because the character was just so
blasphemously unpopular.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Yeah, and coded in some really racist boy howdy was it? Ever?
Speaker 2 (25:30):
And poor guy, there's a whole thing where the guy
that played the voice of jar Jar Binks. I believe
he's the voice, and he also was the model that
they based the CGI movements out of. That guy kind of.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
No fault of his own, sort of got canceled because of,
you know, because of George Lucas's ill informed attempts at
making that character.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
By the way, if you go into Google, because I
was gonna kind of look up who the actor was,
but he type jar jar Binks.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
First.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
First suggestion is jar Jar Binks is not a sith.
Second suggestion, jar Jar Banks is a Sith lord. Coo Oddly,
number three is jar jar Binks is a Sith lord,
et cetera.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Crossword It's like history.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
It rhymes you know, ye dancers theory or fan theory.
Anyway for the crossword anybody's playing.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
That, can we just say that that this look at
the blockade he's attempting to The Japanese ships are trying
to break through the blockade, but they are spotted by
some US ships that are patrolling the area, and a skirmish,
I guess you could call it begins, you know, a
sea battle. I don't know if it was big enough
to call it. Well. I had a name was the
Battle of the Common Door Ski Islands, which is a
(26:38):
fun name. But as we know, the Japanese have have
had a little bit of a head start. So there
already you know, out gunning and outnumbering. Yes, they're dug
in real good uh. And the US fleet has a
hard time matching their forces, and they are seriously hobbled,
you know, by the Japanese, the Japanese ships, So the
(26:58):
American side suffers some serious casualties. After quite a few
hours of fighting, the Japanese ships then suddenly decide to withdraw.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Why is that, you know, it's because they were worried
the heat was around the corner. They thought bombers were arriving,
because they were estimating how long it would take for
American forces to contact each other and how long from
there it would take for US bombers to come and
(27:28):
just rain fire on the islands.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Oh okay, okay, got it its own kind of ring
a fire there. So after the battle, the Japanese soldiers
that are garrison there on Atsu and Kiska are incredibly
isolated because they aren't. That flow of supplies they were
had grown accustomed to has stopped. It was more successful.
No more snacks, the no more snacks in the break
(27:51):
room exactly. They're having to kind of fend for themselves.
Their supplies are diminishing significantly. They do get intermittent delivery,
secret submarines delivering to them, but you can only go
so far with that, right because they're not huge.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
You know, you can't the submarines coming up and it's
throwing like a twenty four pack of chips out.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
Zero. These aren't even lays chips. This is what I want, ruffles?
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Right? Where are my ruffles?
Speaker 1 (28:18):
Okay? I suspect that the three of the three of
us might have the same hierarchy of chip oh.
Speaker 3 (28:23):
I think that's gonna have the Freedo's in there like
damn it and there.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Also ran anyway, that is not they do with it.
Because you're making a very important point. The whatever submarine
can deliver is probably going to be survival rations.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Yep. Are we talking like mr type things on the
Japanese side too? Or you know they have been different,
I wondered, and I'm just conjecturing here, Like you know,
obviously the Japanese when did like dry like ramen noodles
and things become invented after.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
World War it was after World War two, that's right,
and we can we talked about that recently.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
But I'm wondering what those rations might have looked like
because we know about mries. We talked about that pretty extensively.
I just have curious as to what Japanese rations looked like,
if there was any parallel thinking there.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
They had something called imperial Japanese rations that were served
in these little tin boxes and you had to cook
them yourself. There's actually there are a couple of articles
and sources you can find. They usually had rice and
then some kind of protein and then vegetables, pickled vegetables
most likely, and green tea. Sometimes you would get barley
(29:37):
instead of rice, and then you were sort of expected
to forage for other stuff. So these guys, if they're
getting Imperial, they might be getting those rations. They might
just be getting rice and being told, hey, get water,
cook the rice. It's definitely not ideal, and the American
forces are thinking, all right, This is our opportunity to
(30:00):
to storm the beach to land troops on the islands
and take the combat to these Japanese garrisons. This is
the origin of something with the unfortunate name Operation land Crab.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Have I told you that my nickname for my girlfriend
is the crab?
Speaker 1 (30:17):
No?
Speaker 2 (30:18):
Not. I often refer to as the crab, like, not
just my little crab or my crab. I say hello
the crab, and it's sometimes when I text her, I'll
just say the crab question mark, how is an emoji
that is a crab? She described herself as a bit
of a recluse early on in our relationship, so I
call it hermit crab. But it's become a term of affection,
(30:38):
so I often refer to her as the crab. So
our home is also littered with crab plushies and crab.
I have like a pair of crocs with crab. What
do you call those little dingles that go on? Yeah,
you know the little the decorative flare for for crocs.
Do you guys do you have a name based on
I'm the butterfly because she thinks I'm a bit of
a she's a shut in. I'm a social butter. Oh okay,
(31:00):
but these terms have taken on their own meanings.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Yeah, what, Every relationship creates its own language.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
My girlfriend would approve of Operation land Crab, and then
I hear that, I immediately think of her with affection.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
That's what that one's for you day. Did she listen
to the show?
Speaker 2 (31:16):
Nope.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
So, like we said, American ships have been sporadically bombing
the islands for a while. On May eleventh, nineteen forty three,
the US enacts Operation land Crab. Eleven thousand US troops
land on Atu, which is again not the world's biggest island.
The Americans are a little schuffed about this. They're a
(31:45):
little optimistic. They say, we're gonna bedone in like a
couple of days, you guys, because they didn't know how
bad the weather was going to be, they didn't know
how terrible the terrain was. Their short mission ends up
lasting more than two weeks. I love military like like
like classic military men terms of phrase, you know, when
(32:08):
describing conflicts, and Lieutenant Donald E. Dwindle, which is another
great military man name, described it as such.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
It was rugged. The whole damn deal was rugged, like
attacking a pill box by way of a type rope
in winter. I don't quite get it, attacking a pill
box by way of a tight rope.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
Yeah, so like you know what pillboxes you've got that
it's like a concrete enclosure with a little slit where
people can shoot.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
Oh not actually a pill box of pills. Okay, sorry
the visual wasn't working on me, but I get it now.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
But yeah, but still that is a beautiful turn of language.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
They also so, now that's what we talked about the
very beginning. So they have two enemies. Now, they have
the Japanese forces who are already entrenched and dug in,
and then they have the just terrible, terrible weather. Or
it turns out that the weather was responsible for more
US casualties than any actual enemy combatant.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
That's right, more than twenty one hundred American soldiers were
removed from the conflict. Taken out of action is how
the National Park Service refers to this as in their
article Battle of att Tu sixty years later, which we
highly recommend giving a read. So that means killed or injured, right,
taken out of combat right due to the horrible conditions.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Yeah, they are no longer operators.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Things like disease would have come into play, you know,
right exactly, so these would would have been also referred
to as non battle injuries, while around seventeen hundred were
killed or injured by Japanese forces.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
Yeah, it turns out when they were thinking through operation
land craft, despite the fact that they were familiar with
the islands, despite the fact that people in general understand
Alaska's cold Uncle Sam and not taking the weather into account,
so they didn't have the right kind of gear to
operate there. They were falling victim to frostbite exposure. Trench
(34:13):
foot is thankfully something I hope no one's ever experienced.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
This is it like gang green.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
It's super nasty. It can become gang green. It's like
you have your imagine you're walking through wet, crappy environments
for weeks and you never get to change your socks,
so it basically your foot starts to rot, yeah essentially,
or just like oh god, yeah. If you don't treat it,
it can become gangrenous and result in amputation.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
Lots of bacteria and things can form in this nasty
kind of fetid, closed situation, you know, and.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
You're turning your foot into a terrarium. For bacteria.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
Right.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
Even more so, think of it as like really advanced
athletes foot terrible, terrible stuff, and you know, we have
to exercise humanity. Realized that a lot of these Japanese
soldiers are laboring under the same brutal conditions. They're not
having a good day either, just like any war. I'm
sure there are a lot of soldiers on either side
who are going.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
Oh why, why, why do I have to be here?
Speaker 1 (35:18):
But because these guys weren't dressed warmly enough, the US
soldiers had to keep moving to keep their circulation going,
and sometimes that meant they would expose themselves to enemy fire.
Some of them were too beat up to walk, so
they crawled around and when they killed Japanese soldiers, they
(35:39):
stole their clothing to stay warm. And that leads to
friendly fire, because now you are dressed as an enemy soldier.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
A term friendly fire always kind of cracks me up.
It's the least friendly thing you can imagine it just
of course that to say the obvious, but it refers to,
you know, accidentally shooting someone that's on your team.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Right, right, And it is a very real thing, like
an own goal. Yeah, it has happened in every single
modern conflict, so this battle has already kind of been decided.
The fate of the Japanese is sealed as soon as
the Americans establish air and naval supremacy, which despite Pearl Harper,
(36:21):
is still only a matter of time because the US
is much closer. They cut those supply lines. They made
it unlikely for reinforcements to arrive, and by May, the
last remaining Japanese troops were starving. Yeah, give it, run
it out of bullets.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Give a quick read or a long read too. It's
not particularly long article, but to the Battle of the
Aleutian Islands from history dot Com from back in two
thousand and nine. It is actually updated as recently as
twenty twenty, so lots of good resources there for this
chronology that we're pulling from. The commander of the Japanese
force is a Colonel at Yasuyo Yamasaki, decides to give
(36:59):
it one last tarah, one last push, and right before
morning on May twenty ninth, he and he leading his forces,
they execute what's referred to a Bonzai charge, which is
a term that I was not intimately familiar with. This
(37:19):
was apparently a tactic that was employed during the war
in the Pacific, of course.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
Overwhelming numbers. That's right, everybody runs.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
It once and so Yamasaki's troops do the big charge.
It really is kind of like just a murderous rampage essentially, right.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
Yeah, it really is, and it's a dangerous tactic as well.
This becomes one of the largest bondsi charges of its time.
From where you're not worried about people dying, you're putting
all your cards on the table, cannon fodder city, You're
literally throwing bodies at a problem. And they did this
out of desperation. So they charge into the American lines.
(37:59):
They sweep through the combat outpost, they get all the
way to the support troops in the rear of the camp.
They almost succeed, but after a final attack on May thirtieth,
the US soldiers win. The day, they've counted more than
two thousand Japanese casualties, including the commander they lost around
(38:22):
The US lost around one thousand men retaking Atu, and
then within two days they had secured the island and
the Battle of Atu, the only land battle ever fought
on American soil, and World War Two was over. Shout
out also to the National Park Service right there.
Speaker 2 (38:40):
Articles They truly do you know, just what we just
described Ben sounds more like an episode of Game of Thrones,
it really does modern warfare. And then that's why it
makes sense this is such a deadly war because these
types of tactics, they just don't make sense anymore, you know,
because of the nature of combat has just changed. So
this type of land charge, I just picture men on
(39:01):
horses with lances or something, you know, but instead it's people,
you know, running while firing machine guns and bayoneting people
and stuff. But it's not that different.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
And honestly, to give you a sense of the desperation
when people are starving and you want them to make
a suicide run like this, sometimes all you have to
do is tell them that there's food in the enemy camp.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
Jesus right, that level of desperation is just mind boggling. Well,
this might sound like the end of the story. There
is one more operation of note that I think is
worth the very least kind of breezing through without for
fear of giving short shrift to literally the loss of
human lives and just the vast, overwhelmingly deadly nature of
(39:41):
this entire conflict. This one actually was not so bad.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
This is the ridiculous one.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
It is.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
This is the ridiculous one. So remember we said there
were two islands that were that form the setting or
the theater for this conflict. The eleventh Army Air Force
and the Navy Patrol Wing four get their assignment to
take back Kiska Island in something called Operation Cottage, which
(40:07):
is not as creative. They're told, literally, push the enemy
into the sea, get the island back. And this after Atu.
Literally push them into the sea, push them into the sea.
And so they said, look, we've got lessons learned. We're
going to give you the right clothing. We're gonna give
you the right gear and equipment, and you are going
(40:28):
to encounter way Or troops and we face at Atu.
And so on August fifth, nineteen forty three, they arrive
at Kiska. They've already been told the weather's going to
be horrible. This is going to be way harder than
the other island. The weather is nice, the sea is quiet,
and there's no one there.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
Yeah, they have themselves a little beach chill. Now they don't.
But there's certainly probably surprised, you know, in the positive direction,
because they've been prepared for the absolute worst, and they
get there and it's an absolute kikawalk. And there is
an actual reason for this. The Japanese forces had abandoned
their post on July twenty ninth, nineteen forty three. The
(41:09):
Japanese forces stationed on Kiska decided to hide tailor out
of there. Kiska City, which is what they were referring
to their outpost as was wired with explosives and demolish
including all of their supplies, ammunition and outposts. Yeah, booby trap,
(41:31):
yeah exactly. But then they did as an advance of
the Americans arriving though, right, Yeah, they just like they
didn't want to leave them anything that would be of use.
Speaker 1 (41:38):
Yeah. We have a statement from Carl Kosokobek, who was there,
is a Japanese veteran, and said, quote, we threw our
rifles and bayonets into the water and then we went away.
They never saw us. So in fifty five minutes, the
entire Japanese force there over five thousand people boarded the vessel.
(42:00):
They drifted off silently into the night. And the word
for that is noctificant, which we recently learned, Oh wow,
to go about in the night.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
That's a good one. What makes sense nocturnal in the root.
I imagine the Allies had a hard time believing that
this wasn't some sort of rouse.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
Yeah, imagine running, Okay, they're gonna pop out any minute,
there's somebody, because it's ridiculous, right. Imagine you're you're running
full bore onto the shore. You've got your uh, you've
got farm locked and loaded. You might be yelling. You
might just be like, ah, how long do you keep
yelling until you notice that no one's there except maybe
(42:38):
maybe there's a moose who is like, come on, man.
Speaker 2 (42:40):
I just picture it's like that scene in Spinal Tap
where they're like lost and can't find the stage and
they're just pumped up like rock and roll, and then
they turn a corner and I realized that they're not
there yet, so they kind of like get flustered and
then okay, okay, let's get back, let's get the energy back.
I picture them like screaming and then they turn a corner.
No one's there. Okay, Okay, they're definitely gonna be around
this next Okay, let's get up, let's get up the
(43:01):
energy again, and then no on after you know, again
in our version of events, several of these highs and lows,
they finally accept the fact that there truly is no
one around.
Speaker 1 (43:12):
Yes, and they are still fighting the weather. So there
are unfortunately fatalities. Twenty four Allied troops are killed by
again friendly fire. Four die due to Japanese booby traps. Yeah,
seventy one die when one ship hits a floating mine.
And then a lot of other guys one hundred and
(43:36):
sixty eight either get wounded or they fall ill, probably
do at least in part to the weather.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
That's right, We're around eight days of this, looking around
and realizing that finally no one was there. This was
at the end of the day. On paper, I guess,
perhaps to save face, I would imagine written off as
a training exercise.
Speaker 1 (43:56):
Okay, sure, yes, that's like I have a bad habit.
Noel and Max both know this. I have a bad
habit of doing something klutzy and then just immediately look
at yeah whomever has seen it, making eye contact and
yelling on purpose.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
Yeah, I've borrowed that tactic from you. It's a good one, Ben,
It's a good one. So yeah, at the end of
the day, this represents a defeat of the Japanese forces
at the Aleutian Islands, and very interesting story. It's got
some you know, the intense the intensity of this conflict
is represented. We got a little ridiculousness thrown in there.
(44:34):
I mean, obviously, at the end of the day, none
of this can be seen as purely ridiculous, although the
foibles and follies of man are nothing if not ridiculous
at times. But I think this is a really interesting
kind of little encapsulation of the entire conflict. And I'm
surprised that it hasn't been dramatized, you know, because it
seems like exactly the kind of story that would really
(44:56):
play well on on screen.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
I want to at least see the moment where they
run onto the abandoned island. Yeah, I want that definitely.
Speaker 2 (45:04):
How it went down, there's no question, and you.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
Know, you describe it well. It is a microcosm of
a larger, horrific conflict that fundamentally altered the course of
the world, and the consequences of World War Two continue
to echo and resonate today. The war continues for two
years after the Battle of the Aleutian Islands, Japan finally
(45:29):
surrenders to the Allies on September second, nineteen forty five.
This basically ends World War Two. And now if you
go to these islands you'll see the battlefields there have
become national historical landmarks in recognition of this singular, unique
conflict that again a lot of people don't know about,
(45:52):
and that's why we aller big big thanks to our
research associate and super producer Max the the Great North Michigan,
the Michigan Goose, all of this things, it contains a
multitude Williams.
Speaker 3 (46:09):
And also there are moose in Michigan. Also, do you
guys know what the plural of moose is?
Speaker 2 (46:14):
Moose? You already talked about that. It was the first
thing I said. It's plural. Yeah, it's one of my
favorite things about the humble moose. But yeah, also huge
thanks to the to the to.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
The elder Williams Alex who composed this banging track that
you're listening to right this very second.
Speaker 2 (46:28):
Jonathan Strickland are a human booby trap if ever there was.
Speaker 1 (46:32):
Oh, he'll like that one aka the quizt And of
course big big thanks to Eves Jeffcoat, who, unlike Tipper Gore,
has a show coming out on our network.
Speaker 2 (46:41):
Sure we cleared that one up. Yeah, that was a
good save.
Speaker 1 (46:44):
Yeah, and thanks of course to Christopher Hasiotis who just
I was talking with Christopher earlier and he hipped me
to some amazing facts about the four horsemen of the Apocalypse,
specifically famine.
Speaker 2 (46:56):
Okay, yeah, it's a hungry boy.
Speaker 1 (46:58):
He's that kind of dude's next time, folks.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. Let's hear it for our super producer,
Max the Great North Williams. What do you think that works?
Speaker 2 (00:38):
It works? It all works. I am from the most
northern state out of the three of us. You're a Michigan.
That's the correct term, isn't it.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
That's hilarious.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
So it was good for the michig.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
You're no Brown, I'm ben bowling today we are. We're
doing it with the help of a researchers social you,
Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
The Michigan Michigan Max and.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
The Michigan or Williams doing some uh doing some double duty. Here.
We are continuing our weird mission, our don Quixote esque
qixotic mission, to do an episode about every single state
in these United States where punch and windmills whenever we
get the chance. Well, that's on them from punching giants anyway. Yeah,
(01:28):
jousting them.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Yeah, we're all completely mad. We're insane people.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Anybody who says they're not completely mad is lying to
themselves or to you.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Correct. So where are we going Alaska.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Oh nice, nice, nice, I'm sorry, I'll ask her where
we're Oh Alaska, I don't even know. She's great, but
it's true. We are going to Alaska, which is huge.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
It's mad, big, y'all mad, big giant land masks much
bigger than Vatican City six hundred and sixty three thousand,
two hundred and sixty eight square my else over a
fifth of the side of the entire contiguous these United States,
which is three million, one hundred and nineteen thousand, eight
(02:10):
hundred and eighty four point six nine miles.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Take a breath square six six nine. Nice. Let's let's
not forget Thiku.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Mex left the sixth nine of their own purpose man
for effect.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
We're having a cloud outless moment. I feel so seen,
you know what. By way of segue, max mentions was
also big. World War Two. World War two, as any
history buff knows, began in nineteen thirty nine.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Also known as the Gnarly War.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Yes, also known as World War two the warranning. It
ended in nineteen forty five. As of now twenty twenty three,
as we record, World War two is currently the deadliest
and most destructive war in history. Full stop yeah, short
of like another nuke being detonated. It will probably you know,
hold that title simply because the nature of warfare has
(03:03):
just changed. It's a lot more targetable, it's a lot
more precise. Uh.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
This was a ground conflict, you know, with people murdering
each other with with guns. And then of course you
know the big ones, the big boy, the little man.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Big man, little boy, uh fat fat boy, little man
fat Uh No, little little boy.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Of fat man. That's rat Man. Yeah, that's right. Big
ups to Robert oh Oppenheimer. Anyone seen Have you seen
it yet? Whether have you seen Oppenheimer?
Speaker 1 (03:33):
I've read a lot about it. There's an excellent graphic
novel called Trinity. Yes that actually you remember this because
Matt Frederick and I. Matt introduced me to it and
we had we got a wild hair where we're going
to try to make a podcast out of it. But
from what I hear, Christopher Nolan basically nailed it.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
There is a documentary that's available right now on the
Criterion channel called The Day After Trinity, and that refers
to something that Oppenheimer said in an interview when he
was asked about the idea from the president at the
time of stemming nuclear proliferation or you know, kind of
pulling back nuclear you know, armaments or whatever. And Oppenheimer said,
(04:11):
where many years too late? That should have begun, that
effort should have begun the day after Trinity, which of
course refers to the test of the nuclear bomb.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
I want to shout out friend of the show, friend
of ours, Patrese, who lives in Australia, who had this
great suggestion talking about Oppenheimer movie, had this great suggestion
of doing an MCU approach to all these physicists and
nuclear related scientists. And I think stuff will get real
spicy when they get to Parsons, you know sex call
(04:44):
it guy. Well, moving on, right. War is hell. It
drives many innovations, but it also shows humanity the worst
of itself. More than fifty nations getting tangled in the conflict,
more than one hundred million souls are deployed. Books and
books and books have been written about World War Two,
(05:05):
not to mention the fact that films about World War
Two still come out continually every single year. Saving Ryan's
Privates no, sorry, the version Saving Private Ryane.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Yeah, storming the beaches in Normandy. All of that good, Yeah,
is Dunkirk World War two? Is that World War One? Yep,
Dunkirk is two and also an excellent Christopher Nolan film.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Oh yeah, a look at Christopher. So what we're saying
is it's easy for some of these conflicts and some
of these stories to get lost in the mix because
so many crazy, terrible things happened. And here is something
that you may not have known. I certainly didn't until
Max asked us about it. Noel, there were World War
two battles fought in Alaska, and of course, just to
(05:53):
be just so nobody else has to have this emotional
roller coaster that I had, Moose were not part of
the battles.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Yeah. I've always would loved the idea of like moose,
which is its own plural of course, being you know, armored,
like some sort of attack bear. You know situation.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
I told you when I got back because I had
to go to a producing show called Missing in Alaska
and spent like two weeks or a little more than
two weeks I think, in that state right as October
was coming, and Moose run the town. This is something
a lot of people who don't live in Alaska don't know.
(06:32):
Alaskans have a hard time celebrating Halloween because moose like pumpkins,
and they will just go and eat the jack of
lanterns and beat me here, Max, fucking no one can
stop them.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Yeah, they're massive. Yeah. If you if you kill a
moose in Tears of the Kingdom Legend of Zelda, it
nets you three pieces of prime meat.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Oh how many? How many pieces of prime meat do
other animals?
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Typically only one?
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Okay, So Zelta gets it, Nintendo gets it.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Nintendo also got World War Two because it's always, I mean,
this is not really the point of today's episode, but
I always I think that both of us find it
fascinating how Japan is one country that had to just
reinvent itself entirely, you know, essentially after having its old
way of life annihilated by a nuclear weapon. And they
did so with Gusto and and and repurposed themselves as
(07:25):
this incredibly important cultural, pop cultural mecca, you know, for
for everything from toys to manufacturing to just culture, yeah,
design all of this.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Nintendo was a playing card company. That's that's a success story.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
All right.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
So what we're saying is history of World War Two.
It's just shock full of terrible battles, lots of place
names that become legendary. We mentioned Dunkirk, but what about
Omaha Beach, Guadalcanal, Okinawa. To your point, there are three
names you may not have heard of at all, islands
off the coast of Alaska, adat Atu and Kiska. They
(08:05):
are part of the story of what's called the Allusion Campaign.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Yeah, the Elusive Allutian Campaign, a chain of small islands
known as the Aleutian Islands that separate the Bearing Sea
to the north from the main part of the Pacific
Ocean to the south. They form kind of an arc
to the southwest and then northwest for around eleven hundred
(08:30):
miles or eighteen hundred kilometers from the very tippity tip
of the Alaskan Peninsula to the Atu island that you mentioned.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Ben As the moose flies indeed, or.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
As it you know, gallops.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Yeah, the moose in Alaska can fly. If you have
never been to Alaska, just take that on. I think
you're thinking of Rocky as opposed to Bullwinkle. Oh maybe yet.
There are also a lot of costumes on the moose's
very popular. It's it's the it's the annual moose Cosplay festival.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
That's what you go mainstay on the wall of hunting lodges.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Yes, yeah, oh gosh, yeah. So Americans, the American forces
starting nineteen forty two, they struggle to take control of
two of these islands, Atula and Kiska. And not only
do they confront the Japanese, but they're really fighting two
different battles. Not only are you fighting human enemies, but
(09:30):
shout out to Jack London from to build a Fire,
you're fighting one of mankind's eternal enemies, the climate that
you were not evolved to exist in, the bitter bitter cold.
It is incredibly cold. And the story of this battle,
the series of conflicts, the defense of American soil. As
(09:51):
you point out, Max, it has largely disappeared from the
collective consciousness, which is why if you go to the
Library of Congress you're going to see titles like World
War Two's Unknown Campaign, because there hasn't been a film
about this yet. And this is making me think it's time.
(10:12):
It's time that we open up the pitch process for
ridiculous studios again.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Yeah, maybe we can bring in Nolan to the process.
He seems to be down for this type of content.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
So tell us a little bit about the Aleutian Islands. Man, what,
I've never been to those islands, but they're part of Alaska.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
No, but you may have heard of a chain of
volcanoes in the Pacific known as the Ring of Fire.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Correct, Johnny Cash.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Those are in fact a continuation of the Alaskan Allusian Range,
which are in fact underwater.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
And of course, the Johnny Cash song Ring of Fire
is entirely about the likelihood of volcanic explosions and earthquakes
in the Pacific.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Think about it. Read the lyrics the very least, the
volcanic explosion of love.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
There we go, and most of these islands do show
their volcanic origin. You can see evidence of that, and
some of the volcanoes on those islands remain active today,
thinking specifically of the Shishaldan volcano, which is near the
center of Unimak Island. The shores are not your typical
(11:23):
tourist destination.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
They're rocky.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
It's dangerous to approach them by water because the land
rises abruptly from the coast to these big, big mountains.
There's not really a fun beach, is what we're saying.
Oh and for eight thousand years, nobody lived there except
for Aleutian people.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
That's right, the Aluits also known as the Unangan. They
were the only occupants of these islands, and by the
time Russian explorers hit the scene around twenty five thousand,
Unang and indigenous people dispersed to occupy the whole of
(12:07):
the Aleutian Islands.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Yeah, and in seventeen forty one, Russian forces send two
dudes to explore the area. One is a Danish guy,
Vitus bearing.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Bearing Straight named after Hi might sound familiar. Yeah, I
didn't look it up, but that hasen.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Yeah, right there, It's like who invented the saxophone. So
there's another guy, Alexei Chirikov, and he is Russian, and
they're kind of doing like a maritime Lewis and Clark thing.
So their ships become separated in a storm, and this
(12:45):
leads Cherikov to quote unquote discover several of the Eastern Islands.
I'm saying quote unquote discover because, of course, for almost
ten thousand years other people were living there and they
were continually discovering where they lived. So Bearing quote unquote
discovered several of these Western islands. Things are well for
(13:07):
our buddy Vitas. He he dies during the voyage. The
crew survives. They come back to Russia. They say, you guys,
you know, we love fur coats, and the Russians are like, yeah, man,
we're Russian. Fur Coats are one of our you know,
they're one of our big things. And they say, there
are so many furry animals out there, we should go hunting.
(13:30):
So hunters come from all around Siberia flock toward these islands.
They move across the Aleutians to the Alaska mainland, and
this is where Russia gets its foothold in North America.
And they do this in a bloody parallel of what
US colonists would later do. They slaughter the Anangun people. Yeah. Yeah,
(13:52):
that's sort of the vibe of, you know, folks coming
into areas that they would like to think they discovered,
right and then just contending with the inconvenient fact that
they're already, like, you know, people hanging out there. Let's
tell Hey, let's tell Max. We hey, Max, we discovered
this studio.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
I'll slaughter you, I believe it. Yeah. The door locks
from the outside. Well, yeah, Max is a bloodthirsty conqueror. Yeah,
as well. As a crack producer.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Yes, and the first Nation's folks living there, the Unongun
who were not slaughtered, were enslaved or they were forced
to relocate. Eventually, Russia sells the islands and the rest
of Alaska to the United States in eighteen sixty seven.
And the street name for this was Seward's Folly or
Seward's ice box, because literally everybody else in America I
(14:43):
thought it was the dumbest idea.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
Oh random history fact right here. When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated,
it was a three prong assassination attempt to get Lincoln,
Andrew Johnson, and Seward. Seward actually got the attack happened
john and the attack didn't happen, but Seward survived the
assassination ten So that's his other footnote in history. That's
(15:06):
a smaller one behind he bought Alaska, Max with the facts.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
That seeking in the ponds backs and he's fallen.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
Lol.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
It's just for you right now here with the fact.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
So in nineteen forty two, you might have heard of
a little thing called Pearl Harbor. Six months before that,
that fateful Japanese attack that really kicked off World War
two in earnest in Hawaii, the Japanese were eyeing the
Aleutian Islands.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
They were Yes, this is very true. And once they
reached the island chain this archipelago, the Japanese started conducting.
Japanese forces started conducting airstrikes on Dutch Harbor, which was
the site of two US military bases. They started this
on June third and June fourth. Then they made landfall
at Kiska Island on June sixth, and then uh, just
(16:05):
a day later, they make landfall on Atu Island, about
two hundred miles away. They quickly establish pop up military
bases on both islands. Does it feel like some of
these indigenous names, you know, for these islands that obviously
descended from the people who lived there, were possibly inspiration
(16:26):
for some Star Wars things. Yeah, I know, that's a
good call.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
It island just really feels very much in the Star
Wars universe. The Japanese garrison their forces there, established military
bases on both Kiska and Atu Islands, and very similarly
(16:52):
to other islands in the Aleutian chain, Atu and Kiska
didn't really represent much of a military stronghold strategically speaking, right.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Yeah, I would agree with that. Man because they didn't
have a ton of resources. They're rocks in the far North.
They had a lot of harsh weather. It was they're
out of the way, they're out of the way, they're
out of the main way of the conflict. That they
have a lot of crazy storms and fog and rain,
(17:21):
and you know, it snows a lot. If you ask
historians after the fact, you'll hear a lot of them
argue that Japan seized those two islands because they wanted
to divert attention during the Japanese attack on Midway Island,
which was occurrying June fourth through seventh in nineteen forty two,
(17:42):
and so they were trying to get the US Navy
to misdirect its forces a diversion right right. And they
they also thought, apparently, and this makes sense, that holding
those islands could stop the US from invading Japan's home island,
because once you get to that top of the globe,
(18:03):
Japan is a lot closer to the Aleutian Islands than
we might assume.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Does it make sense maybe that the Japanese would have
targeted these island chains because it was something they were
kind of comfortable with in terms of you know, military operations,
you know, because it's similar layout to their home turf.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Yeah, it's similar, it's easier to get to. It's also yeah,
it goes into kind of the island hopping strategy. But
they are again the Bearing Sea and the Sea of
Altast separate them, but they're they're very close, you know
what I mean.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
Yeah, And jumping real quick, there is this interesting thread
that I've really been kind of pulling on in history,
and we've actually talked about it a number time. I
kind of think this is like part three or four
of a series that we have, which spoiler there's another
part or in works where it's like this fear of
Japanese invasion on the West coast of America. It was
(19:03):
never really a thing that was ever actually that close.
But you know, we have the fire balloons, we have
the guy who tried to fire bomb Oregon. Japan was
always trying to keep this narrative going like, hey, America, we're.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Not that far away, watch out, yeah, which is like.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
I mean, there's not really any proof that they ever
got to the point where they thought invading the US
was feasible because it's so far.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Well, yeah, and we should draw a differentiation there between
US the whole thing and continental US because Hawaii is
in the middle of the ocean. So from a strategic standpoint,
Pearl Harbor, the Pearl Harbor attack makes sense for Japan.
(19:44):
It would have been much more feasible than attacking SA
San Francisco anyway.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
But it was a big deal to have the Japanese
occupying any portion of American soil, no matter how out
of the way.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
One hundred percent. Like philosophically speaking, yes, how dare the
uh so? They know it's remote, they know it's barren,
but they're saying Japanese troops are on US soil, they're
occupying US land, and they stoke this fear amongst themselves,
not without some justification. They say, look, these forces might
(20:20):
this might be the first step in an attack on
Alaska or you know, even the entirety of the Pacific Northwest.
And the press is drumming up a lot of bloody
headlines about this. But the people in charge of the
American war effort, from what I understand, man, they're still
trying to figure out how to survive Pearl Harbor exactly.
(20:44):
That's that's you know, mission critical, that's like item number
one on the to do list, right right, and so
their attention is already kind of in a couple of
different places. Japan occupies these islands for months, and for
a while for the first few months, all the US
(21:04):
military does is sort of fly by and bomb stuff occasionally,
sort of an effort to show that they are doing something.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
In the meantime, the Japanese soldiers who have garrison on
these islands are doing a bang up job of getting
very cozy, relatively as cozy as you can get in
these very harsh climates. The Japanese Navy is keeping them
stocked with you know, snacks of their war snacks, and
also you know, arms.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Of cose and ammunition and fuel.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
And all that kind of stuff. So by January of
nineteen forty three, the US has sort of beefed up
its Alaskan Command to the tune of around ninety four
thousand soldiers. They've set up several bases around and on
other Aleutian islands, and on January eleventh, troops from that
Alaskan Command make landfall on Amchitka Island, which is about
(22:00):
fifty miles from Kiska Island, one of the two main
ones that the Japanese are occupying.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Yeah, and this is where we have to introduce US
Navy Rear Admiral Thomas C. Kincaid, And I want to
stop and say, you know, thank you to all our
veterans to Nina. And yes, we have not ever been
members of the Navy. And I will never not think
Rear Admiral is low key hilarious.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
It's funny, yeah, Ian. Yeah, A lot of a lot
of military terms associated with leadership do kind of have
a little bit of a teh quality to them. So
you guys cool by jumping real quick.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
I got some pretty intense facts right here. The temperature
currently on ODD two station in Alaska, yeah, is fifty
three degrees.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
We're recording this in August.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
Fifty three below, just fifty three degrees, and in Kiska
it is supposed to get up to fifty five today.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
Boiling global boiling.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Yeah, oh right, but that's not insane, right, that's what
we're talking, Like fifty three it's cold, but it's not like.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
It's the height of August. So it's the heighth of August,
so it'd be one of the warmest months in the
Northern hemisphere. That's about as hot as it gets, even
with all the hard work we've done throwing all those
pollutants in the air. Everybody get back to the coal
exactly because it's still it's still too chilly in Alasco anyway. Sorry, so,
(23:23):
US Navy Rear Admiral Kinkaid, No, why are we introducing
this guy?
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Well, because he set up a blockade of Atu and
Kiska to help kind of stem the flow of those supplies,
those snacks and armaments and all the other goodies that
the Japanese are supplying to the occupiers there. And on
March twenty sixth of nineteen forty three, the Japanese ships
that are afloat in the Bearing Sea try to get
(23:52):
around the blockade and deliver some supplies. In real this
is very Star Wars he too, remember that whole Star
Wars movie that's just about the blockade. Oh yeah, really
really powerful stuff. You know. No, it's not that movie
has always eluded me as so like talky you know,
government ye stuff. Which movie is? I think it was
the Phantom Menace that starts.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Off with with like all the alien guys talking about
in the brockade a brockadeh. I barely remember the fanom
did you ever hear this theory that and this is
this really interesting fan theory.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
That it was attack of the Clones. Actually that was
broad attack of the Clones.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
Sounds like that because they go get the clones because
they need to break the blockheads. Okay, hello, this is
future Max here, I the guy producing the episode, not
on the recording. Yeah, I led Noel Stray He's correct.
It is the Phantom Menace, not Attack of the Clones.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Uh. To be completely honest, I don't know the plot
of either of those movies. I've seen them.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
I've definitely seen them, but I don't know. I don't
know if you really remember anything else about the movie.
But I want to add this a dendem in here.
So there's that solved it that way was terrible to remember.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
Here's the question. Have you guys ever heard the theory
that Lucas originally wanted jar Jar Binks to be revealed
as a Sith lord?
Speaker 2 (25:11):
Yep? Is that true? Yeah? That's well, that's it's true.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
That's a theory. Okay, but it's like one of those things,
you know, wait until two am watched the YouTube documentary, Right,
it's way too long.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Maybe maybe he pivoted because the character was just so
blasphemously unpopular.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Yeah, and coded in some really racist boy howdy was it? Ever?
Speaker 2 (25:30):
And poor guy, there's a whole thing where the guy
that played the voice of jar Jar Binks. I believe
he's the voice, and he also was the model that
they based the CGI movements out of. That guy kind of.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
No fault of his own, sort of got canceled because of,
you know, because of George Lucas's ill informed attempts at
making that character.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
By the way, if you go into Google, because I
was gonna kind of look up who the actor was,
but he type jar jar Binks.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
First.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
First suggestion is jar Jar Binks is not a sith.
Second suggestion, jar Jar Banks is a Sith lord. Coo Oddly,
number three is jar jar Binks is a Sith lord,
et cetera.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Crossword It's like history.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
It rhymes you know, ye dancers theory or fan theory.
Anyway for the crossword anybody's playing.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
That, can we just say that that this look at
the blockade he's attempting to The Japanese ships are trying
to break through the blockade, but they are spotted by
some US ships that are patrolling the area, and a skirmish,
I guess you could call it begins, you know, a
sea battle. I don't know if it was big enough
to call it. Well. I had a name was the
Battle of the Common Door Ski Islands, which is a
(26:38):
fun name. But as we know, the Japanese have have
had a little bit of a head start. So there
already you know, out gunning and outnumbering. Yes, they're dug
in real good uh. And the US fleet has a
hard time matching their forces, and they are seriously hobbled,
you know, by the Japanese, the Japanese ships, So the
(26:58):
American side suffers some serious casualties. After quite a few
hours of fighting, the Japanese ships then suddenly decide to withdraw.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Why is that, you know, it's because they were worried
the heat was around the corner. They thought bombers were arriving,
because they were estimating how long it would take for
American forces to contact each other and how long from
there it would take for US bombers to come and
(27:28):
just rain fire on the islands.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Oh okay, okay, got it its own kind of ring
a fire there. So after the battle, the Japanese soldiers
that are garrison there on Atsu and Kiska are incredibly
isolated because they aren't. That flow of supplies they were
had grown accustomed to has stopped. It was more successful.
No more snacks, the no more snacks in the break
(27:51):
room exactly. They're having to kind of fend for themselves.
Their supplies are diminishing significantly. They do get intermittent delivery,
secret submarines delivering to them, but you can only go
so far with that, right because they're not huge.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
You know, you can't the submarines coming up and it's
throwing like a twenty four pack of chips out.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
Zero. These aren't even lays chips. This is what I want, ruffles?
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Right? Where are my ruffles?
Speaker 1 (28:18):
Okay? I suspect that the three of the three of
us might have the same hierarchy of chip oh.
Speaker 3 (28:23):
I think that's gonna have the Freedo's in there like
damn it and there.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Also ran anyway, that is not they do with it.
Because you're making a very important point. The whatever submarine
can deliver is probably going to be survival rations.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Yep. Are we talking like mr type things on the
Japanese side too? Or you know they have been different,
I wondered, and I'm just conjecturing here, Like you know,
obviously the Japanese when did like dry like ramen noodles
and things become invented after.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
World War it was after World War two, that's right,
and we can we talked about that recently.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
But I'm wondering what those rations might have looked like
because we know about mries. We talked about that pretty extensively.
I just have curious as to what Japanese rations looked like,
if there was any parallel thinking there.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
They had something called imperial Japanese rations that were served
in these little tin boxes and you had to cook
them yourself. There's actually there are a couple of articles
and sources you can find. They usually had rice and
then some kind of protein and then vegetables, pickled vegetables
most likely, and green tea. Sometimes you would get barley
(29:37):
instead of rice, and then you were sort of expected
to forage for other stuff. So these guys, if they're
getting Imperial, they might be getting those rations. They might
just be getting rice and being told, hey, get water,
cook the rice. It's definitely not ideal, and the American
forces are thinking, all right, This is our opportunity to
(30:00):
to storm the beach to land troops on the islands
and take the combat to these Japanese garrisons. This is
the origin of something with the unfortunate name Operation land Crab.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Have I told you that my nickname for my girlfriend
is the crab?
Speaker 1 (30:17):
No?
Speaker 2 (30:18):
Not. I often refer to as the crab, like, not
just my little crab or my crab. I say hello
the crab, and it's sometimes when I text her, I'll
just say the crab question mark, how is an emoji
that is a crab? She described herself as a bit
of a recluse early on in our relationship, so I
call it hermit crab. But it's become a term of affection,
(30:38):
so I often refer to her as the crab. So
our home is also littered with crab plushies and crab.
I have like a pair of crocs with crab. What
do you call those little dingles that go on? Yeah,
you know the little the decorative flare for for crocs.
Do you guys do you have a name based on
I'm the butterfly because she thinks I'm a bit of
a she's a shut in. I'm a social butter. Oh okay,
(31:00):
but these terms have taken on their own meanings.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Yeah, what, Every relationship creates its own language.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
My girlfriend would approve of Operation land Crab, and then
I hear that, I immediately think of her with affection.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
That's what that one's for you day. Did she listen
to the show?
Speaker 2 (31:16):
Nope.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
So, like we said, American ships have been sporadically bombing
the islands for a while. On May eleventh, nineteen forty three,
the US enacts Operation land Crab. Eleven thousand US troops
land on Atu, which is again not the world's biggest island.
The Americans are a little schuffed about this. They're a
(31:45):
little optimistic. They say, we're gonna bedone in like a
couple of days, you guys, because they didn't know how
bad the weather was going to be, they didn't know
how terrible the terrain was. Their short mission ends up
lasting more than two weeks. I love military like like
like classic military men terms of phrase, you know, when
(32:08):
describing conflicts, and Lieutenant Donald E. Dwindle, which is another
great military man name, described it as such.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
It was rugged. The whole damn deal was rugged, like
attacking a pill box by way of a type rope
in winter. I don't quite get it, attacking a pill
box by way of a tight rope.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
Yeah, so like you know what pillboxes you've got that
it's like a concrete enclosure with a little slit where
people can shoot.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
Oh not actually a pill box of pills. Okay, sorry
the visual wasn't working on me, but I get it now.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
But yeah, but still that is a beautiful turn of language.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
They also so, now that's what we talked about the
very beginning. So they have two enemies. Now, they have
the Japanese forces who are already entrenched and dug in,
and then they have the just terrible, terrible weather. Or
it turns out that the weather was responsible for more
US casualties than any actual enemy combatant.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
That's right, more than twenty one hundred American soldiers were
removed from the conflict. Taken out of action is how
the National Park Service refers to this as in their
article Battle of att Tu sixty years later, which we
highly recommend giving a read. So that means killed or injured, right,
taken out of combat right due to the horrible conditions.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Yeah, they are no longer operators.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Things like disease would have come into play, you know,
right exactly, so these would would have been also referred
to as non battle injuries, while around seventeen hundred were
killed or injured by Japanese forces.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
Yeah, it turns out when they were thinking through operation
land craft, despite the fact that they were familiar with
the islands, despite the fact that people in general understand
Alaska's cold Uncle Sam and not taking the weather into account,
so they didn't have the right kind of gear to
operate there. They were falling victim to frostbite exposure. Trench
(34:13):
foot is thankfully something I hope no one's ever experienced.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
This is it like gang green.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
It's super nasty. It can become gang green. It's like
you have your imagine you're walking through wet, crappy environments
for weeks and you never get to change your socks,
so it basically your foot starts to rot, yeah essentially,
or just like oh god, yeah. If you don't treat it,
it can become gangrenous and result in amputation.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
Lots of bacteria and things can form in this nasty
kind of fetid, closed situation, you know, and.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
You're turning your foot into a terrarium. For bacteria.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
Right.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
Even more so, think of it as like really advanced
athletes foot terrible, terrible stuff, and you know, we have
to exercise humanity. Realized that a lot of these Japanese
soldiers are laboring under the same brutal conditions. They're not
having a good day either, just like any war. I'm
sure there are a lot of soldiers on either side
who are going.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
Oh why, why, why do I have to be here?
Speaker 1 (35:18):
But because these guys weren't dressed warmly enough, the US
soldiers had to keep moving to keep their circulation going,
and sometimes that meant they would expose themselves to enemy fire.
Some of them were too beat up to walk, so
they crawled around and when they killed Japanese soldiers, they
(35:39):
stole their clothing to stay warm. And that leads to
friendly fire, because now you are dressed as an enemy soldier.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
A term friendly fire always kind of cracks me up.
It's the least friendly thing you can imagine it just
of course that to say the obvious, but it refers to,
you know, accidentally shooting someone that's on your team.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Right, right, And it is a very real thing, like
an own goal. Yeah, it has happened in every single
modern conflict, so this battle has already kind of been decided.
The fate of the Japanese is sealed as soon as
the Americans establish air and naval supremacy, which despite Pearl Harper,
(36:21):
is still only a matter of time because the US
is much closer. They cut those supply lines. They made
it unlikely for reinforcements to arrive, and by May, the
last remaining Japanese troops were starving. Yeah, give it, run
it out of bullets.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Give a quick read or a long read too. It's
not particularly long article, but to the Battle of the
Aleutian Islands from history dot Com from back in two
thousand and nine. It is actually updated as recently as
twenty twenty, so lots of good resources there for this
chronology that we're pulling from. The commander of the Japanese
force is a Colonel at Yasuyo Yamasaki, decides to give
(36:59):
it one last tarah, one last push, and right before
morning on May twenty ninth, he and he leading his forces,
they execute what's referred to a Bonzai charge, which is
a term that I was not intimately familiar with. This
(37:19):
was apparently a tactic that was employed during the war
in the Pacific, of course.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
Overwhelming numbers. That's right, everybody runs.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
It once and so Yamasaki's troops do the big charge.
It really is kind of like just a murderous rampage essentially, right.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
Yeah, it really is, and it's a dangerous tactic as well.
This becomes one of the largest bondsi charges of its time.
From where you're not worried about people dying, you're putting
all your cards on the table, cannon fodder city, You're
literally throwing bodies at a problem. And they did this
out of desperation. So they charge into the American lines.
(37:59):
They sweep through the combat outpost, they get all the
way to the support troops in the rear of the camp.
They almost succeed, but after a final attack on May thirtieth,
the US soldiers win. The day, they've counted more than
two thousand Japanese casualties, including the commander they lost around
(38:22):
The US lost around one thousand men retaking Atu, and
then within two days they had secured the island and
the Battle of Atu, the only land battle ever fought
on American soil, and World War Two was over. Shout
out also to the National Park Service right there.
Speaker 2 (38:40):
Articles They truly do you know, just what we just
described Ben sounds more like an episode of Game of Thrones,
it really does modern warfare. And then that's why it
makes sense this is such a deadly war because these
types of tactics, they just don't make sense anymore, you know,
because of the nature of combat has just changed. So
this type of land charge, I just picture men on
(39:01):
horses with lances or something, you know, but instead it's people,
you know, running while firing machine guns and bayoneting people
and stuff. But it's not that different.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
And honestly, to give you a sense of the desperation
when people are starving and you want them to make
a suicide run like this, sometimes all you have to
do is tell them that there's food in the enemy camp.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
Jesus right, that level of desperation is just mind boggling. Well,
this might sound like the end of the story. There
is one more operation of note that I think is
worth the very least kind of breezing through without for
fear of giving short shrift to literally the loss of
human lives and just the vast, overwhelmingly deadly nature of
(39:41):
this entire conflict. This one actually was not so bad.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
This is the ridiculous one.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
It is.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
This is the ridiculous one. So remember we said there
were two islands that were that form the setting or
the theater for this conflict. The eleventh Army Air Force
and the Navy Patrol Wing four get their assignment to
take back Kiska Island in something called Operation Cottage, which
(40:07):
is not as creative. They're told, literally, push the enemy
into the sea, get the island back. And this after Atu.
Literally push them into the sea, push them into the sea.
And so they said, look, we've got lessons learned. We're
going to give you the right clothing. We're gonna give
you the right gear and equipment, and you are going
(40:28):
to encounter way Or troops and we face at Atu.
And so on August fifth, nineteen forty three, they arrive
at Kiska. They've already been told the weather's going to
be horrible. This is going to be way harder than
the other island. The weather is nice, the sea is quiet,
and there's no one there.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
Yeah, they have themselves a little beach chill. Now they don't.
But there's certainly probably surprised, you know, in the positive direction,
because they've been prepared for the absolute worst, and they
get there and it's an absolute kikawalk. And there is
an actual reason for this. The Japanese forces had abandoned
their post on July twenty ninth, nineteen forty three. The
(41:09):
Japanese forces stationed on Kiska decided to hide tailor out
of there. Kiska City, which is what they were referring
to their outpost as was wired with explosives and demolish
including all of their supplies, ammunition and outposts. Yeah, booby trap,
(41:31):
yeah exactly. But then they did as an advance of
the Americans arriving though, right, Yeah, they just like they
didn't want to leave them anything that would be of use.
Speaker 1 (41:38):
Yeah. We have a statement from Carl Kosokobek, who was there,
is a Japanese veteran, and said, quote, we threw our
rifles and bayonets into the water and then we went away.
They never saw us. So in fifty five minutes, the
entire Japanese force there over five thousand people boarded the vessel.
(42:00):
They drifted off silently into the night. And the word
for that is noctificant, which we recently learned, Oh wow,
to go about in the night.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
That's a good one. What makes sense nocturnal in the root.
I imagine the Allies had a hard time believing that
this wasn't some sort of rouse.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
Yeah, imagine running, Okay, they're gonna pop out any minute,
there's somebody, because it's ridiculous, right. Imagine you're you're running
full bore onto the shore. You've got your uh, you've
got farm locked and loaded. You might be yelling. You
might just be like, ah, how long do you keep
yelling until you notice that no one's there except maybe
(42:38):
maybe there's a moose who is like, come on, man.
Speaker 2 (42:40):
I just picture it's like that scene in Spinal Tap
where they're like lost and can't find the stage and
they're just pumped up like rock and roll, and then
they turn a corner and I realized that they're not
there yet, so they kind of like get flustered and
then okay, okay, let's get back, let's get the energy back.
I picture them like screaming and then they turn a corner.
No one's there. Okay, Okay, they're definitely gonna be around
this next Okay, let's get up, let's get up the
(43:01):
energy again, and then no on after you know, again
in our version of events, several of these highs and lows,
they finally accept the fact that there truly is no
one around.
Speaker 1 (43:12):
Yes, and they are still fighting the weather. So there
are unfortunately fatalities. Twenty four Allied troops are killed by
again friendly fire. Four die due to Japanese booby traps. Yeah,
seventy one die when one ship hits a floating mine.
And then a lot of other guys one hundred and
(43:36):
sixty eight either get wounded or they fall ill, probably
do at least in part to the weather.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
That's right, We're around eight days of this, looking around
and realizing that finally no one was there. This was
at the end of the day. On paper, I guess,
perhaps to save face, I would imagine written off as
a training exercise.
Speaker 1 (43:56):
Okay, sure, yes, that's like I have a bad habit.
Noel and Max both know this. I have a bad
habit of doing something klutzy and then just immediately look
at yeah whomever has seen it, making eye contact and
yelling on purpose.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
Yeah, I've borrowed that tactic from you. It's a good one, Ben,
It's a good one. So yeah, at the end of
the day, this represents a defeat of the Japanese forces
at the Aleutian Islands, and very interesting story. It's got
some you know, the intense the intensity of this conflict
is represented. We got a little ridiculousness thrown in there.
(44:34):
I mean, obviously, at the end of the day, none
of this can be seen as purely ridiculous, although the
foibles and follies of man are nothing if not ridiculous
at times. But I think this is a really interesting
kind of little encapsulation of the entire conflict. And I'm
surprised that it hasn't been dramatized, you know, because it
seems like exactly the kind of story that would really
(44:56):
play well on on screen.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
I want to at least see the moment where they
run onto the abandoned island. Yeah, I want that definitely.
Speaker 2 (45:04):
How it went down, there's no question, and you.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
Know, you describe it well. It is a microcosm of
a larger, horrific conflict that fundamentally altered the course of
the world, and the consequences of World War Two continue
to echo and resonate today. The war continues for two
years after the Battle of the Aleutian Islands, Japan finally
(45:29):
surrenders to the Allies on September second, nineteen forty five.
This basically ends World War Two. And now if you
go to these islands you'll see the battlefields there have
become national historical landmarks in recognition of this singular, unique
conflict that again a lot of people don't know about,
(45:52):
and that's why we aller big big thanks to our
research associate and super producer Max the the Great North Michigan,
the Michigan Goose, all of this things, it contains a
multitude Williams.
Speaker 3 (46:09):
And also there are moose in Michigan. Also, do you
guys know what the plural of moose is?
Speaker 2 (46:14):
Moose? You already talked about that. It was the first
thing I said. It's plural. Yeah, it's one of my
favorite things about the humble moose. But yeah, also huge
thanks to the to the to.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
The elder Williams Alex who composed this banging track that
you're listening to right this very second.
Speaker 2 (46:28):
Jonathan Strickland are a human booby trap if ever there was.
Speaker 1 (46:32):
Oh, he'll like that one aka the quizt And of
course big big thanks to Eves Jeffcoat, who, unlike Tipper Gore,
has a show coming out on our network.
Speaker 2 (46:41):
Sure we cleared that one up. Yeah, that was a
good save.
Speaker 1 (46:44):
Yeah, and thanks of course to Christopher Hasiotis who just
I was talking with Christopher earlier and he hipped me
to some amazing facts about the four horsemen of the Apocalypse,
specifically famine.
Speaker 2 (46:56):
Okay, yeah, it's a hungry boy.
Speaker 1 (46:58):
He's that kind of dude's next time, folks.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
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Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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