Unsung Hero; Forgotten War
My Father's Remembrance of WWII and the Battle of Attu
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Attu Island, the Aleutians, May 11, 1943, on the tail winds of a violent williwaw, the U.S. army and naval invasion force consisting of 15,000 American boys began the amphibious assault of Attu to drive out the Japanese garrison of a mere 2,500 still holding the island. Attu, at the western tip of the Aleutian island chain, was halfway to Japan. President Roosevelt wanted them out at any cost. This was to be the pivotal battle of the campaign to finally drive the Japanese monster off America's soil and prevent a possible future invasion of North America through Alaska. To the war planners of W...
Attu Island, the Aleutians, May 11, 1943, on the tail winds of a violent williwaw, the U.S. army and naval invasion force consisting of 15,000 American boys began the amphibious assault of Attu to drive out the Japanese garrison of a mere 2,500 still holding the island. Attu, at the western tip of the Aleutian island chain, was halfway to Japan. President Roosevelt wanted them out at any cost. This was to be the pivotal battle of the campaign to finally drive the Japanese monster off America's soil and prevent a possible future invasion of North America through Alaska. To the war planners of Western Defense Command, the odds were overwhelmingly favorable. Many of the boys were not even equipped with winter gear. The assault would be a quick thirty-six hour operation. It turned into a frozen, hellish nightmare that lasted twenty days. The Battle of Attu ranks second only to Iwo Jima in terms of the ratio of casualties to the number of combatants engaged for a single battle campaign operation. In the annals of WWII history, it was to become known as America's Forgotten War. The author's father was one of those boys who rode the assault wave that landed at Massacre Bay and marched up the hogback to engage the Japanese in one of the bloodiest and costliest battles of WWII. He would become a casualty, but one who would survive. This book is his story, as told to his son, the author. It is the story of an army soldier's journey from a depression era coal region town in eastern Pennsylvania to the Aleutian Islands half a world away and back again. It is not only his story, but about the many unsung heroes of the Aleutian Campaign who sacrificed so much to preserve America's freedom during the dark days of WWII.
