Under Cover

What were the Japs doing in their newly won footholds in the western Aleutians, the bleak little islands of Attu and Kiska? If the U.S. Army & Navy knew, they did not say. So the only news was from the Tokyo radio, and that was positively insulting. The Jap broadcasts said that Attu and Kiska had been renamed Atsuta and Narukam; that vegetable seeds and potatoes had been shipped in and that "this alone reveals that our action was not meant to be merely temporary"; that Japanese Navy headquarters had sent congratulations to the unnamed "supreme commander of ground forces in the Eastern Pacific." Eastern Pacific ground means North American ground.

In some official quarters in Washington attempts were made to shrug off the obscure Jap moves in the Aleutians as feints or minor encroachments. But the U.S. had reason to worry. Kiska has not only a good harbor but some flat land for airfields. The busy little Japs were under cover of Aleutian fog, and probably building air and submarine bases, emplacing anti-aircraft guns, sneaking in shells, bombs and torpedoes. Apparently anticipating a Japanese move east to Atka Island and northeast to the Pribilof Islands, the Army announced the evacuation of 550 natives to southeastern Alaska.

The people of Alaska were mad as hornets at strict Army censorship. Pending further enlightenment, however, it was well for hotheads not to get too hot. Perhaps the U.S. forces knew what the Japs were doing in the Aleutians, and did not want the Japs to know that they knew.

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