The Forgotten War

The Forgotten War: The Japanese Invasion of the Aleutian Islands, 1942 - 1943

The Aleutian Islands Campaign of World War II represents one of the most brutal and overlooked chapters in American military history. For eighteen months between 1942 and 1943, American and Japanese forces fought for control of these fog-shrouded islands at the edge of the North Pacific, where the environment proved as deadly as enemy fire. This comprehensive account examines the campaign from multiple perspectives: the soldiers who endured incomprehensible conditions on Attu where environmental casualties exceeded combat wounded, the successful Japanese evacuation of Kiska that fooled American intelligence, and most tragically, the forced removal of the indigenous Unangax̂ people from their ancestral homes.
Drawing on extensive primary sources including Japanese diaries, military records, and survivor testimony, this narrative reveals how nearly nine hundred Unangax̂ were confined in squalid camps where seventy-five died from preventable diseases, while their villages were deliberately destroyed by American forces. The book traces the intelligence windfall from the captured Akutan Zero that helped turn the tide of aerial warfare, the refinement of amphibious doctrine through bitter experience, and the decades-long struggle for justice that culminated in the 1988 Restitution Act. This is the story of a forgotten war that deserves to be remembered.