Alaska's Hidden Wars: Secret Campaigns on the North Pacific Rim (review)

Otis Hays, Jr. is a familiar name among academics and general readers with a more than passing knowledge of and interest in the historiography of the conflict in the North Pacific during World War II. A former intelligence officer in Alaska during the war, Hays has written extensively on the subject of Alaskan defense, including two well-received books on the aerial connections between Alaska and Siberia from 1942 to 1945. In this latest short monograph, Hays thus returns to very familiar ground, though unfortunately with decidedly mixed results.

One of the book's major problems lies in its episodic and sometimes disjointed framework. Hays seeks to give the reader a veritable smorgasbord of subjects loosely divided into two broad sections: the Aleutian Islands campaign of 1942-43; and operations in the Kurile Islands from 1943 until 1945. Therefore the reader is given the chance to become acquainted with a series of subtopics, including aerial operations in the Aleutians, deception campaigns, censorship, the bitter experience of an American-trained Japanese military doctor who met his death on Attu in May 1943, and the use of Japanese-American Nissei interpreters and intelligence operatives by American forces in the landings on Attu and Kiska in 1943. In the case of the Nissei, Hays does a good job, using original intelligence documents, interviews conducted with surviving Nissei, and well-chosen photographs to tell a most interesting story of a hitherto little known episode.

Much of the rest of the book does not live up to the Nissei standard. By seeking to cover so many topics in relatively few pages, the book gives the reader more of a fleeting taste than a truly satisfying and filling meal. For example, the too short chapter on American plans to deceive the Japanese about possible operations against the Kurile Islands does little to illuminate a most complex subject. Hays relies too much on a limited set of primary documents produced within Alaskan Defense Command itself rather than on the vast record sets produced by the various American command organizations in the wider Pacific Theater and in Washington, D.C. There is no mention of Admiral Robert Theobald's unrealized plans, as early as 1942, to mount a deception scheme in the Aleutians. Further, the excellent work on American deception plans in the Pacific conflict by Katherine Herbig is not cited.

Hays also does little to explain the attempts by such luminaries as Generals Simon Buckner, John DeWitt, Admiral Thomas Kinkaid, and various other planners and staff officers to mount a massive invasion of the Kuriles in late 1944 or early 1945. Such an attack would have been no small effort. In late 1943 Buckner lobbied for an expeditionary force of nine divisions (plus 18,000 corps troops), three aircraft carrier task forces, and hundreds of combat aircraft to force a decisive war-winning confrontation with Japan on its northern approaches. This plan, and numerous others, foundered upon two virtually unmovable shoals: the Soviet Union's consistent refusal to enter the war against Japan until after Germany's destruction; and the refusal of the senior levels of the American military command system, personified by General George C. Marshall, to countenance such a risky effort for fear it would have disrupted not only American plans for the entire Pacific Theater, but also the global Allied war effort.

In the end, Hays and his readers would have been better served had he winnowed down the number of topics, giving him the time and space to explore what remained in more satisfying detail. Finally, a correction. Hays mentions that the "Canadian Grenadiers" were given an American Nissei interpreter. The unit, in fact, was the "Winnipeg Grenadiers."