Amchitka and the Bomb: Nuclear Testing in Alaska

2. On an Anvil of War

2 / ON AN ANVIL OF WAR •.. barracks blacken in rain, sag on their foundation. Beyond them pill boxes and beach, hills strung with bunkers, the trails worn into subsoil like contour lines of a map. -JI!RAH CHADWICK, "Approaching the Improbable" World War II. which began officially for the United States with the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese in December 1941. came to the Aleutians in 1942. On June 3 and 4. American military installations at Dutch Harbor on Amaknak Island in Unalaska Bay were bombed by Japanese planes. Soon after, Japanese troops invaded Kiska Island and then took Attu Island in the far western Aleutians close to Japan. This was the onset of what the United States military called the Aleutian Campaign. Never before had the Aleutians. now a Refuge of the National Wildlife Reservation, been a battIe zone ofsuch magnitude or intensity. Yet, for purposes of battle, only the devil himself could have conjured up a more improbable place. Craggy mountains, steep hills, deep valleys, spongy tundra, jagged coasts, shoal-strewn waters, thick fog, mighty winds, and numbing cold. snow. and ice awaited the encroaching warriors. Although the war in the Aleutians ended in the summer of 1943, when Americans in Operation Landcrab retook Attu Island, and, along with Canadians in Operation Cottage , landed on Kiska Island just after it was deserted by the Japanese, over three thousand died in this campaign fought on the islands of the Refuge. Moreover, the conversion of many of the islands into armed camps during the war so damaged the environment as to call into serious question their future fitness as places for animal or human habitation.1 Even now, evaluations of the Aleutian Campaign vary greatly. Most agree 13 ON AN ANVIL OF WAR 14 that its influence was rather ephemeral and failed materially to affect the war's outcome. But the overall balance sheet abounds in ironies. Both sides mistook the intentions of the other, each side thinking the Aleutian Islands could become, ifnot actual invasion platforms, then at least a pathway to harass the other's mainlands. The occupation of Attu and Kiska as defense posts might have been a morale booster for the Japanese, but it was shortlived . And, when the United States took back the islands, it was done more for political reasons than for military considerations, namely as a response to public outrage over enemy-occupied United States territory. Some said the forces tied up there could have been better used in the central Pacific. The costs ofsupply were high, weather conditions were horrible, and the lost lives may have been in vain since, as it turned out, the Aleutians were not convenient steppingstones from Japan to the United States. But the persistent fog and low-lying cloud cover in the Aleutians did lead to major improvements in radar technology. When the campaign ended, the United States' dominance of the North Pacific was clinched, which made the later lend-lease shipments to Soviet Siberia safer. In the calculus ofwar, however, whether the campaign's costs were worth its benefits is still an open question.2 Such questioning, nonetheless, cannot discount the sacrifices ofthe combatants or the experiences ofthe nativeAleuts whose lives were disrupted by this war. All were scarred by the campaign and testify to it still. American soldiers died in the Aleutians, and the native villages in the area were evacuated and/or destroyed by the Japanese and the Americans alike. This campaign was far from trivial. And, the aftermath for Alaska itselfwas extremely important. The war wrote the Alaska Territory large upon the geopolitical map. Alaska's position became increasingly crucial as the Cold War bore down. Its population was increased by service personnel assigned to bases there or by their choosing the "last frontier" for home after the war. Finally, as a result of huge defense expenditures on infrastructures and military installations , the Territory was propelled toward statehood) Yet, seldom is there factored into the war's effect the unprecedented amount ofdamage visited upon this Aleutian Refuge. Military construction, the battles, and the occupation itself took a huge environmental toll throughout the Refuge by dint of the pressures of a large human presence. The United States Army alone sent thousands of construction engineers, not counting thousands more of civilian workers, to build the Aleutian fortress. Reminiscent of ancient Aleut heroes Daylight Lifter, Mainland Slayer, and Tusk Breaker, 34,000 United States troops swelled over the is- [3.145.119.199] Project...