The Battle of Kiska (1943)

 "The horse is prepared for the day of battle,

But deliverance is of God."

Proverbs 21:31                                                         

The fog of war.  It's a real thing.  Not only in real time but also in regards to history bygone as well as prosperity future.  For "winners" will chronicle one version of events past, "losers" another.  Chalk that up to human nature.  As for destiny?  Indeed, the future is tied to the past.  While wars to end all wars have been waged, conflicts continue raging in this very hour, and greater battles are coming which foretell the Revelation.  Yet, all the more, these words of Christ our Lord spoken two thousand years ago apply today:

"But of that day and hour no one knows,

not even the angels of heaven,

but My Father only." 

                           Matthew 24:36

What follows is an attempt to neither glorify nor condemn, idealize nor denounce, canonize nor vilify.

Nor should we minimize one mother's tears as we elevate the sacrifices of millions more.  No.  What follows is to simply say that God is Great and His ways are mysterious.  I give you the Battle of Kiska (1943).  Codename: Operation Cottage.

7:55 on the morning of December 7, 1941 saw clear skies over a peaceful, nearly idyllic Honolulu, Hawaii.  Seventy-five minutes later, the United States Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor lay battered, sinking and in flames.  In just over an hour, the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service had delivered a decidedly one-sided military strike.  By all accounts, the attack was a tactical success although U.S. Navy aircraft carriers had been intended targets and none were present, much less damaged.  The outcome may well have been more devastating for American forces had the carrier USS Enterprise been moored in the safety of the harbor.  Her arrival had been scheduled for December 6 but high winds and rough seas had delayed her return to port, thus ensuring her survival.

On December 8, 1941 the United States declared war on Japan and entered World War II, the official response to the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Emboldened by their early successes in the war, Japanese forces landed on the remote Aleutian islands of Kiska and Attu in early June 1942 to little or no resistance with the timing concurrent to their Midway campaign.  The Japanese strategy was threefold:  1) Draw elements of the U.S. Pacific fleet north and away from the real prize, the Midway Atoll.  2) Provide a northern flank defense for the Japanese homeland.  3) Bolster domestic morale by seizing physical American soil.   

The Battle of Midway is where the trajectory of the Pacific Theater changed direction.  Midway proved to be a disaster for the Japanese war machine - four aircraft carriers sunk, hundreds of highly trained pilots and skilled mechanics killed.  Japan would never recover from those losses and the Imperial High Command was forced to shift strategy from offense to defense.  It should be noted that aircraft flying off the deck of the USS Enterprise accounted for destroying three of the four sunken Japanese carriers.

Nonetheless, three more years of bloody battles lay ahead.

In May of 1943, American and Canadian forces undertook Operation Landcrab - an amphibious assault on Attu.  Three weeks of bloody hand-to-hand combat ensued.  Ultimately, the Allies prevailed and Attu was recaptured.  But the cost was great.  Virtually the whole Japanese garrison of 2,600 men fought to the death and some 549 U.S. troops were killed in action, 1,148 wounded.  

On to Operation Cottage.  Allied Intelligence expected a tougher fight on Kiska as it was believed the Japanese garrison on Kiska to be between 5,000 and 8,000 men.  To overcome fire with fire, 34,000 U.S. and Canadian troops were assembled.  On August 15, 1943, they stormed the island.  For eight days, the Allies slogged forward mostly by foot through sharp gullies and waterlogged bogs while the most severe of weather conditions prevailed.  Thick, persistent fog, and zero visibility resulted in pitch-black firefights.

Finally, the whole of the island had been combed and the realization set in that not a single Japanese soldier had been encountered.  Three weeks earlier, on July 28, 1943, a fleet of Japanese ships had slipped past the American naval blockades under cover of a dense Aleutian fog.  In less than an hour, some 5,183 soldiers were evacuated leaving Kiska completely deserted prior to the Allied invasion. 

Still, the firefights were all too real as 32 dead attest.  Friendly fire.  Phantom armies.  The fog of war.