Alaska was once called “the most important strategic place in the world.” “Whoever held
[it] held the world,” according to General Billy Mitchell, the father of the US Air
Force. During World War II, Alaska became a battleground for the US and Japan. Japan’s
invasion of the Alaskan Territory was the only invasion of the United States during
the Second World War. Japan managed to take hold of two islands in the outer Aleutians,
but they were still at a significant disadvantage.
The weather and terrain in Alaska were unforgiving for those unfamiliar with
it. So the United States put together a band of Arctic Scouts, a unit familiar
with the landscape that could survive the harsh conditions with minimal training and equipment.
Their job was to run reconnaissance missions and gather intel on the Japanese invaders.
In this video, we’ll discuss why these Alaska Scouts absolutely terrified the Japanese.
Japan took the island of Kiska on June 6th, 1942 and Attu on June 7th. This made the United States
nervous. The Japanese held a position that made US counterattacks nigh impossible. The
climate was harsh and prone to intense winds, snow, and sleet squalls, making things even
more difficult for the Americans. US soldiers were largely ill-equipped for such conditions,
and many didn’t know the first thing about survival, even in ideal conditions.
While the conditions were extreme, it was not impossible to survive, and even thrive,
in the Aleutian Islands. The indigenous Aleut people had already been doing it for 9,000 years.
Intelligence chief of the US Army’s Alaska Defense Command, Colonel Lawrence Castner, understood the
advantage these sorts of survival skills could offer the army. His father, Major General Joseph
Castner, had been one of the first commanders of the Philippine Scouts, a special military group
created during the Spanish-American War made up of natives who gathered intel for the United States.
Colonel Castner knew that a similar group of Alaska natives would make better scouts than
anyone else. He brought up the idea to his superiors and was given the green light to
form the 1st Alaskan Combat Intelligence Platoon in early 1942, more commonly known as the Alaska
Scouts. He began recruiting and searching for those he thought would be a good fit.
The Alaska Scouts' task was to gather intelligence via mapping and surveying, but they also needed to
master commando-style fighting. It wasn’t easy to become an Alaska Scout. The standards were
very high, and many were rejected. In the end, Colonel Castner hand-picked 66 men for the job.
The group comprised indigenous Aleuts and Eskimos, fishermen, hunters, trappers, dogsledders,
prospectors, and miners. Colonel Castner said, “They have one thing in common. They’re tough.”
Being tough wasn’t the only trait the Alaska Scouts shared, however. They also weren’t fans
of military rules, ranks, and rigidness. Because of that, and because their job was so critical
to the United States, the Alaska Scouts were granted special privileges. They never used ranks,
were allowed to carry whatever weapon they wanted and didn’t wear Army uniforms or
any kind of identifiers. They mostly wore buckskins and cowboy-style hats,
but one Scout, named Larry Beloff, was the owner of two Alaskan gold mines and always
wore a diamond ring and a diamond-studded watch, earning him the nickname Diamond Jim.
Their reputation eventually earned them the nickname “Castner’s Cutthroats,” which
stuck among other Army personnel but not among the Cutthroats themselves.
They preferred to be called the Alaska Scouts, so that’s what we’ll stick with.
Their primary mission was as simple as it was crucial: observe the enemy without detection and
send intel to the commander, who would call the shots from there. But that wasn’t all they did.
After the Japanese took Kiska and Attu, the US desperately needed an airstrip closer to
the islands from which they could launch bombing raids since they had already lost
several planes to the Alaskan weather and needed airfields closer to the Japanese.
The problem was that the islands best suited for airstrips were unmapped.
This was where the Scouts came in, splitting into two groups to survey different islands.
Their first secret landing was on Adak Island, where there were no Japanese. Here,
they found that the land was far too mountainous and rugged for a landing strip. Instead,
they built a dam to make a lagoon, then drained it and used the sandy
bottom as a temporary landing strip -- smart thinking on their part.
Another group went to Amchitka Island, where they quickly found a suitable spot
for a landing strip and built one. This allowed the US to start bombing
Kiska and form a naval blockade to prevent Japanese supplies from reaching the island.
But the Scouts' played their most critical role
when the US decided to launch its campaign to retake Attu.
The retaking of Attu, also known as Operation Sandcrab, involved 15,000 US troops breaking up
into three groups to attack the Japanese garrison from multiple directions, encircling them.
In the early morning on May 11, 1943, a group of Alaska Scouts rowed 1,000 yards through freezing,
rough water in a plastic whaleboat to Beach Red, a narrow strip of coast on Attu Island,
to see if it would be possible for the US troops attacking from the north to land there. This would
have been a suicide mission for anyone else, but the Scouts navigated through the fog and black
water skillfully and silently, landing on the beach without being detected by the Japanese. They
gave the northern infantry the all-clear signal, and US boats began to disgorge their troops.
Wasting no time, the Scouts began the next phase of their mission:
scouring the rest of the island for the Japanese.
By the mid-afternoon, they'd spotted a group of Japanese soldiers from the top of a ridge. While
the Scouts had an advantageous position, the thick fog made it difficult to ascertain the
enemy soldiers' positions, and the US infantry was struggling to keep up with the Scouts.
The troops sent to Alaska had trained in the Mojave Desert, as they were originally assigned
for duty in North Africa. They didn’t have any warm weather gear as it was in short supply,
and their boots weren’t even waterproof. The US Army had decided that this wouldn't matter
because the battle would only last three days or so. But they had miscalculated.
Some bad calls from command had slowed the soldiers in all three groups and gave the
Japanese time to pin down some US units, making advancement all but impossible.
The soldiers were freezing, and their feet were constantly wet, resulting in frostbite and trench
foot. Without the Alaska Scouts, they would almost have certainly been unable to carry out their
mission. The Scouts kept them alive, using their survival skills to stave off cold and starvation.
But they weren’t only there to keep the soldiers' hearts beating. After two days on Attu, George
Gray, an Alaska Scout who held a good position on a ridge above them, was ordered to create a
diversion and draw Japanese fire so the infantry could advance and take much-needed control of the
Holtz Valley. Just after he'd been given the orders, he saw the infantry start to advance,
throwing off his plan entirely. So Gray just went for it, grabbing a rifle, three grenades,
and a few other Scouts, and charged. The Japanese spotted them and began firing
machine guns and throwing grenades, but much to the shock of the Japanese, they all survived.
For the Japanese, spotting a Scout meant spotting danger. There was nowhere they could
go on the island where the Scouts couldn’t find them. Despite their best efforts,
the Japanese found that they were very difficult to kill -- and this scared them even more.
When the infantry eventually took control of Holtz Valley, they unknowingly destroyed
the Japanese defense in the process. The Scouts patrolled the island for two weeks,
noting the surviving Japanese soldiers' positions and passing this information on to the troops.
Using Scout intel, the three US infantry groups
created a semicircle around their enemy, cutting them off from their supplies.
This is what ultimately led to one of the most bloody Japanese banzai attacks in World War II.
Beaten but refusing to surrender, the remaining Japanese soldiers attacked
the sleeping US infantry, screaming, “We die–you die, too!]. The Scouts weren’t there,
however. They were holding a position on a mountain, far away from the infantry,
and could only watch through their binoculars as the Japanese killed US soldiers and themselves.
And with that, the American operation on Attu Island came to an end.
The Scouts were sent to the island of Kiska next. Their mission was the same as it had
been for Attu. But when they arrived, they found the island abandoned. The Japanese had
heard about what was happening on Attu and knew they were next, so they got out while
they still could. Better to give up a good position than let an Alaska Scout spot you.
The Alaska Scouts undertook only minor jobs after their success in the Aleutians. Colonel Castner
received the Distinguished Service Medal in 1944 for his role in organizing and leading the Scouts.
Without them, it’s unlikely the US would have been able to take the islands back from the Japanese.
So what do you think? Would you have been scared of the Alaska Scouts if you were Japanese? Do
you think you would have had the skills to join the Alaska Scouts yourself? Tell us down in the
comments. And if you want to learn more about the banzai attack on Attu, check out our video on it.