The Aleutian islands were not the only territories in North America to be attacked by Japan.
About a week after the attack on Pearl Harbor, 9 submarines of the Japanese 6th Fleet arrived
off the North American Pacific coast.
They were tasked with performing reconnaissance and disrupting shipping lanes.
Some of these submarines would go a step further and carry out attacks on the mainland of North
America.
This episode will be the War on the American Pacific Coast.
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On December 10th, the Japanese learnt that an American Lexington-class carrier was heading
for the US mainland and sent 9 out of 12 submarines operating around Hawaii to pursue and sink
the enemy carrier.
After a stressful 4 days, the search proved fruitless.
Afterwards a new role was established for the submarines, they were to take up positions
at designated sites off the Pacific coast and begin attacking allied merchant shipping.
Vice Admiral Mitsumi Shimizu, commander of the Japanese submarine forces, would direct
Rear Admiral Tsutomu Sato on his flagship I-9 for the operations.
These 9 submarines had a range of approximately 15,000 miles, a surface speed of around 23
knots, armed with up to 18 torpedoes and 5.5 inch deck guns.
An hour before dawn on December 18th, the I-17 attacked the US freighter, Samoa , which
was carrying lumber to San Diego.
The I-17 fired 5 times upon her with her 5.5 inch guns doing light damage and at a distance
of 70 feet shot one torpedo which passed under the Samoa missing.
Luckily for the Samoa, the torpedoe’s explosion made the Japanese think she was hit and sinking
so they submerged and left the scene, allowing the Samoa to escape to San Diego.
On December 20th, the I-17 found the Socony-Vacuum Oil Company’s tanker, Emidio , 20 miles
off the coast of Cape Mendocino.
Captain Clark Farrow of the Emidio upon discovering the I-17 a quarter mile to his stern sent
an sos as he tried to outrun the raider but was rapidly overtaken at 20 knots.
The I-17 opened fire with its deck gun with the first shot taking out Emidio’s radio
antenna. 2 more shots struck into the Emidio’s hull as the ship hoisted a white flag and
the crew took to its lifeboats. 1 of the salvo’s hit a lifeboat carrying 3 crewmen who fell
into the water and would drown as a result of choppy seas.
5 shots in total would hit the Emidio before the I-17 would suddenly submerge as two US
bombers had arrived, responding to the sos sent out 15 minutes prior.
The two bombers dropped depth charges before leaving.
After the planes left the I-17 resurfaced and launched a torpedo hitting the Emidio
in her stern, passing through her engine room and killing 2 crewmen before the I-17 would
submerge and flee the scene.
The Emidio drifted until it ran aground on the rocks off Crescent city in early January
1942 . At about the same time Emidio was attacked,
the I-23 was stalking the US tanker, SS Agwiworld 20 miles off Cypress Point near Santa Cruz.
At 2:15pm, an explosion off the stern of the ship alerted the Captain, Frederick Goncalves
to run for the bridge.
500 yards away the I-23 tried to get broadside of the frantically zigzagging tanker but was
unable to outmaneuver her while simultaneously firing.
The I-23 shot 8 shells as the tanker neared land missing her and submerged in failure.
On the morning of December 22, the Standard Oil Company tank, SS H.M Story was 55 miles
north of Santa Barbara as the I-19, commanded by Captain Narahara Seigo, stalked her for
over an hour.
When the H.M Story was two miles off Point Arguello, the I-19 shot 3 torpedoes missing
her with each.
A US Navy plane saw her and began to drop depth charges, forcing the I-19 to submerge
and flee the scene.
At 5:30am on December 23rd, the SS Montebello sailing from Port San Luis bound for Vancouver,
was hit amidship by a torpedo launched from I-21, luckily hitting the only compartment
not loaded with gasoline.
The crew was forced to abandon ship as the I-21 began to shell them at point blank range
. As 36 men in 4 lifeboats began rowing for safety, the I-21 opened fire with machine
guns on the helpless sailors, but luckily for them, visibility was quite poor and no
one was wounded.
On the morning of December 24th, the lumber schooner Barbara Olson was sailing for San
Diego when she was rocked by an explosion 100 feet off her seaward side.
None of her crew would know what caused the explosion, but it was a torpedo launched from
the I-19.
The torpedo had gone under her and blown up on the other side.
4 hours later the I-19 was a few miles north off Point Fermin where it found the freighter
SS Absaroka entering the Catalina Channel.
The I-19 shot 2 torpedoes with one striking 50 feet aft of the beam sending lumber into
the air and killing a man.
Though she was injured and tilting she did not sink, but instead managed to beach herself
off Fort MacArthur.
The I-9 left the west coast for Panama on December the 20th and as a planned finale
to the 7 days of attacking the west coast shipping, the 8 remaining submarines were
to make attacks on Christmas Day.
They would select a choice of mainland targets to fire 30 rounds each from their deck guns
at and then withdraw to the Marshall islands.
However on December 22nd an unexpected order was received postposting the attack to December
27th from Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto.
Yamamoto wanted to avoid attacking during the Christian festival out of fear of offending
their German and Italian allies, there was also a fear of American reprisal attacks.
5 days later Rear Admiral Tsutomu Sato on the flagship I-9 notified headquarters the
submarine force was low on fuel and this would complicate the return to Japan, so Yamamoto
called off the attack altogether.
Despite the order 1 submarine, the I-15 lingering around Farallon Islands decided to do something
daring.
Before departing like the rest, Captain Ishikawa Nobuo fired at least 1 torpedo at the Golden
Gate Bridge, fortunately it ended up missing its target and embedded in a sandbank of Marshal’s
beach and was found later in 1946 . After the submarine attacks of December 1941,
US coastal defenses were strengthened . On February 23rd 1942, the first Axis ship would
shell the US mainland.
At 7:07pm, while Franklin D Roosevelt was commencing a fireside chat, the I-17, captained
by Nishino Kozo stopped right beside Ellwood Richfield Oil Company Refinery . The I-17
proceeded to fire the first of 17 rounds aimed at the Richfield aviation fuel tank stored
behind the beach.
Most of the shells fell into the water, overshot the target or landed as duds . By 7:35, assuming
the Americans would be hot on his tail, Nishino fired his last round and retreated.
The attack did only slight damage , but caused immense panic as mainland America had been
attacked!
Local residents of Ellwood jumped into their cars and drove madly inland, trying to escape
a potential invasion.
Captain Hagen and a master sergeant went to the refinery to defuse the dud rounds and
one detonated sending shrapnel to hit Hagan.
Hagan would be America's only assigned service member to receive a purple heart for a wound
received by enemy attack on American soil.
The submarine attacks of December had caused the US to increase its coastal defenses and
the American people's paranoia of possible attacks.
When the Ellwood Oil field was shelled by I-17 it set in a hysteria.
On February 24th, the Office of Naval Intelligence issued a warning that an attack on mainland
California could be expected within the next 10 hours.
At around midnight, a report was sent out to anti aircraft batteries on the heights
overlooking the Los Angeles area that enemy planes had been spotted.
Air raid sirens began to sound off at 2:25 am throughout Los Angeles County and a total
blackout was ordered as thousands of air raid wardens rushed to their positions.
At 3:16am, the 37th Coast Artillery Brigade began firing their .50 caliber machine guns
and 12.8 lb anti-aircraft shells into the air.
Over 1400 shells were fired sporadically until 4:14am.
Several buildings, and vehicles were damaged by shell fragments, with 5 indirect civilian
deaths . This became known as the infamous “battle of Los Angeles”, and in 1983 the
air force reported the entire event was attributed to the sighting of a runaway weather balloon
and war panic.
On June 7th, the I-26 after taking part in the opening stages of the Aleutian Islands
Campaign, began to stalk the SS Coast Trader as it left the strait of Juan de Fuca . The
I-26 fired a torpedo hitting the Coast Trader in her starboard side, flooding her quickly.
Then the I-26 turned her attention to a new enemy, Canada.
At around 10pm on June 20th, the I-26 was patrolling the coast of British Columbia when
it surfaced 2 miles off the Estevan Point Lighthouse.
The I-26 began to open fire with its deck gun, this was the first direct attack on Canadian
territory since the Fenian raids of the 1860’s.
R.M Lally, the light-keeper at Estevan Point heard the salvo’s crashing into the surf
below and hurried down the spiral staircase to warn his wife to take cover before he doused
the light.
A veteran of the Great War, he stayed to observe the shelling, fortunately the I-26 missed
with over 17 shots to hit the lighthouse . Although the I-26 failed to hit its target, the aftermath
caused a disproportionate effect on coastal shipping as all lighthouses along the coast
were extinguished in fear of their use by the enemy.
Near where the Columbia empties into the Pacific Ocean stands Fort Stevens, an American military
installation built near the end of the American Civil War.
By 1941 it held 10 inch coastal defense guns, antiques left over from WW1, 2 12 inch mortars
and few 6 inch disappearing guns . The fort was manned by the Oregon Army National Guards
249th Coast Artillery Battalion led by Lt Colonel Lifton M. Irwin and the 18th Coast
Artillery.
On June 21st just before midnight, the I-25 captained by Meiji Tagami had been following
some fishing boats to avoid mine fields in the area, when it surfaced at the mouth of
the Columbia River and began to fire 17 rounds from its deck gun in the direction of Fort
Stevens.
Tagami expected immediate return fire, so he ordered his gun crew to fire as quickly
as possible without bothering to aim properly.
Lt Colonel Lifton M. Irwin ordered an immediate blackout of the fort and refused to permit
his men to return fire which would have revealed their positions.
Some of the shells landed in a nearby baseball field destroying its backstop. 1 shell landed
close to Battery Russel, another next to a concrete pillbox and one severed several large
telephone cables.
The I-25 made a hasty escape after doing little to no damage, but the attack on Fort Stevens
along with the Aleutian Islands campaign helped create the 1942 full-scale west coast invasion
scare.
With so many operations doing minimal damage one Japanese officer would try to step up
to the challenge to strike at North America.
Warrant Flying Officer Nobuo Fujita was aboard the I-25 during a deployment in the Aleutian
Islands campaign.
In the spring of 1942, he had flown above Kodiak Island at 9000 feet and observed that
the American response to an unidentified plane was complete indifference.
This led Fujita to suggest an air raid against the American Pacific Coast, utilizing a Yokosuka
E14Y “Glen” floatplane.
This particular plane was capable of being stored and launched from submarines to perform
reconnaissance and small scale bombing operations.
The Glen had folding wings and was transported in a watertight capsule attached to the deck
of a submarine such as the I-25.
The proposal was endorsed by Prince Takamatsu, a younger brother of Emperor Hirohito who
was enticed by a Japanese official who had been previously assigned to the consulate
in Seattle Washington, who mentioned that late summer was quite dry in the Pacific Northwest.
Thus it was decided, the air raid would drop incendiary bombs to ignite major forest fires.
On August 15th 1942, the I-25 left to make what would be the final Japanese attack on
the American coast and a reprisal for the Doolittle raid.
On September 9th after arriving off the Oregon coast, Fujita and his bombardier, Petty Officer
Shoji Okuda propelled off the I-25 carrying 2 168lb incendiary bombs.
They flew 50 miles eastward passing over Cape Blanco.
On Mount Emily fire tower in Siskiyou National Forest, Howard “Razz” Gardner spotted
and reported the Glen. 50 miles inland, Fujita dropped the first bomb and 6 miles farther
the second.
Both bombs exploded, but the foliage was too damp from rain to allow for the fires to develop
quickly.
Fire warden Gardner and USFS Fire lookout Keith V Johnson hiked to Wheeler Ridge where
there was a small fire emerging.
Both men worked throughout the night to contain the fire and by the morning an additional
fire crew arrived to help.
Fujita performed a second raid on September 29th in the same general locale.
Fujita reasoned that no one would expect a repeat attack.
He flew 90 minutes inland this time and let two bombs release over Grassy Knob near Port
Orford Oregon.
However even less came of these bombs as yet again wet foliage refused to catch a wild
fire.
20 years later in 1962, Fujita was invited by the town of Brookings, just 10 miles due
east from Wheeler ridge.
Assured by the Japanese government he would not face a war criminal trial, Fujita served
as Grand Marshal for the local Azalea Festival.
At the festival, Fujia presented his family’s 400 year old katana to the city as a symbol
of his regret . Brookings treated him with respect and affection, he would go on to make
additional visits to Brookings serving as an “informal ambassador of peace and friendship”.
In 1995 Fujita sponsored 3 students from Brookings-Harbor high school to visit Japan, they would present
him with a deciatory letter from Ronald Reagan . Fujita would make a few last visits to Brookings
and in 1992 he planted a tree at the bomb site as a gesture of peace.
A few days before his death, Fujita was made an honorary citizen of Brookings on September
30, 1997 at the age of 85.
In october of 1998, his daughter Yoriko Asakura, buried some of his ashes at the bomb site.
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