Research Catalog

Title

War comes to Alaska : the Dutch Harbor Attack, June 3-4, 1942 / by Norman Edward Rourke.

Author

Rourke, Norman E., 1936-

Publication

Shippensburg, PA, USA : Burd Street Press, ©1997.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xiii, 166 pages : illustrations, maps; 23 cm

Summary

"War comes to Alaska tells thestory of the Dutch Harbor Attack from both the American and Japanese pointsof view. Kept secret for morale and securityreasons, the Japanese attack and ultimate invasion of Aleutians was off limits to the American press. Government leaders feared the outbreak of panic if Americans realized how close the Japanese were to the West Coast of the Lower 48 states. But Rourke has gone beyond that importaant, but little known, story of when war cam to North America. He has also shown us the fight a small body of troops wages against weather in that far north place where they were building a fortress in that spongy tundra to protect the American mainland. There pilots found themselves using ground maps to guide their aircraft because magnetic forces skewed their instruments. Ground crews scraped, shoveled, and chipped ice, snow, and frozen earth to keep planes and otherequipment at the ready. Their companion air crewmen had to fly in weather that even acrtic birds avoided, yet they did their job and did it well."-- Back cover

Subject

• 1939-1945
• World War, 1939-1945 > Campaigns > Alaska > Aleutian Islands
• Military campaigns
• Kriegführung
• Geschichte 1942
• Dutch Harbor (Alaska) > History, Military
• Aleutian Islands (Alaska) > History, Military
• Alaska > Aleutian Islands
• Alaska > Dutch Harbor
• Aleuten
• Dutch Harbor

Genre/Form

Military history.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 160-162) and index.

Contents

Foreword -- Acknowledgement -- Keystone of the Pacific Arch -- Operation AL -- Enemy contact -- Attack -- Interrogation of Commander Masatake Okumiya -- War diary -- Others who served -- The Aleutian Campaign begins -- 1183 -- Apendix A: Carl E. Creamer papers -- Ex-POW publication article -- AppendixB: PBY Flying Boat -- Apendix C: Selected Japanese papers: Japanese Military History of World War II, Junyo Combat reports June 1942-January1943, Naval operations in Aleutian area -- Appendix D: Japanese Zero Technical Intelligence Report -- Appendix E: Interrogation of Captain Sukemitsu Ito -- Appendix F: From the diary of a Japanese medical officer -- Appendix G: Article by Vice Admiral Hiroichi Samejima -- Bibliography -- Index.

ISBN

• 1572490284
• 9781572490284

LCCN

96053353

OCLC

• ocm36103844
• 36103844
• SCSB-542751

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library