The Battle of Attu. As I started The Forgotten War: A World War II Battle on American Soil, it was a battle that sounded familiar, but I could’ve easily been confusing it with something else. Attu does sound very Star Wars. The Forgotten War introduces Attu in the first chapter as American and Japanese troops are engaged in combat in WWII. An omnipresent narrator starts the book with our main character Charlie, in the midst of a battle on the island of Attu. Attu is part of the Aleutian Islands. This chain of islands is the spiraling strand of land that spews off of Alaska. It’s a remote location that teeters into the North Pacific Ocean like a kid scared to jump from the high dive at the swimming pool.
Readers don’t need to be into history to enjoy The Forgotten War: A World War II Battle on American Soil, but it would certainly help. Middle school students in the United States only know about World War II battles happening in Europe or maybe North Africa. They know of the bombings in Pearl Harbor, Nagasaki and Hiroshima, but fighting on land in the United States during WW II is Greek to them. Because they haven’t heard about it, it didn’t happen.
It’s a big deal because in the minds of many people the United States did not host any ongoing combat during WW II. Admiral Yamamoto’s decision to attack Attu had two purposes. It was thousands of miles away from the real target and would hopefully divide the United States Navy, specifically, the aircraft carriers. Yamamoto knew those ships were crucial towards their success in a war that they didn’t expect to go on as long as it was, and this was only 1942. Invading Attu, the southernmost island in the Aleutian Island, which is part of the United States, would also provide a morale boost to Japanese troops.
The Forgotten War starts with the combat on Attu in May 1943. Charlie alludes as to why he’s on the wet, cold rocky terrain. Readers will glean into the rigors of what soldiers experienced, as well as, seeing photographs from their time on Attu. The story shifts back in time to the attack on Pearl Harbor, their casualties and its effect on bringing the United States officially into WW II. What made Charlie enlist? Was he trained as a medic, or did the speed of his deployment mandate his on-the-job training?
His story in The Forgotten War is contrasted by Paul Nobuo Tatsuguchi, a Japanese surgeon who was stationed on Attu. He’d been there since June 1942 when Attu was invaded by the Japanese. Tatsuguchi is unique because he was educated in the United States and lived there for a decade. He’s conflicted about what the Japanese Emperor is saying because if flies in the face of his direct experience with the American people.
The Saskinax people had called Attu home for generations. After the invasion, they were temporarily housed on the island, but eventually shipped to Hokkaido, Japan as prisoners of war. A couple of American soldiers on Attu briefly escaped when the invasion started. After 50 days in the wild they came down from the scrags to see that the Japanese troops had built a small town. Previously there were only a couple of crude structures.
The Japanese troops build their camp and wait for the American troops to come. Due to the remoteness of the islands and the various theaters that were established, it takes a while. This time wore them down. The inhospitable conditions surprised the American troops when they arrived. Their uniforms weren’t waterproof or warm enough for the conditions. The wet sand became a tar-ridden surface that their vehicles couldn’t operate on.
The battle for Attu did commence. It was hard fought, rock-to-rock combat that killed 3,800 Americans, and 2,400 Japanese. The majority of Japanese casualties were in one final battle where they led a mass banzai charge on May 29, 1943. The battle lasted just under a month.
The story of the story is fascinating too. Author Candace Fleming knew that her father served in WW II and asked him questions about it. She was aware he served in the Aleutian Islands, but thought that all the real action happened elsewhere. Her father passed away when she was a younger girl, but his story always stuck with her. When Fleming decided to write a book about Charlie she was blessed by the discovery of a mystery box that her sister found in a storage shed. This box had dozens of photos from his time in the army. These are the aforementioned photographs that are peppered throughout The Forgotten War.
There are a couple of photographs that show Tatsuguchi or his wife, as well as, photos of their lives in the military. It’s the sheer number of photographs and the direct narrative that make The Forgotten War so readable. The book doesn’t water down the terror of war. Instead, it presents this military campaign, how American came to enter the war and the results of everything in a way that makes education fun, and something to hopefully learn from and never repeat. It’s also not jingoistic. This is the first book we’ve read from Fleming and it makes us hopefully curious to read her other books to see if she can make any non-fiction book as fun as she made The Forgotten War.
The Forgotten War: A World War II Battle on American Soil is by Candace Fleming.
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