Forgotten Warriors of the Aleutian Campaign
Missoula, MT: Pictorial Histories Publishing Company. Algonquin Books. 2005. 188 pp.

If you’ve read anything by Jim Rearden, you’ll know that his books are meticulously researched from primary sources as much as possible, with the immediacy and liveliness of first person accounts. In this regard, Forgotten Warriors of the Aleutian Campaign is no exception. Mr. Rearden brings to life one of the lesser known campaigns of WWII through his careful compilation of personal interviews, source documents, and historical photos.

The Aleutian Islands stretch over 1000 miles from the Alaska mainland into the Pacific. The islands, a string of volcanic mountains jutting out of the ocean, are subjected to some of the fiercest weather on the planet. Violent winds, thick fog, and heavy rain and snow are common, making navigation difficult, even hazardous. On the other hand, the sea around these islands is rich, supporting a wide variety of marine life: seals, whales, otters, fish and seabirds provided plenty of resources for the islands’ original inhabitants. Several hundred low growing plant species cover the lowland tundra, including a variety of luscious berries. It is a uniquely beautiful and harsh environment.

It was in this environment that the only battles of WWII fought on American soil took place. The Aleutians, stretching as they do to within 1000 miles of Japan, were a possible route to invasion. In June of 1942, the Japanese began their assault on the Aleutians, beginning with the bombing of Dutch Harbor on the island of Unalaska. Several days later, the Japanese occupied both Kiska and Attu.

On Kiska the Japanese captured the Navy’s weather crew. One of these individuals was Lieut. Commander William Charles House. He managed to elude capture and survive in the harsh environment for fifty days before surrendering to the Japanese. Treated with respect and deference on Kiska because of his survival, he was eventually transported to Japan as a POW. There he endured mistreatment and torture for the remainder of the war. He did survive, however, and is one of the “forgotten warriors” of Rearden’s book.

Charlie House is just one of the individuals Rearden profiles in this book. Each of the stories he includes – from submariners and pilots and scouts – provides an intimate glimpse into the challenges of this campaign. However, Rearden’s book does not outline the Aleutian Campaign chronologically, nor do the personal accounts follow an orderly sequence from beginning to end. As he writes in his introduction, “. . . this is not a history of the Aleutian Campaign, a minor conflict by World War II standards. Rather, it is an attempt to let readers accompany those who fought there, to take to the skies as pilots of PBY Catalinas, to dodge bullets while lying on their bellies on wet tundra, to breathe the stale air of a long submerged submarine, to glory in the performance of a powerful fighter plane.” (p. ix) This is the kind of history that Rearden excels at, and which he conveys admirably in this book.