Soldiers unloading landing craft on the beach at Massacre Bay, Attu, on May 12, 1943. Soldiers unloading LCPR and LCM type landing craft on the beach at Massacre Bay, Attu, on 12 May 1943. Boats are from USS Heywood (APA-6). Note the Military Policeman overseeing operations from his position near the right side of the image. Public domain.
On May 11, 1943, combined forces of the Army and Navy were brought to bear on Attu Island, a United States Territory of the Aleutian Chain in the Bering Sea. The 7th Infantry Division and Naval Task Force 51 (TF 51) participated in Operation Landcrab, an operation designed to end Japanese occupation of the island.
These landings followed months of preparation by the United States to retake the Aleutian Islands that had been occupied by the Japanese since June 1942. The first island to be cleared of Japanese Occupation was Attu. The weather delayed the initial invasion of Attu until May 11, 1943, and continued to wreak havoc at sea with the naval task force and the army landing forces. Multiple landings at different locations on Attu and coordination between services added to the level of complexity and the coordination of supporting units/ships.
Wisconsin veterans participated in all phases of Operation Landcrab. They started by gathering intelligence on what Japanese forces were present on the islands and their disposition. Here, Vinal Jorgensen of South Wayne, Wisconsin, talks about gathering information on the Japanese, then on Attu:
JORGENSEN: Our first mission was Attu, and the Aleutian Islands.
INTERVIEWER: Cold.
JORGENSEN: Chilly.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. (laughs) Chilly, yeah. So what do we do there?
JORGENSEN: Well, we risked—we gave the Army information on the Japs’ installations.
INTERVIEWER: How did you obtain that information, Vinal?
JORGENSEN: The Army’s had a—had a lookout—
INTERVIEWER: I see.
JORGENSEN: Troops went ashore and dug it out.
INTERVIEWER: And they send—
JORGENSEN: They send—
INTERVIEWER: Information back to you?
JORGENSEN: Yeah, it’s back to our ship.
INTERVIEWER: How, by radio?
JORGENSEN: By—I don’t know—I don’t know whether it’s by radio or other communications. I don’t remember.
INTERVIEWER: I see. And then what did you do with that information?
JORGENSEN: Well, we was—our first assignment was Attu. That’s the last island of the Aleutian Island chain.
INTERVIEWER: Yes.
JORGENSEN: And we was to go to Attu. If we—if the Army needed military support, we would radio back to our ship, and they would send military support for the Army. [WVM.OH398]
Next, the Navy prepared the island for landing by shelling targets on Attu with ship-to-shore artillery. Kenneth Kalhagen of Madison talks about the important role that the Navy played in support for the Battle of Attu:
KALHAGEN: Well, the whole chain up there--we're in on that whole campaign up there.
INTERVIEWER: And then, while they were landing all that stuff, your--your duty was patrolling the harbor, to keep out submarines?
KALHAGEN: Well, no, well--and then bombardments, too. Oh, and bombardment, we--
INTERVIEWER: Oh, is that close enough--sort of--
KALHAGEN: We gave--yeah. Oh, yeah.
INTERVIEWER: What you have, five-inchers on your--
KALHAGEN: Five-inch--five-inch, .38s, and then we had the 40mm, and the Bofors guns.
INTERVIEWER: Mm-hmm.
KALHAGEN: And then 20mm. Yeah, that's what they used is--mostly for bombardment, was the 40--
INTERVIEWER: Right.
KALHAGEN: 40s and the five-inch.
INTERVIEWER: Mm-hmm. Just lob them in?
KALHAGEN: Yep. Wherever they called for it--
INTERVIEWER: Sure.
KALHAGEN: They had spotter planes up, and wherever they called for the firing power, that's what we did. We had one ship in our squadron up there, the Ammen [DD-527],and she ran into a mine, blew the fantail off, and they limped all the way in with that [clears throat]. [WVM.OH383]
Following and during the naval bombardment, the troops and sailors boarded their landing craft and made for the landing beach. Norris Tibbetts recalls his ship-to-shore landing experience on Attu:
TIBBETTS: “All troops go to your boat stations, go to your boat station,” learn how to go over the side, pitch dark, how to handle the cargo net. You got everything on your back, go down the cargo net, boat’s heaving up and down, LCVP. Get yourself into the boat and then start circling six boats to the wave and you circle and everybody gets seasick, not everybody, and it’s still pitch dark and the fog and the time comes maybe it’s at 0630, landing, and you start in but it turns out you can’t get all the boats in because of rocks, so you pass the destroyer that was always there kind of guiding things with its five-inch guns battle down to the beach and down goes the ramp and out you come.
INTERVIEWER: And what’s there?
TIBBETTS: You never know. It’s like driving a truck up to the front lines and saying “Everybody out.” So you don’t know whether you’re going to get shelled or attacked or whether they’re up in the mountains. So you do what you had been trained to do. You go up the beach and you have your notes from what you were told, don’t wait for any wounded, they’ll be looked after afterwards, your job is to get in there and form your, in this case, platoon in the attack and start going, which is what we did.
INTERVIEWER: Was there resistance on the beach?
TIBBETTS: There was not. There again, you have to assume there will be resistance which is what makes the night before always chancy.
INTERVIEWER: So when you landed there you formed up in your platoon?
TIBBETTS: I think of this as a platoon action because that’s what I was in. If I’d been an officer at the time I would have had more knowledge of unit deployment, but our job was to go up to something called Russian Ridge I think, because Japanese had difficulty with Rs so everything had Russian Ridge, Prussian Ridge, all this on the theory that if they captured radios or got into the phone lines, you could tell if they were Japanese. We had seen photos, such as they were, of the area and it was quite well done. We had a mock-up on the boat and here’s where you are going to go and your objective is up here and you’re to get there as best you can and hold it against counter-attack and so on and we will have naval gun support and we’ll have some P-38s up there to come in and strafe for bombs as the case may be. So they conveyed the attack information very well to the smallest unit. You knew what was what, but once you got the grass under your feet, it looks different. That’s what we did, went up Russian Ridge, and prepared for a horrible counter-attack. [WVM.OH485]
Dorwin Lamkin, originally from Hudson, Wisconsin, relates what he saw on Attu:
LAMKIN: The only Japanese I saw in all six years that I was in the Navy, the only Japs I ever saw was at Attu. A Ranger battalion went ashore at Attu to invade and they were short of medical personnel so they took a corpsman off each one of the ships lying, who would be participate in the bombardment. I went ashore with this Ranger battalion. Well, as it turned out, there was practically no resistance. At least that did involve the main battery on the San Francisco. And the Army warrant officer, Ranger warrant officer, showed me a revetment on top of the hill that had been a lookout post and a gun emplacement and there were 12 or 15 Japanese soldiers, remains of them, where they sat around in a circle and pulled a grenade pin. [WVM.OH170]
Lastly, Rudie Baack of Sister Bay, Wisconsin, explains his offshore support of the Attu landings and the nature of the fighting in land that was about to occur:
INTERVIEWER: But you said that you were in the unit that reclaimed the first land from the Japanese.
RUDIE BAACK: That had been taken from us, you know, that was the 7th Division did that. [Inaudible] And I was in the 2nd Battalion, assigned, during combat I was assigned to the 2d Battalion and they were very closely involved in that. In fact, I wouldn't doubt but what that supply line is, is second battalion people crawling around, it wouldn't have done it. I was fortunate in that I did not make that landing the first two days. They kept me on board ship to help unload ship and stuff. I was fortunate in a number of ways. That was a break, because that landing was not an easy one. What happened there on Attu, at that time of the year, that season, it becomes heavily enshrouded with fog.
CLAIRE BAACK: Uh-huh.
RUDIE BAACK: And it would be foggy, and the Japanese would be up on the top of the mountain hiding in the fog. And as the fog came down, they would come down with it. So, it was tricky. Japanese were clever fighters. [Pause] It's interesting, though, that most of us, as far as I know, do not hold any real animosity toward Japanese in general, you know.
INTERVIEWER: Well, they were doing what you were all doing for their country.
RUDIE BAACK: All doing what they were told to do.