Alaska: Saga of a Bold Land

by Walter R. Borneman

Now the question was, where to from Kiska? In September 1943, the Joint Chiefs of Staff pondered the next move. A strike against Paramushiro and the Kuriles was tempting, particularly given the forces now massed in the Aleutians. Ultimately, however, such an attack never came to pass for a number of reasons. First, there was the perpetual enigma of what the Soviet Union was planning. The Soviets all too gladly picked up Lend-Lease airplanes in Fairbanks and flew them westward, but Stalin dragged his feet in declaring war on Japan until the final month of the war. Operations against Paramushiro and the Kuriles without Soviet support from neighboring Kamchatka would have been dicey at best. Then there were the lifelines of Japan’s war effort. They ran south to the rubber, rice, oil, and strategic minerals of the East Indies. Attacking Paramushiro would do nothing to disrupt them. Finally, of course, there was that other enemy of the Aleutian front: the weather. One could be better prepared for it, but one could not prevail against it. Few relished the idea of more major operations in such conditions of uncertainty. Ironically, of course, the war against the weather continued even in the balmy Central Pacific, where typhoons would wreak major havoc with the 1945 landings at Okinawa.