At the beginning of June 1942, in the wake of the enormous Japanese struggle to bring a conclusive victory in the Pacific War, the Imperial Japanese Navy commenced Operation AL (AL Sakusen). Among the objectives of this bold plan was the 2nd Kidō Butai’s carrier-borne strike on the American military base at Dutch Harbor and seizing part of the Aleutian Archipelago in the North Pacific. Operation AL, elaborated by the Navy General Staff and the Combined Fleet, was an initiative that could expand the Japanese perimeter far eastwards to secure the northern approach to the home islands and prevent the potential of US-Soviet military cooperation against Japan. By conquering Attu and Kiska in the Aleutians, the Japanese Army and Navy intended to turn them into bastions that, supplied directly from the Kurile Islands, would check any American advance from the north until at least the summer of 1943.
The great disaster at Midway foiled the Japanese plan to create a greater defensive perimeter, though, ironically, as a result of the same battle, the Americans lacked the forces to reconquer the two lost islands. A Japanese presence on US land, remote on maps but seen as a natural highway to Alaska and America’s back door, also caused chaos among military personnel and politicians alike in Washington D.C., sharing the fear of an attack on the West Coast and the inability to predict Japanese intentions.
Volume 1 of Into the Endless Mist covers the events of Operation AL from the Japanese raid on Dutch Harbor and the invasion of Attu and Kiska to the American landing on Adak in late August 1942, and is illustrated throughout with original photographs along with the @War series’ signature color artworks.
