Pearl Harbor was not the only Attack on the U.S. in WWII

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2 years ago

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U-boats stalked the coast. Balloon bombs were set off to start wildfires. These assaults on the U.S. mainland caused destruction and panic—when they weren’t covered up.

Most of the fighting during World War II took place overseas, destroying much of Europe and Pacific nations in the process. But there are little known instances of Japan and Nazi Germany attacking the American mainland. These incidents—including balloon bombs, lurking U-boats, and a mysterious object flying in Los Angeles’s night sky—highlighted the vulnerability of the U.S. homeland and prompted increased defense measures. They also unleashed fear and suspicion throughout the American population, notably against Japanese Americans, resulting in the internment of thousands of innocent people. Here are some notable examples of enemy attack on U.S. soil while war raged abroad.

Japanese balloon bombs

Between November 1944 and April 1945, the Japanese launched about 9,000 high-altitude balloon bombs, known as “fire balloons,” that were carried across the Pacific Ocean in the atmospheric jet stream with the aim of starting forest fires in the western United States. The balloons were kept afloat using a mechanism that triggered a fuse when the balloon dropped in altitude, releasing a sandbag to lighten the load and rise back up; this was repeated until all that was left was the bomb. While there have been only 300 documented recoveries, some of these balloons reached as far inland as Wyoming and Montana.

One had tragic results. On May 5, 1945, a balloon bomb exploded near Bly, Oregon, killing six Americans on a church picnic, including a pregnant woman and five children—the only mainland casualties that resulted from enemy action during World War II. While the Japanese hoped to instill panic and divert resources from the war effort, the U.S. government kept the enemy’s scheme under wraps from the public for fear of mass hysteria. Even the affected community was forced to remain silent after the disastrous event.

Left: The Japanese attempted to bomb the U.S. mainland by floating balloons, like one pictured here in California in 1946, via high-altitude air currents. The project was dubbed “Fugo” as was the first intercontinental weapons system.

Right: Twenty years after leading a bombing raid targeting Brookings, Oregon, Nobuo Fujita reads a 1942 headlines of his wartime bombing mission. Fujita visited Brookings as a guest of the junior chamber of commerce in an international goodwill gesture.

The German U-boat threat

German U-boats—an abbreviation of Unterseeboot, the German word for “undersea boat”—prowled the Atlantic waters along the American and Canadian coastlines between January and June 1942, targeting U.S. and Allied shipping. In the first three months of 1942, they sank more than 100 ships—some within sight of land. In North Carolina alone, U-boats sank 78 merchant ships, killing 1,200 merchant marines.

The U.S. Navy was not prepared for this threat, and the situation became so desperate that unarmed civilian light aircraft patrolled offshore, though the pilots had no means of driving the U-boats from the U.S. coastline. Some crews later jury-rigged their planes with bombs, successfully sinking two U-boats.

The attacks finally declined after American merchant ships began sailing in transatlantic convoys, accompanied by sea and air escorts.

Two Coast Guard convoy patrols take to the skies.

A skulking Japanese submarine

On February 23, 1942, a Japanese submarine, the I-17, under the command of Commander Nishino Kozo surfaced off the coast of California and shelled the Ellwood oil field near Santa Barbara. It was one of California’s largest oil fields, but unlike those in San Francisco and Los Angeles, it did not have a major military presence.

Contemporary newspaper reports describe the attack as beginning at 7:15 p.m., with a total of about 16 shells fired. Hilda Wheeler, who helped run the nearby Wheeler Inn, described the scene: “We saw the shells tearing up the ground as they landed between us and the ocean front. … We all thought at first it was target practice. And then we looked out back and saw the earth spurting up and we were scared to death.”

Amazingly, the only destruction was a damaged rig that needed a $500 repair job, and one man was wounded when he attempted to defuse an unexploded shell. U.S. planes chased the sub, but Nishino got away.

Nevertheless, the incident generated significant fears of invasion among Americans living on the West Coast. Newspapers blurted: “Submarine Shells Ellwood Oilfield” and “First Attack of War on Continental U.S.” Soon after, the U.S. government unjustly rounded up more than 120,000 Japanese Americans—the majority U.S. citizens—and placed them in internment camps, where they remained until 1945.

A mysterious flying object

The day after the Ellsworth oilfield was attacked, paranoia reigned, leading to one of the war’s most bizarre home-front incidents. Naval intelligence told units on the California coast to prepare for a potential Japanese attack. At 2 a.m. on February 25, the military picked up an unidentified flying object approaching the Los Angeles area. Believing the Japanese might use aircraft or balloons to launch an attack on California, they sounded air raid sirens, and the city went into a state of high alert. Searchlights aimed at the object and more than 1,400 rounds of anti-aircraft ammunition were fired, resulting in a chaotic night-sky scene. During the chaos, several people died as a result of car accidents and heart attacks. But no enemy aircraft was shot down, and no wreckage or debris was recovered.

This event, referred to today as the Battle of Los Angeles, remains shrouded in mystery, with no definitive explanation for the mystifying object.

A bomb-equipped floatplane

On September 9, 1942, a Japanese submarine launched a small reconnaissance floatplane equipped with two 170-pound thermite incendiary bombs over the Oregon coast in the hope of starting massive forest fires and igniting large-scale panic. The pilot, Nobuo Fujita, released the bombs about 50 miles inland in the vicinity of Mount Emily, starting a smattering of small forest fires. Rainfall in the area made the forest damp and less prone to igniting. Bomb fragments identified as Japanese were collected and handed over to the U.S. Army.

President Roosevelt called for a news blackout in the hopes of avoiding mass panic, though the effort proved fruitless since so many people already knew about the attack. The military brought in fighter aircraft, and blackouts were implemented all along the West Coast.

Fujita conducted another incendiary attack after midnight on September 29, 1942, dropping more two bombs along the Oregon coast. He reported seeing flames, but no one on the ground reported anything.

Soliders survey the damage after the June 21, 1942 shelling of Fort Stevens in Oregon by the Japanese submarine I-25. In response to the April 1942 bombing of the Japanese archipelago, known as the “Doolittle Raid,” Japanese sent their I-class long-range submarines to attack along the North American Pacific coast.

5 Attacks on US Soil During World War II

The Japanese made a handful of isolated attacks on the coasts of California and Oregon, while the Germans deployed spies and saboteurs to more broadly undermine the American war effort. Ultimately, none had a material impact on the outcome of the war.

1. The Duquesne Spy Ring

The most sophisticated German espionage operation in the United States was established—and busted—before America even entered the war. The Duquesne spy ring included 30 men and three women operating under the direction of Frederick “Fritz” Joubert Duquesne, a flamboyant South African adventurer and soldier who had also spied for the Germans during World War I.

Starting in the late 1930s, members of Duquesne’s clandestine cell found their way into key civilian jobs in the United States. Some operatives served as couriers by working aboard American merchant vessels and airlines, while others gathered information by posing as military contractors. In its first several months, the Duquesne spy ring gained significant intelligence on American shipping patterns and even stole military secrets regarding the bombsights used in American aircraft.

Despite its early successes, the Duquesne spy ring was toppled in 1941 when a new recruit named William G. Sebold became a double agent for the United States. In addition to funneling dummy radio messages to the Nazis, the Federal Bureau of Investigation provided Sebold with an office in New York outfitted with hidden recording devices and a two-way mirror. Once Sebold had gathered enough evidence, the FBI arrested Duquesne and 32 of his operatives in the biggest espionage bust in American history. Just days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941, all members of the group were convicted and sentenced to a total of over 300 years in prison.

2. The Bombing of Ellwood Oil Field

After the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, a small contingent of Japanese submarines was dispatched east to patrol the California coastline. On February 23, 1942, the Japanese submarine I-17 slinked into a channel near Ellwood Oil Field, a large oil well and storage facility outside of Santa Barbara. After surfacing, the submarine lobbed 16 shells at Ellwood Beach from its lone deck gun before submerging and fleeing to the open ocean.

The brief shelling only caused minor damage to the oil field—a pump house and a single oil derrick were destroyed—but its implications were severe. The bombardment at Ellwood was the first shelling of the mainland United States during World War II, and it sparked an invasion panic among an American populace not used to dealing with war on the home front. A day later, reports of enemy aircraft led to the so-called “Battle of Los Angeles,” in which American artillery was discharged over Los Angeles for several hours due to the mistaken belief that the Japanese were invading.

3. The Bombing of Fort Stevens and the Lookout Air Raids

The only attack on a mainland American military site during World War II occurred on June 21, 1942, on the Oregon coastline. After trailing American fishing vessels to bypass minefields, the Japanese submarine I-25 made its way to the mouth of the Columbia River. It surfaced near Fort Stevens, an antiquated Army base that dated back to the Civil War. Just before midnight, I-25 used its 140-millimeter deck gun to fire 17 shells at the fort. Believing that the muzzle flashes of the fort’s guns would only serve to reveal their position, the commander of Fort Stevens ordered his men not to return fire. The plan worked, and the bombardment was almost totally unsuccessful—a nearby baseball field bore the brunt of the damage.

I-25 would later make history again when it executed the first-ever bombing of the continental United States by an enemy aircraft. In what became known as the Lookout Air Raids, I-25 returned to the Oregon coast in September 1942 and launched a Yokosuka E14Y floatplane. After flying to a wooded area near Brookings, Oregon, the floatplane dropped a pair of incendiary bombs in the hope of starting a forest fire. Thanks to light winds and a quick response from fire patrols, the bombing failed to have its desired effect, as did a second bombing over Brookings later that month. The pilot of the Japanese floatplane, Nobuo Fujita, would later make several goodwill visits to Brookings during the 1960s and was even proclaimed an honorary citizen of the town upon his death in 1997.

4. Operation Pastorius

The largest invasion of American soil during World War II came in the form of eight Nazi saboteurs sent to the United States on a doomed mission known as Operation Pastorius. The men—all naturalized American citizens who were living in Germany when the conflict began—were tasked with sabotaging the war effort and demoralizing the civilian population through acts of terrorism. In June 1942, U-boats secretly dropped the two four-man crews on the coast of Amagansett, New York, and Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. Each team carried up to $84,000 in cash and enough explosives to wage a long campaign of sabotage.

The men had orders to attack transport hubs, hydroelectric power plants and industrial facilities. But before a single act of sabotage could ever take place, the mission was compromised when George John Dasch, one of the saboteurs from the New York group, chose to turn himself in to the FBI. Dasch was heavily interrogated, and after two weeks the FBI successfully rounded up the remaining saboteurs. Six of the men were executed as spies, while Dasch and an accomplice were jailed for six years before being deported by President Harry Truman.

5. Japanese Fire Balloons

One of the most unusual military actions of World War II came in the form of Japanese balloon bombs, or “Fugos,” directed at the mainland United States. Starting in 1944, the Japanese military constructed and launched over 9,000 high-altitude balloons, each loaded with nearly 50 pounds of anti-personnel and incendiary explosives. Amazingly, these unmanned balloons originated from over 5,000 miles away in the Japanese home islands. After being launched, the specially designed hydrogen balloons would ascend to an altitude of 30,000 feet and ride the jet stream across the Pacific Ocean to the mainland United States. Their bombs were triggered to drop after the three-day journey was complete—hopefully over a city or wooded region that would catch fire.

Nearly 350 of the bombs actually made it across the Pacific, and several were intercepted or shot down by the U.S. military. From 1944 to 1945, balloon bombs were spotted in more than 15 states—some as far east as Michigan and Iowa. The only fatalities came from a single incident in Oregon, where a pregnant woman and five children were killed in an explosion after coming across one of the downed balloons. Their deaths are considered the only combat casualties to occur on U.S. soil during World War II.

Japan had little chance of victory—so why did it attack Pearl Harbor?

“Air raid on Pearl Harbor. This is no drill.” When that urgent message from Honolulu reached Washington, D.C., on December 7, 1941, even those who anticipated conflict with Japan were stunned by the attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, nearly 4,000 miles from Tokyo. “My God, this can’t be true!” said Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox.

Japan’s leaders had hatched a daring plan to let the United States know who was in control of the Pacific. The surprise attack had been in the works for months before the first bombs fell.

A sailor observes explosions and stands amid wreckage at Ford Island Naval Air Station during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Simmering tensions

Japan had begun an imperial expansion in the late 19th century, seeking out natural resources for the island nation as well as buffer states to protect it. It defeated China in the 1890s to gain control of Korea and triumphed over Russia in the 1900s to seize the Liaodong Peninsula and parts of Manchuria for itself.

The Japanese lacked aerial-reconnaissance views of Pearl Harbor like this U.S. Navy photo, but spy Takeo Yoshikawa reported on ships moored near Ford Island.

In the early 20th century, Japan’s imperial efforts continued unabated as it took more and more territory from China, but by the mid-1930s relations between Japan and the United States had become strained. Through diplomacy and sanctions, the U.S. was trying to prevent Japan from becoming a great imperial power—a stance that seemed somewhat hypocritical. Why, Japan’s leaders asked, should their nation abandon expansion at the insistence of Americans who had colonized Hawaii and occupied the Philippines? If the price for peace was to grovel and pull back, then they would fight.

First strike

Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, depicted here in a portrait, targeted the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor.

Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, the Japanese Marshal Admiral of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) and the commander-in-chief of the Combined Fleet during World War II, had lived in the United States when studying at Harvard University and during later tours of duty in the 1920s. Yamamoto understood that provoking the United States with a direct attack could have deadly consequences for he had seen the nation’s vast natural resources and industrial capacity. He warned that to “fight the United States is like fighting the whole world.”

The only hope, Yamamoto surmised, was to smash the Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor before the U.S. Navy had a chance to fully mobilize. If Japan did not rout the Pacific Fleet and prevent Americans from bringing their strength to bear, Japan would be in a world of trouble. Only a quick, powerful, pre-emptive strike could hobble the U.S. in the Pacific.

Japan authorized war preparations on July 2, 1941. Planning for the attack on Pearl Harbor began.

No turning back

On November 26, 1941, Yamamoto launched six big aircraft carriers with more than 400 warplanes of the First Air Fleet on their decks, escorted by battleships, cruisers, destroyers, and submarines. To avoid detection, the force followed a little-traveled, northerly route to Hawaii. Before daybreak on December 7, the Japanese carriers reached the assigned position a few hundred miles north of Honolulu.

Japanese warships such as these shielded the aircraft carriers dispatched by Yamamoto as they approached Hawaii.

War rituals

Up before daybreak on December 7, Japanese naval aviators aboard the aircraft carriers commanded by Vice Adm. Nagumo sat down to a ceremonial breakfast of rice and red beans and took sips of sake before setting out to attack the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. They did not have to wait until they achieved victory to honor their mission. These men believed that one who entered battle for his country and its exalted emperor was blessed, whether he prevailed or perished. Cmdr. Mitsuo Fuchida, chosen to lead the attack, spoke for many when he recalled his feelings that morning. “Who could be luckier than I?” he asked. In risking his life for what he cherished, he wrote, “I fulfilled my duty as a warrior.”

1st Image: Japanese naval pilots receive orders before bombing Pearl Harbor.

2nd Image: Officers and crew on a warship of the Imperial Japanese Navy salute their flag, emblazoned with the rising sun.

3rd Image: Crewmen on a Japanese aircraft carrier cheer as a warplane destined for Pearl Harbor takes off in the second wave of the attack, launched around 7 a.m.

The rising sun

As dawn glimmered around 6 a.m., the carriers turned into the wind to launch the first wave of 183 fighters, bombers, and torpedo planes, even as heavy seas made conditions hazardous. “The carriers were rolling considerably, pitching and yawing,” recalled a pilot who was waiting to take off with the second wave of attackers an hour later.

Among the items recovered at Pearl Harbor after the attack were these goggles worn by a Japanese pilot, and a navigational instrument from a plane that was shot down.

When planes left the flight deck, they sank out of sight before bobbing up above the clouds. Fuchida, who worried that cloud cover would obscure their target, was reassured when his radio picked up Honolulu’s weather forecast, promising clear skies. Residents there, waking to what looked like another placid Sunday in paradise, had less than two hours of peace left.

MISSED WARNINGS

A Japanese bomber flies over an airfield at Pearl Harbor as smoke rises from targeted American warships.

Two clear warnings of an imminent attack failed to reach Adm. Husband Kimmel and Lt. Gen. Walter Short—the U.S. leaders commanding the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor—between the time Fuchida and his men took off and the time they approached their target.

At 6:45 a.m., Lt. William Outerbridge, captain of the destroyer U.S.S. Ward, dropped depth charges on a small submarine lurking near the narrow entrance to Pearl Harbor. Operated by a two-man crew and armed with a single torpedo, the midget Japanese sub was among five assigned to go where the larger submarines that hauled and released them could not safely enter, by slipping furtively into the shallow harbor and targeting American warships. Although Outerbridge reported the startling incident, communications were slow on Sunday morning. It took an hour for his report to work its way up the chain of command to Kimmel, by which time Fuchida and his men had Pearl Harbor in sight.

The second warning came around 7:15 a.m. when Pvt. Joseph Lockard, operating a mobile radar station near Kahuku Point at the northern end of Oahu, detected an “unusually large flight” of aircraft approaching at a distance of less than 100 miles. “Don’t worry about it,” replied the watch officer of the U.S. Army Air Force 78th Pursuit Squadron. He assumed the planes were friendly B-17 bombers, expected in from California for a stopover at Pearl Harbor before they continued on to the Philippines. No fighters were dispatched, and no word of Lockard’s report reached General Short before the attack began.

This is no drill!

At 8 a.m. sharp, as a band on the deck of the U.S.S. Nevada began playing the national anthem for the raising of their flag, a squadron of 40 Japanese torpedo planes bore down on the harbor. One hit the battleship U.S.S. Oklahoma, docked near the Nevada, whose band members scrambled for cover. Within moments, a torpedo struck the Nevada explosively.

The damage done by torpedoes was compounded by bombs dropped at high levels that crashed through the decks of warships before detonating. Around 8:20 a.m., a bomb penetrated the forward magazine of the battleship U.S.S. Arizona where gunpowder was stored, triggering a volcanic blast that killed hundreds of men instantaneously. Of the nearly 1,400 men aboard the Arizona that morning, fewer than 300 survived.

Top: Rescuers pull a crewman from Pearl Harbor as the battleship U.S.S. West Virginia burns.

Bottom: Smoke billows from stricken warships of the U.S. Pacific Fleet during the attack.

Bloody Sunday

Around 9 a.m., the second wave of warplanes swooped in and wreaked further havoc. By the time the last attackers departed around 9:45 a.m., all eight battleships and 11 other warships had gone down or been severely damaged. Most eventually would be repaired, but the Arizona and Oklahoma were ruined and those on board accounted for nearly three-fourths of the Navy’s casualties on this bloody Sunday.

Losses among members of other services and civilians brought the toll to more than 2,400 killed and nearly 1,200 wounded.

This newspaper extra, issued soon after Pearl Harbor was attacked, told of civilian casualties.

Waking the sleeping enemy

When Fuchida and his airmen returned to their carriers, the elation they felt at catching their foes off-guard drained away. For all the harm done at Pearl Harbor, the Pacific Fleet had not been incapacitated. The oil depots and repair yards on which it depended had suffered little damage.

Admiral Yamamoto, who later learned of the results, stated there was no glory in mauling a “sleeping enemy” who was now wide awake and capable of striking back. He knew the tide might turn against him if he did not complete the task his fleet left unfinished on December 7.

Among the casualties that day were 429 men who died when the *Oklahoma* was torpedoed and capsized.

‘A date which will live in infamy’

Within hours of the Pearl Harbor attack, Japanese forces struck several other targets up to 6,000 miles away to clear the way for invasions that would follow. It was the broadest offensive ever launched at one time by a single nation. Japanese troops advanced on the British stronghold of Singapore. Among the American targets bombed on that same day were bases on Guam, Wake Island, and the Philippines, where dozens of fighters and B-17 bombers were destroyed on runways at Clark Field. As President Roosevelt stated when asking Congress to declare war on Japan, this day would “live in infamy.”

The Japanese show of force hurt the United States, and it would be many desparate days before American and Allied forces could begin to reclaim lost ground in the Pacific theater.

Enlisted men of the Naval Air Station at Kaneohe, Hawaii, place leis on the graves of their comrades killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Resources

nationalgeographic.com, “Pearl Harbor was the only WWII attack on the U.S., right? Wrong.” By NEIL KAGAN ANDSTEPHEN HYSLOP;

history.com, “5 Attacks on US Soil During World War II.” By Frank Andrews;

nationalgeographic.com, “Japan had little chance of victory—so why did it attack Pearl Harbor?” By Editors of National Gegraphic;