The Second Attack on Pearl Harbor: Operation K and other Japanese attempts to bomb America in World War II

This is a very interesting book which covers a rather wide variety of things dealing with World War II. My own comments will be in ( ).

Second Attack on Pearl Harbor

First is that there was a second attack at Pearl Harbor, the attack taking place on March 4, 1942. Two huge Japanese “flying boat” planes tried to bomb the harbor. Because of weather they missed their target by miles, though, the bombs falling but doing no damage.

The Americans considered that the attack was a failure since no damage was done, but the Japanese considered the attack a success since it showed they could come right back and bomb Pearl Harbor yet again in a surprise move despite all the reaction to the first surprise attack.

Operation K was a series of planned attacks on the US and its possessions.

Plans to bomb coastal cities

The Japanese worked out with the Germans a plan to use the Japanese plane called the Emily, which was a long-range plan. They would be refueled by German subs and then bomb cities on the East Coast of the US. When that plan fell through, the Japanese considered doing their own refueling, and this time change the targets to cities on the West Coast. The attack also would include bombing the Panama Canal to slow down passage of warships from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans.

(This is, of course, when the game of “what if” becomes playable. Assuming the Japanese had carried out that plan, and bombed, say, Los Angeles, San Francisco and a few other cities, what would have been the effect? )

(For one thing, it would have had a major effect on the civilian populations. The US hadn't had trouble like that on its own soil for over a hundred years. It probably would have resulted in a lot of panic and an immediate call for arming the West Coast. That could have had the result of forcing the military to use a lot of its resources in the US itself and that would have made fewer resources available in the Pacific and could have resulted in a longer war.)

(Even though the Japanese Americans had been removed from the West Coast and placed into internment camps, there was still a lot of major anti-Japanese prejudice, particularly in California, and it's possible that, as a result of the attacks, the Japanese Americans would have been totally barred from returning to the West Coast, as some wanted but were unable to otherwise accomplish.)

The book also talks about when Japan actually managed to launch a plane from a sub and bomb the Oregon forests, trying to start a forest fire. The sub and plane worked as did the bombs, but since it was the rainy season no significant fires were started.

There was a plan to use six Emilys, refueled by subs, and bomb Los Angeles, and the plan was approved before the battle of Midway. After that battle, though, the idea was dropped.

Another plan was to take 30 Emily bombers, refuel them, and bomb the oil fields in Texas.

The Doolittle Raid and its effects

The book says that the Doolittle Raid was possibly the most important strategic bombing of the entire war. It boosted the morale of the American people, and it had a major effect on the Japanese in that they realized that their own nation could be bombed by Allied planes.

This caused the Japanese to decide to extend their eastern perimeter of controlled areas to keep out American carriers. This then resulted in the attacks on the Aleutian islands, and the idea of attacking Midway island. It was the attack on Midway island that basically marked the beginning of the end for Japan's war efforts.

Sub Attacks

The Japanese sub I-26 sank an American merchant ship on Dec. 7, 1941 northwest of Seattle. Another sub sunk a ship that was between Oahu and San Francisco, and on Dec. 9 the I-10 sank a ship headed towards the US West Coast.

Three subs shelled the Maui harbor area on Dec. 15, 1941, hitting a pineapple cannery and causing about $700 in damage. Another attack by subs on the islands took place on Dec. 30.

Nine subs were ordered to proceed to the US mainland and shell “targets of opportunity.” The I-19 ended up off Los Angeles, the I-15 off San Francisco, the I-25 off the mouth of the Columbia River, and the I-26 off Seattle.The other subs took up positions off the coast of Oregon and California.

They sunk two merchant ships. One plan called for eight of the subs to surface on Dec. 24 and bombard Los Angeles, San Francisco and other West Coast sites, but the plan was canceled. There was a fear that if the Japanese did this to the US, the US would do exactly the same to Japanese cities.

The I-26 fired at the Estevan Point lighthouse on Vancouver Island on June 20, 1942, making it the only place in Canada to be directly attacked by the Japanese in WWII. No damage was done.

Japanese censorship

The battles of the Coral Sea and Midway marked pretty much the end of Japanese expansion in the Pacific and the beginning of their defensive strategy. The Japanese people, though, were told by one paper that “Navy Scores Another Epochal Victory.” The Japanese claimed they sank 2 US aircraft carriers, downed 120 planes, and also sank a heavy cruiser and a sub. In reality, the newspaper reporters that were with the attacking force were barred from returning to Tokyo and telling of the Japanese loss. The crews of the ships was not allowed shore leave, all to keep the people from learning of what was basically a Japanese disaster.

The book speculates that, if the Japanese had not lost four carriers at Midway and had actually won the battle, they would have take Midway island whenever they wanted to, and would have been able to start launching attacks on the Hawaiian islands. There is even a possibility that Japan could have taken Hawaii, forcing US forces to fall back to the US West Coast. The Japanese might have been able to take India and link up with Nazi forces in the Mideast.

The bombing of Oregon

This was also done in order to raise Japanese morale and as a reaction to the Dolittle raid on Japan. The plane used, a Glen, was not very big (it was stowed on a sub and when used was put together, then folded up and stowed again) and had a limited bomb run, so incendiaries were probably the best thing for it to carry and use. There would have been a third attempt to start fires in the forest, but bad weather prevented that attack.

The same sub that carried the plane that bombed Oregon later sank two oil tankers and a Russia submarine, although they didn't realize it was a Russian sub. That could have been a problem since the two countries were not actually at war when the sub was sunk.

The I-17 was the first Japanese sub to fire on US mainland shore targets, doing so off the Santa Barbara channel. They were aiming at oil storage tanks and fired for 45 minutes but failed to score any direct hits.

”To keep the Japanese from learning of any reaction to the shelling, the American government immediately warned newspapers and radio stations not to publicize he event. Oil refinery workers were ordered not to talk about the incident and were threatened with loss of exemption from the draft if they broke their silence about what happened. Life magazine ignored the government orders and published three pages of pictures covering the story in its March 9, 1942 issue.”

The Battle of Los Angeles

The book then describes how, at 2:15 A.M. On February 15, 1942, reports of unidentified flying craft were received, resulting in anti-aircraft guns opening fire, using 1400 hundreds of ammunition. There was a fairly major argument afterwards over whether or not there ever were any planes above Los Angeles, with government officials confirming and denying it at the same time.

9-11, far before the time

There was a plan in 1944 for Japanese plane-carrying subs to go to the US East Coast and then use the planes in suicide attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. The plan was cancelled.

Bio-warfare

There was also a plan to use subs and planes to wage bacteriological warfare against the US West Coast. The subs would launch planes that carried plague bombs to spread typhus, dengue fever, cholera, bubonic and other plagues, the agents being developed by Unit 731. That mission was also canceled.

Sub atrocities

The sub I-8, commanded by Captain Arizumi, picked up 98 unarmed survivors of a ship then sank and then had them all killed. 96 prisoners from an American ship met the same end on July 2, 1944. To avoid arrest and trial, the captain killed himself when his sub entered port when the war was ended.

Balloon Bombs

The book also talks a little about the balloon bombs and how Japanese girls were the ones to assemble them. They worked 12 hour shifts in an unheated building. This was another instance in which the US government censored events to prevent the Japanese from finding out if their efforts were working or not.

A Sunday-school teacher and six children were killed by one of the bombs on May 4, 1945. Due to the censorship of news, they had no idea what the strange object was they had found.

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