WORTHINGTON - Tuesday night I nearly telephoned you. Well, I nearly telephoned half the people I know. As it turned out, I telephoned no one. In that old expression, I was glued to the TV. C-SPAN, I think. I am not a television watcher. I am a television checker. I check in the early evening to see what’s on. You would never guess.
They were showing the U.S. troops, regular Army and National Guard, on the Aleutian islands during World War II. As I understood it, these films are in the national archives. They were never broadcast before, for important reasons. All those old names I haven’t heard for more than half-a-century were coming back - Kodiak and Sitka and Attu. Kiska. Dutch Harbor.
There is a day I remember well. It must have been summer. We were out of school. Suddenly, out of the Ninth Street armory, our local guardsmen began to appear and to get into a formation. They were wearing their dress uniforms. There was Dr. R.W. Lowry with silver eagles on his lapels. A lieutenant colonel, I believe. Ken Roberts Sr., my scout master. Henry Fauskee. Jay Thurber. Clifford Leak with his captain bars. I knew practically all of them. There was no saying, “Hi!” to them. They looked grim. Stern and grim. When their ranks were formed they marched from the armory in silence, past the Campbell Soup plant and on to a special train which was waiting for them at the depot.
These were Worthington men going off to war, except there was no war. It was 1940. For the boys standing at curbside, it was confusing. There were Luverne men there, too. Windom men.
The military contingent went first to California for a kind of basic training. They brushed up on basic skills. Then it was back aboard ships and off to Alaska and the Aleutians.
There was a scratch of humor in all this. The Japanese commanders had it figured out that, should American men be part of an invasion force, they would leap from Aleutian isle to Aleutian isle to the heart of Japan. The American commanders had it figured out - invading Japanese troops would leap from Aleutian isle to Aleutian isle to Alaska and on to America.
As it turned out, Japan did conquer two of the islands. This was a diversion force to distract from the great sea battle that was shaping at Midway. And so it is that when TV has shown films from that time they have gone to the vaults for photos of Midway, Iwo Jima. Normandy. Never before had they broadcast the U.S. war in the Aleutian islands.
I tried to find the faces of the men I knew. I never saw one. The cameras were moving fast and I could catch no glimpse of, among others, Worthington men at war.
We were told this was the only American soil the Japanese conquered in the war. The Aleutian chain is a part of Alaska - it was Alaska Territory where the stars and stripes blew in the cold winds. The Japanese invaded and captured the island and military base at Attu, west of Kodiak, where the main U.S. troop strength was concentrated.
For several weeks U.S. heavy bombers dropped their explosives on the harbor at Attu. Then came the invasion force, the ground troops, somewhat in rehearsal for the South Pacific island campaigns that were still to come. Japanese soldiers and Americans fought at Attu for two weeks, often in brutal bayonet carnage. Attu was at last surrendered - nearly every Japanese soldier was dead.
There were people at Worthington who read one of the New York newspapers daily. There were many who read the Minneapolis and St. Paul papers. They said there never was a report of Worthington men marching off to war. Maybe no one ever realized that clear out here in Minnesota, before there even was a war, young Americans were marching to their hometown depots and preparing for combat against a foe who was not yet a foe. Worthington men - southwest Minnesota men - were among the very first to sail in the icy ocean to form a line of defense against (we were guessing) the army of Japan.
Ray Crippen is a former editor of the Daily Globe. His column appears on Saturdays.
