American forces reclaimed remote Attu Island on May 30, 1943, after a 19-day campaign known as World War II’s forgotten battle. Much of the fighting was hand-to-hand, waged in dense fog and winds of up to 120 mph.
Casualties were high; only 28 of 2,500 Japanese soldiers survived. More than 500 U.S. soldiers died in the “forgotten battle.” American forces had trained in California for desert combat and were not prepared for the harsh Alaska weather. On the final assault on U.S. forces on May 29 1943, 200 Japanese soldiers were killed and another 500 held grenades to their bellies and pulled the pins. The battle for Attu proved to be unimportant to the rest of the war, but American planes did use the island to bomb the northernmost reaches of Japan.