The Williwaw War: The Arkansas National Guard in the Aleutians in World War IIWhen the 206th Coast Artillery Regiment of the Arkansas National Guard was called into federal service in January of 1941, few of the soldiers saw this action as anything more than a temporary detour in their lives. The war, after all, was in Europe and Asia and did not seem to involve them; many of the men thought they would serve their one-year enlistment and go home. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor changed all that. The Williwaw War highlights the event sthat shaped the service of Arkansas’s 206th in the Aleutian Islands, including the Japanese strikes on Dutch Harbor on the third and fourth of June 1942, as well as the naval battle of the Komandorski Islands and the recapture of Attu and Kiska. Written by the noted co-authors of the best-welling books on World War II, The Williwaw War chronicles the efforts of the men of the 206th as they battled terrible weather, overwhelming boredome and deprivation, and the Japanese, who were succesfully attempting to distract the Americans from the main Japanese assault on Midway Island. |
Contents
1 Well Above the Average | 1 |
2 Training Began to Pick Up | 9 |
3 Who Knows Our Destiny ? | 17 |
4 A Sometimes Difficult Situation | 24 |
5 Is this Alaska? | 33 |
6 Officially Named Fort Mears | 43 |
7 Early On in Our Story | 51 |
8 Still Just a Big Adventure | 61 |
24 Settled on Hog Island | 199 |
25 Unfit for Pigs | 208 |
26 But Duty Is Duty | 222 |
27 A Little Lift | 231 |
28 The Worst Storm of the Tour | 240 |
29 A White Christmas | 249 |
30 Out There When Conditions Were Rough | 257 |
3l The Japanese Could Have Sunk Salt Lake City with a Baseball | 265 |
9 It Really Looks Serious Now | 69 |
10 This Is It | 77 |
11 Under Trying Conditions | 85 |
12 Snafu | 95 |
13 This Country Gets You | 104 |
14 We Plowed On | 113 |
15 A Dangerous Game | 122 |
16 Tomorrow May Bring Untold Things | 131 |
17 Its the Damn Japs | 140 |
18 Friendly Planes Hell | 149 |
19 The Waiting Is Torment | 158 |
20 Like a Big Bunch of Mosquitos | 167 |
21 They Sure Did Some Damage | 175 |
22 We Calmed Down Some | 182 |
23 The Japs Are Here | 191 |
32 Charged with a Herculean Task | 273 |
33 Sweating the Attack | 281 |
34 Get the Damned Thing Over With | 289 |
35 We Think We WIll be Seeing Action Soon | 299 |
36 A Great Big Juicy Expensive Mistake | 308 |
37 The War Had Gone By | 316 |
38 Back to Civilization | 325 |
39 A Learning Experience | 334 |
Return to Yesterday | 343 |
Notes | 351 |
Bibliography | 395 |
Contributors | 403 |
| 407 | |