Word: kiska
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ELMENDORF Air Force Base, which stretches across 13,400 frosty acres of tundra on the outskirts of Anchorage, is a carryover from the days when Alaska had not yet become an American state and Japanese soldiers were swarming through the fog and cold of Attu and Kiska. Constructed 16 months before Pearl Harbor, Elmendorf was designed to blunt a Japanese thrust at the Aleutians. This week the base was to play a far different role in Japanese-American relations. According to the prepared script, a gleaming Japan Air Lines DC-8 jet swoops down at night for a refueling stop...
...grown from a handful of people to more than 2,000 scientists in 120 countries. The Russians (though not the Chinese) find participation useful; last month the center flashed word of an event taking place right on the Soviet Union's Siberian doorstep: the eruption of long-dormant Kiska volcano in the Aleutians...
...Attu, the desert-trained U.S. soldiers showed little dash, though outnumbering the suicidal Japanese more than four to one. Off Kiska, a naval task force wasted more than 1,000 rounds of 14-and 8-inch shells, shooting at phantoms on their radar screens; after that, Admiral Kinkaid launched an invasion by 34,426 troops, only to find that the enemy had pulled stakes and cleared out 18 days earlier. After the trigger-happy U.S. soldiers landed in the Kiska fog, they began shooting at each other, killing 25 and wounding...
...Global War. Why, then, was the U.S. falling back to Alaska's inner core? It had been different in World War II. The Japanese, landing on Attu and Kiska, had tied up ten U.S. divisions. The Navy, hard-pressed at the crucial battle of Midway, had nonetheless spared five cruisers, 13 destroyers and six submarines to defend the big peninsula against a diversionary raid. Air bases were strewn along the coast and down the Aleutians at enormous cost: in 1942 the Army diverted desert-camouflaged planes intended for Africa to defend the very areas where...
...soldiers retook Attu; in July the Japs deserted Kiska, abandoned the Aleutians...