When Japan Attacked Continental United States During WW2

 Nobuo Fujita

Nobuo Fujita  (1911–30 September 1997) was a Warrant Flying Officer of the Imperial Japanese Navy who flew a floatplane from the long-range submarine aircraft carrier I-25, and conducted the only wartime aircraft-dropped bombing on the continental United States, which became known as the Lookout Air Raid. Using incendiary bombs, his mission was to start massive forest fires in the Pacific Northwest near the city of Brookings, Oregon with the objective of drawing U.S. military resources away from the Pacific Theater. The strategy was also used in the Japanese fire balloon campaign.

Fujita himself suggested the idea of a submarine-based seaplane to bomb military targets, including ships at sea, and attacks on the U.S. mainland, especially the strategic Panama Canal. The idea was approved, and the mission was given to I-25. Submarine aircraft carriers such as the giant I-400-class submarines would be developed specifically to bomb the Panama Canal.

 Nobuo Fujita standing by his Yokosuka E14Y "Glen".

At 06:00 on 9 September, I-25 surfaced west of the Oregon/California border. The submarine launched the "Glen", flown by Fujita and Petty Officer Okuda Shoji, with a 154 kg (340 lb) load of two incendiary bombs. Fujita dropped two bombs, one on Wheeler Ridge on Mount Emily in Oregon. The location of the other bomb is unknown. The Wheeler Ridge bomb started a small fire 16 km (9.9 mi) due east of Brookings, which U.S. Forest Service employees were able to extinguish. Rain the night before had made the forest very damp, and the bombs were rendered essentially ineffective. Fujita's plane had been spotted by two men, Howard Gardner and Bob Larson, at the Mount Emily fire lookout tower in the Siskiyou National Forest. Two other lookouts (the Chetco Point Lookout and the Long Ridge Lookout) reported the plane, but could not see it due to heavy fog. The plane was seen and heard by many people, especially when Fujita flew over Brookings in both directions. At about noon that day, Howard Gardner at the Mount Emily Lookout reported seeing smoke. The four U.S. Forest Service employees discovered that the fire was caused by a Japanese bomb. Approximately 27 kg (60 lb) of fragments, including the nose of the bomb, were turned over to the U.S. Army.

 Japanese submarine I-25. The bulbous plane hangar and the catapult are visible forward of the conning tower.

After the bombing, I-25 came under attack by a USAAF aircraft on patrol, forcing the submarine to dive and hide on the ocean floor off Port Orford. The American attacks caused only minor damage, and Fujita flew a second bombing sortie three weeks later on 29 September. Fujita used the Cape Blanco Light as a beacon. After 90 minutes flying east, he dropped his bombs and reported seeing flames, but the bombing remained unnoticed in the U.S.

The submarine torpedoed and sank the SS Camden and SS Larry Doheny, and then sailed for home. On its way to Japan, I-25 sank the Soviet submarine L-16, which was in transit between Dutch Harbor, Alaska and San Francisco, California, mistaking it for an American submarine (Japan and the USSR were not at war at the time).

The two attacks on Oregon in September 1942 were the only World War II aircraft bombings on the continental United States.

Japanese Army During WW2: Rare Pictures

Japanese troops in China 

Japanese paratroopers

Japanese anti-aircraft sonar

Tomoyuki Yamashita (November 8, 1885 - February 23, 1946) - general of the Japanese army during World War II. September 2, 1945, he was taken prisoner by the Americans.
 During the trial in Manila, the American military court sentenced Yamashita to death.  February 23, 1946 he was hanged. 

Japanese soldiers on motorcycles

Testing a anti-tank gun in 1944 by the Japanese

 Japanese soldiers with a machinegun

With a anti-tank rifle

A Japanese soldier about to toss a grenade

Military training given to Japanese monks

Japanese officer in Philippines. 1942

Light Tank "2595" ("Ha-Go")

The HA-GO 2595 Japanese light tank was developed by the Mitsubishi Corporation in 1935. It was produced serially from 1936 to 1940 and used during Second World War.

An exotic Japanese vehicle

 Kamikaze pilots

Japanese machine-gunners

Japanese anti-tank gunners

A Japanese machine gun fires

Cleaning the weapons

 Special Japanese amphibious units

Mortars being fired

Japanese paratroopers

Japanese tank in action

Japanese heavy anti-aircraft guns

Japanese sailors

 Japanese marines

 Soldiers pass through a bamboo grove

 Refreshing themselves with coconut

 Sugar cane!

 Lunch break

 A parade

Battle in the street

Japan's militarism: Occupies Manchuria 1932

After the Russo-Japanese War (1904–5), Japan replaced Russia as the dominant foreign power in Manchuria. By the late 1920s the Japanese feared that unification of China under the Kuomintang party would imperil Japanese interests in Manchuria.

This view was confirmed when the Manchurian general Chang Hsüeh-liang, a recent convert to the Kuomintang, refused to halt construction of railway and harbor facilities in competition with the South Manchurian Railway, referring Japan to the Nationalist central government.

When a bomb of unknown origin ripped the Japanese railway near Shenyang (then known as Mukden), the Japanese army guarding the railway used the incident as a pretext to occupy Manchuria (Sept.18, 1931).

The 10,000-man Japanese Kwantung Army was responsible for guarding the Manchuria railway. In September 1931, it attacked one of its own trains outside Mukden (present-day Shenyang). Claiming that the attack had been carried out by Chinese soldiers, the Japanese used the event—now known as the Manchurian Incident—to provoke a fight with Chinese forces in Mukden and as an excuse to start a full-scale war in China.

The instigators of the incident were Kanji Ishihara and Seishiro Itagaki, staff officers in the Kwantung Army, a unit of the Imperial Japanese Army. Some blame these two men for starting World War II in the Pacific. They modeled their attack on the assassination of Zhang Zuolin, a Chinese warlord with a strong influence in Manchuria, whose train was blown up in 1928.

After the Manchurian Incident Japan sent 100,000 troops to Manchuria and launched a full-scale invasion of Manchuria. Japan took advantage of China's weakness. It encountered little resistance from the Kuomintang, taking Mukden in a single day and advancing into Jilin province. In 1932, 3,000 villagers were massacred in Pingding, near Fushan.

Chiang Kai-shek's army offered no resistance against the Japanese after Japan entered Manchuria in 1931. Out of disgrace Chiang resigned as head of the nation but continued on as head of the army. In 1933, he made peace with Japan and attempted to unify China.

In a tactic intended to halt the southward movement of Japanese soldiers from Manchuria before World War II, Chiang Kai-shek ordered his soldiers to breach the levees of the Yellow River and purposely divert its flow. At least 200,000, maybe millions, died, millions more were made homeless and the Japanese advanced anyway.

Despite Japanese cabinet opposition and a pledge before the League of Nations to withdraw to the railway zone, the army completed the occupation of Manchuria and proclaimed the puppet state of Manchukuo (Feb., 1932).

In March 1932, the Japanese created the puppet state of Manchukou. The next year the territory of Jehoi was added. The former Chinese emperor Pu Yi was named the leader of Manchukuo in 1934. In 1935, Russia sold the Japanese its interest in the Chinese Eastern Railway after the Japanese had already seized it. China’s objections were ignored.
Japanese sometime romanticize their occupation of Manchuria and take credit for the great roads, infrastructure and heavy factories they built. Japan was able to exploit resources in Manchuria using the Russian-built trans-Manchurian railway and an extensive network of railroads they built themselves. Vast expanses of Manchurian forest were chopped down to provide wood for Japanese houses and fuel for Japanese industries.
For many Japanese Manchuria was like California, a land of opportunity where dreams could be realized. Many socialists, liberals planners and technocrats came to Manchuria with utopian ideas and big plans. For Chinese it was like the German occupation of Poland. Manchurian men were used as slave laborer and Manchurian women were forced to work as comfort women (prostitutes). One Chinese man told the New York Times, “You looked at the forced labor in the coal mines. There wasn’t a single Japanese working in there. There were great railroads here, but the good trains were for Japanese only.”
The Japanese enforced racial segregation between the themselves and the Chinese and between the Chinese, Koreans and Manchus. Resisters were dealt with using free fire zones and scorched earth policies. Even so Chinese from the south migrated to Manchuria for jobs and opportunities. The pan-Asian ideology given lip service by the Japanese was a view widely held by the Chinese.
Japanese forces fought with Soviet forces along the Manchuria-Outer Mongolia bordered during May-September 1939. Japanese troops were slaughtered in a Mongolian Desert called Nomonhan by Soviet tanks because the military leaders though they were assured of victory because they had been given a blessing by the Emperor.