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On June 21st of 1942, the Japanese carried out a daring raid on Fort Stevens. Situated at the mouth of the Columbia River in Oregon, the fort put up a desperate fight in this evening encounter, but was overwhelmed by the superior Japanese firepower. Fort Stevens was largely destroyed with a large number of the garrison killed. The Japanese suffered no casualties and made their escape in I-25, the submarine on-station.
That’s probably what got reported in Japanese newspapers.
Of course, our history lessons have taught us that the submarine I-25, which was patroling the American coast, did fire a few shells at Fort Stevens as it passed. Pretty much nothing was damaged, and none of the guns at Fort Stevens so much as spit, much less returned fire.
But that was June. On September 9, 1942, I-25 was back. And this time, she had reinforcements. Along with the sub came a floatplane…a bomb-carrying floatplane. Warrant Flying Officer Nobuo Fujita (shown above) piloted the plane, a Yokosuka E14Y (the U.S. military simply called it a “Glen”), which was carrying a pair of incendiary bombs. He took to the skies and bombed…Mount Emily. He succeeded in starting a small forest fire, but the Japanese probably didn’t know that it rains pretty much every day in Oregon. Everything was still wet from the previous day’s rain, and the fire did nothing but smoke a little.
Of course, it’s possible that Fujita’s mission was simply to bomb “something”, which means hitting Mount Emily was pretty awesome. And it was kind of foggy. Of course, Fujita was the only man to bomb the United States, but this wasn’t the only time the United States was bombed in World War II. Maybe we’ll talk about that in the future.
On September 9, 1942, a single Japanese aircraft was responsible for a devastating attack on Portland, Oregon in imperial America. Pressing his attack against withering anti-aircraft fire, Nobuo Fujita placed his incendiary bombs squarely on target in the heart of the city, where extremely dry conditions and high winds served to created a fire that destroyed one-fifth of the city’s center. Deaths are said to num…
Nobua Fujita (and the Commander of I-25) both later visited Brookings Oregon (just South East of Mount Emily) where Nobua presented his family sword to the town as a gesture of peace. Nobua ended up coming back to the town several times before he died.
Really nice posts. I will be checking back here regularly.