From our “Wartime Mysteries” department comes a little historical oddity concerning Catalina Island and a case of mistaken identity that first came to my attention while researching my documentary “Wings Across the Channel.”
During the early years of World War II in the Pacific Theatre, the island chain in the South Pacific known as the Solomons (the island of Guadalcanal in particular) was the scene of some of the first major confrontations between the armed forces of the United States and the Empire of Japan.
From our “Wartime Mysteries” department comes a little historical oddity concerning Catalina Island and a case of mistaken identity that first came to my attention while researching my documentary “Wings Across the Channel.”
During the early years of World War II in the Pacific Theatre, the island chain in the South Pacific known as the Solomons (the island of Guadalcanal in particular) was the scene of some of the first major confrontations between the armed forces of the United States and the Empire of Japan.
The Japanese had occupied the Solomons in May of 1942 after expanding their sphere of influence across the Pacific beginning with the Philippines. Since Guadalcanal was essentially the easternmost area of Japanese influence, it was decided in the halls of the U.S. military to attack there first.
The fact that Allied reconnaissance patrols had discovered that the Japanese were building an airfield on the island was especially worrisome, because this would put Japanese bombers and fighter planes within range of Australia.
On Aug. 7, 1942, U.S. Marines made their first assaults on the island, beginning what would become a long, arduous: and very costly: campaign to retake the island chain.
And how does Catalina Island fit in to all this?
Well, according to a United Press article that appeared in newspapers across the nation in August of 1942, a number of Japanese soldiers captured by American forces during those first battles told their captors that they believed they were on Catalina Island, not Guadalcanal.
“A strange story has been brought back to the United States from the steaming jungles of Guadalcanal, where many Japanese soldiers have died,” says the article, “still believing they had invaded Catalina Island off the coast of California.”
According to the article, Chief Aviation Machinist’s Mate A.A. Vaughn from the San Joaquin Valley town of Woodlake, Calif., claimed he had talked to some of the Japanese prisoners who “admitted they originally believed they were on Catalina Island.” His claims were echoed by fellow Machinist’s Mate N.W. Ohlsson of Ashland, Wis.
“One marine,” said Vaughn in the article, “told me he had talked to (Japanese) prisoners who boasted the United States might ‘get back the Philippines, but would never get back the West Coast of America’.”
According to the article, it was unclear to the Americans whether the rank and file of the Japanese Army had been “misinformed” of their location as a morale building measure, or whether the Japanese soldiers had decided for themselves that they had invaded the United States.
The idea of the Japanese attacking Catalina isn’t quite as outlandish as some revisionists of history have claimed. When you consider how quickly and relatively easily the Japanese had attacked Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines, Bangkok, Wake Island, Midway and, of course, Pearl Harbor: all in the space of a few weeks: it’s quite easy to understand how people on the West Coast may have had trouble sleeping at night.
As a matter of fact, it was only after the war was over that we learned that the Japanese had indeed come within several hours of launching a low-level assault on the Los Angeles area. Now, this was not to be a full-on D-Day type of invasion. But still could have done quite a bit of damage.
The low-hanging fruit they were after came in the form of the oil refineries and storage tanks in the Wilmington and San Pedro areas. One of the little known facts of that era (because it was fiercely kept secret) was that the entire Allied war effort dependended on that fuel in the early years of the war.
Britain’s Royal Air Force, for example, needed that fuel for their fighter planes and bombers during the Battle of Britain. Had Japanese submarines been able to make it into Los Angeles Harbor and shell those tanks and refineries, Britain may very well have fallen and the war may have been over much quicker and without the desired result on the part of the Allies. Yes, it was those big smelly refineries and those big unsightly oil tanks that get painted up like Jack o’lanterns every Halloween that at one time held the key to the preservation of world civilization.
But, fortunately, the West Coast attack happened only in the minds of a handful of Japanese soldiers and marines on Guadalcanal.
Jim Watson is the author of “Mysterious Island: Catalina,” available on Amazon, Kindle and in stores all over Avalon.
