sunken

In June 1942, something unprecedented in modern American history happened: someone invaded them. In the middle of World War II, Japanese troops landed on Attu Island, in the extreme west of Alaska. What took place then was an icy and fleeting battle that resulted in the death of more than 3,000 people in less than three weeks. Faced with well-known operations reproduced ad nauseam in cinema on the European front or the South Pacific, the battle of Attu She was and is a great unknown. Eighty years later, the remains of that battle were still sunk on the seabed of the Aleutian Islands. Until nothing ago. The discovery. In July 2024, an archeology team funded by the US oceanographic agency NOAA and the US National Park Service carried out the first in-depth underwater exploration in the waters of Attu. There they found two shipwrecks from World War II: on the one hand, the Kotohira Maru, a Japanese military cargo ship sunk on January 5, 1943 by B-24 bombers. On the other hand, the SS Dellwood, an American cable ship that ran aground on an underwater pinnacle seven months later, on July 20, 1943. Both wrecks lie just 25 kilometers apart from each other. Why is it important. Because the Battle of Attu is probably the least studied campaign of the war and this finding is only the beginning of deeper research. Beyond recovering this military history, this discovery brings to the forefront another little-known tragedy: the one suffered by the Saskinax̂ indigenous people of Attu. After the occupation, the Saskinax̂ were deported to Japan, but when the war ended they were prohibited from returning: Attu had become a US military base. Of the 41 prisoners sent to Japan, only 25 survived and most ended up relocated to another island. Context. Despite being a brief and almost unknown battle, it was the fiercest: the ratio of American to Japanese casualties was the second highest of the war, only surpassed by the famous battle of Iwo Jima, as explained by the research team. The Kotohira Maru was bombed when it was trying to supply the troops isolated in Attu: it was carrying wood, food, fuel and construction materials, essential for the survival of the Japanese soldiers, who endured harsh climatic conditions (it is practically in the Arctic) and almost no trees. For its part, the SS Dellwood ran aground while laying communications cables between islands. In detail. To find the ships, the researchers dragged from their boat a high-resolution sonar capable of “photographing” the seabed with an accuracy of centimeters. When the sonar detected something of interest, they sent an underwater drone to investigate it closely with a video camera. In five days of work they inspected more than 1,000 targets at the bottom. But perhaps the most striking thing was not what they found, but what they solved. In May 1943, the destroyer USS Phelps attacked what it believed to be a Japanese submarine near Holtz Bay. They were wrong: this study has revealed that what the destroyer had detected as a submarine was actually the hull of the Kotohira Maru deposited on the seabed. Yes, but. The study has certain limitations. Strong underwater currents made the remote-controlled underwater robot’s work difficult, especially on the Kotohira Maru, leaving large areas of the wreck undocumented. The team recognizes that they need a more powerful robot to complete the job. There are also unanswered questions. Without going any further, the identity of the Kotohira Maru crew remains a mystery: the files only confirm that two people were rescued, a figure that the study’s own authors consider improbably low. And no one has yet addressed a thorny issue: who has legal sovereignty over these war wrecks. In Xataka | Barcelona started digging to build a parking lot. He ended up discovering a 10 m medieval ship of uncertain origin. In Xataka | The 17th century ship refloated in Cádiz held a surprise for archaeologists. One of more than 50 meters Cover | US Navy and Exploration of Alaska’s World War II Submerged Heritage: The Kotahira Maru and S.S. Dellwood Wreck Sites off Attu Island