War on Our Doorstep: The Unknown Campaign on North America's West Coast

Sidney Allinson is Canadian news correspondent for Britain’s The Army
Quarterly and Defence. He is the author of The Bantams: The Untold Story
of World War I, Jeremy Kane, and Kruger’s Gold: A Novel of the
Anglo-Boer War.

War on Our Doorstep is the best account to date of the now virtually
unknown military operations fought close to Canada’s West Coast during
the Second World War. It describes how Japanese forces occupied a
thousand miles of U.S. territory and assailed the Pacific Northwest and
Alaska with submarines, unguided missiles, and aircraft. Their campaign
included three attacks on British Columbia, the bombardment of Oregon,
and bitter large-scale battles in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska.

The author has combined a wealth of obscure facts ferreted out during
years of research, plus interviews with veterans on both sides, to
produce an engrossing narrative. Among many other events, he tells how
on June, 1942, a daring Japanese submarine surfaced off Vancouver
Island’s Estevan Point Lighthouse and fired 21 shells from its
deck-gun. There were no casualties, but the attack brought the war
uncomfortably close to local civilians.

Readers can take pride in knowing that Canadian troops, sailors, and
airmen were heavily involved in helping U.S. forces defeat the enemy in
the region. Coyle is particularly good at describing the savage combat
required to oust Japanese forces from Attu, in one of the most costly
battles of the Pacific war. In late 1944, Tokyo used the prevailing
westerly winds to send balloon-bombs to drift inland over North America
and wreak random destruction and death.

The book is generously illustrated, but the photographs are marred by
poor reproduction quality. Also, a couple of them are incorrectly
captioned. For instance, one describing an aircraft crash that killed
some USO people, translates the initials as “United States Overseas”
(the correct translation is “United Services Organizations,” which
coordinates civilian entertainment for American military personnel).
Another showing water pouring from a small bilge-pump port on a ship is
amusingly described as damage from “a torpedo hole.”

Quibbles aside, Coyle’s excellently researched book deserves a wide
audience.