5 July—It’s not widely known that the dastardly Japanese, after infamously devastating Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, invaded the American Aleutian Islands on 6 June 1942 and stayed for just over a year. That was and is the only time since the War of 1812 that the United States itself has been invaded and occupied by foreign forces. (Except for all the Latino gang members and other terrorists, of course.)

To remind you, the Aleutians are an archipelago of 69 small, smaller, and smallest islands in the North Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea, southwest of the Alaska mainland. Some would call that the middle of frozen nowhere. But not The Monitor.

Most of the Aleutian Islands are American territory, having been sold to the United States by Russia in 1867 along with mainland Alaska for $7.2 million. Remember Seward’s Folly? That $7.2 million is said to be worth about $156 million today, certainly a steal.

To digress, the United States bought the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803 for $15 million, about $425 million today, also a steal. With real estate bargains like that, even one single multibillionaire could buy the whole United States.

Anyway, the Louisiana Purchase added all or parts of Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming to the U.S., as well as a section above the 49^th parallel the U.S. gave to Britain in 1818 that became a small part of Alberta and Saskatchewan in Canada.

Of the whole Louisiana Purchase, only Colorado, Minnesota, and New Mexico didn’t go for Trump in 2024.

Back to the Aleutians, then, like the rest of Alaska, the few human-inhabited ones (with a total population of about 7,000) went for Trump in 2024. No surprise there, since the median household income is over $100,000, largely derived from fish torture. And the state kept ranked-choice voting and open primaries while voting for Trump. Three mistakes.

But Attu and Kiska, the islands invaded by the Japanese in 1942, didn’t vote for Trump. Or whatshername. Because neither island has been inhabited by people—even in military outposts—for quite a while.

So back in 1942, before Donald was even a twinkle in Fred Trump’s eye, the Japanese occupied Attu, the westernmost American Aleutian, and neighboring Kiska, both of which are closer to Russia than to the Alaskan mainland. They had strategic significance for the Japs (as we called them then but mustn’t call them now) as well as for the U.S. And the U.S. did in fact have troops stationed on both islands.

For various reasons, however, including lousy communications and god-awful weather (or god-awful communications and lousy weather), American forces couldn’t hold either island. But on 5 July 1942 the American submarine USS Growler sank the Jap(anese) destroyer Arare just outside Kiska Harbor and also damaged two other enemy destroyers. For all the good it did strategically. But it was good for morale.

When American forces were finally able to reclaim Attu on 30 May 1943 and Kiska on 15 August, they—doubtless on orders from Washington—interned the native Aleut Americans and treated them disrespectfully and disgustingly. Just like Japanese Americans on the mainland were being abused by presidential executive order.

And even legal immigrants are being abused now . . .