1943.05.29 “The Success-Drunken Maniac We’ve Got to Beat”
by Keith Temple (1899 -1980)
11 x 14 in., crayon and ink on board
Coppola Collection
Keith Temple (1899-1980). An Australian, Temple volunteered at age 17 to serve with the Australian Imperial Forces during World War I. Temple’s brother was killed in the war and Temple himself was wounded. After his discharge, Temple decided to travel around the world. While visiting the United States in 1919, Temple ended up in a New Orleans hospital due to complications from his World War I wound. After his release from this costly hospital stay, Temple had to seek work. He spent 47 years working as a lawyer in New Orleans, including the 40 years he was the editorial cartoonist for the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
The Aleutian Islands military campaign was fought between June 3, 1942, and August 15, 1943, on and around the Aleutian Islands. Making use of weather cover, the Japanese made a two-day aerial bombing of continental North America, at Dutch Harbor, for the first time in history. Although that attack was repelled, the Japanese invasions and occupations of Kiska on June 6 and Attu on June 7 shocked the American public. At the same time, the original intent of this invasion was well-known to the US because it had broken the Japanese codes. The primary target was Midway, which would have been a substantial and strategic victory for Japan had the US not been aware and prepared.
Because the action in the Pacific was so significant, the Alaska campaign is often called a forgotten war. Yet, the Japanese remained on US territorial soil for almost a year, with implicit fear that this location would serve as a launching point for attacks on the West Coast cities. A battle to reclaim Attu was launched on May 11, 1943, and completed after a final Japanese banzai charge on May 29.
Without warning, the remainder of Japanese forces attacked near Massacre Bay. Recorded as one of the largest banzai charges of the Pacific campaign, troops penetrated so deep into US lines that Japanese soldiers encountered rear-echelon units of the Americans. After furious, brutal, often hand-to-hand combat, the Japanese force was virtually exterminated. Only 28 Japanese soldiers were taken prisoner, none of them were officers. American burial teams counted 2,351 Japanese dead, and it was thought that hundreds more had been buried by bombardment during the battle. On August 15, 1943, a US invasion force landed on Kiska in the wake of a sustained three-week barrage, only to discover that the Japanese had withdrawn from the island on July 29.
