1942.06.11 “Don’t Awake the Giant”
by Ralph Lee (1906-1947)
23 x 15 in., ink on board
Coppola Collection
Ralph Lee was an editorial cartoonist for the Portland Oregonian. He died suddenly, at 41, in January 1947. His cousin, Art Bimrose, was the editorial cartoonist for the Oregonian for more than three decades. In 1937, the Oregonian hired him part-time to work on printing plates. Following Lee’s death, Bimrose was hired as the Sunday editorial cartoonist.
On June 7, 1942, during the Aleutian Islands campaign (June 3-7), a Japanese submarine attack occurred near the Strait of Juan de Fuca involving US and Canadian forces. The American merchant ship SS Coast Trader was sunk by a Japanese submarine (I-26) off the coast of Washington State. Survivors were rescued by a fishing vessel and a Canadian corvette. This was the first American vessel sunk by the Imperial Japanese Navy off the Washington coast during the war. Although the Navy maintained an “internal explosion” took out the ship in its investigation, contemporary reports all attributed this to an attack by the Japanese.
The submarine I-26 was already infamous. It had attacked and sunk the US merchant ship, Cynthia Olson, midway between Seattle and Honolulu, within minutes after the attack on Pearl Harbor. It is recorded as the first merchant ship attacked in the war and was alluded to in FDR’s “day of infamy” speech.
Later that month, the I-26 shelled a lighthouse on Vancouver Island.
