America’s Pacific coast was extremely vulnerable following Pearl Harbor.
Nine Japanese submarines convened near the mouth of the Columbia River. They withdrew before engagement but would revisit.
On the night of June 21, 1942 those on and nearby Oregon’s Fort Stevens Army Base were jolted by an enemy attack from a Japanese I-25 submarine. There were no casualties. Following the bombarding there were no additional assaults, but this confirmed the wartime coastline was at high level risk.
What’s interesting about this attack on American soil – we did not respond. The Fort Stevens artillery guns were manned, although targeting a submarine from land was unfeasible. The fort stayed in blackout.
This was the only hostile shelling of a military base on the U.S. mainland during World War II and the first since the War of 1912.
Further south, Japanese firebombs were dropped on timberland with expectancy of creating forest fires that our military would be diverted to extinguish. Damp weather prevented serious damage. A newspaper headline read, “Japan Air Raider Drops Fire Bombs on Oregon.”
Before the Oregon attacks, four Nazi saboteurs came ashore on Long Island. The German’s called it Operation Pastorious. When the men were captured, the Coast Guard found buried explosives, cash and New York maps.
Another German submarine, associated with Operation Pastorious, placed agents in Florida. They too were caught. Their mission – destroy infrastructure up and down the east coast.
To thwart foreign saboteurs, the U.S. Coast Guard enlisted thousands of citizen volunteers to ride horses in pairs, patrolling homeland beaches. They christened the volunteers “Sand Pounders.”
Sand Pounders were issued uniforms by the Coast Guard and the Army provided their equipment. They were a patrol and information unit equipped with rifles, handguns and radio transmitters for reporting anything suspicious, officially a Coast Guard Beach Patrol.
With increasing coastline tensions and grateful for the Sand Pounders presence, residents often left freshly baked loaves of bread and home-canned food for them. These obscure wartime volunteers undoubtedly bolstered America’s coastline safety.
