JF Ptak Science Books Post 2573
Earlier in this blog I posted about an article that appeared in Life magazine on the various invasion/attack routes on the United States in 1941. (I believe this was the most visited of all 4000+ posts over eight years, with something on the order of 200k visits.) It came to mind while I was working my way through the P.J. Mode Persuasive Map Collection (digitized) at Cornell University and found this glorious appraisal of the possibilities of a Japanese attack on Los Angeles and the western U.S. It screamingly appeared in the Los Angeles Examiner on November 7, 1937 (p. V-8), and no doubt was meant to incite some sort of thinking in the paper's reading population. (I don't think it a coincidence that California is shown in yellow in the details when under attack and blue before being attacked.) Remember that the Japanese had already been mucking around in China for several years and the (Second) Sino-Japanese War was already full-on for a year by this point, so giving the possibility of Japanese imperial designs on the U.S. in 1938 is not necessarily so far out of reach. (On the other hand many of the high command in Japan thought it a miserable and in some cases an insane idea to finally attack the U.S. in 1941, so there's that--plus there's the larger and more substantial issue of the incredible amount of ships and planes and support and energy that goes into manufacturing an invasion of this scope that would just be out-of-hand for Japan.) All that said, it is an interesting to see this play out in the pages of the Examiner.
- Mapping the Invasion of America, 1942 http://longstreet.typepad.com/thesciencebookstore/2009/12/mapping-the-invasion-of-america-1942.html
- Invasion Routes to the U.S. 1940 http://longstreet.typepad.com/thesciencebookstore/2011/06/invasion-of-the-us-1940.html
- The Invasion of America, 19?? (1935) http://longstreet.typepad.com/thesciencebookstore/2010/01/the-invasion-of-america-19-1935-scenario-for-invasions-via-canada-mexico-and-the-caribbean.html
[Source: PJ Mode Persuasive Maps Collection, at Cornell: https://digital.library.cornell.edu/catalog/ss:3293952]
And the vision for San Francisco:
[Source: PJ Mode Persuasive Maps Collection, at Cornell: https://digital.library.cornell.edu/catalog/ss:3293952]
And the full page, showing the importance of the Aleutians to the general plan:
[Source: PJ Mode Persuasive Maps Collection, at Cornell: https://digital.library.cornell.edu/catalog/ss:3293952]
Comments