Enemy Offshore! : Japan's Secret War on North America's West Coast

On June 20, 1942, the lighthouse at Estevan Point on Vancouver Island was shelled by the Japanese submarine I-26. It was the first enemy attack on Canadian soil since the War of 1812. But this was only one incident in the incredible and little-known Japanese campaign to terrorize North America''s west coast and mount an invasion through the Aleutian Islands. Enemy Offshore is a dramatic, comprehensive narrative of the events that unfolded as Japan brought the Second World War to North American shores. Submarines--Japan''s formidable I-boats--stalked the West Coast, attacking ships and shore stations. A Japanese aircraft-carrier force attacked Alaska twice, grabbing a footing in North America and launching a bloody conflict in the Aleutians. The Japanese bombed an Oregon forest in an eccentric plan to start mass fires and desperately launched thousands of bomb-laden balloons against Canada and the United States. Here are also the stories of ordinary citizens--fishermen, Natives and wilderness warriors who allied with the military in the extraordinary but largely unknown war on the West Coast.