Castner’s Cutthroats

Castner’s Cutthroats, a platoon of unique soldiers commanded by Colonel Lawrence V. Castner, launched into Subarctic history shortly after the Japanese occupied Kiska and Attu in June 1942.

Few Americans Worried about the Aleutians

Relentless cold, impenetrable fog and endless hurricane force winds called “williwaws” threatened the Japanese survival far more than the Americans. The Americans, too, would fight the weather, but they had to take the islands back. Castner’s cutthroats would deal with the weather.

Colonel Castner handpicked 66 tough men–trappers, hunters, fishermen, dogsledders, miners—men who knew all about Aleutians weather and terrain. Major William J. Verbeck taught them to fight. And Castner’s cutthroats sallied forth.

In August 1942 a team of Cutthroats paddled rubber boats through the frigid surf from a submarine onto Adak. Another did the same onto Amchitka. On both islands they scouted airstrips the air force used to bomb Kiska and Attu.

When the Army sent the 7^th Infantry Division north from Fort Ord to invade Attu, Castner’s Cutthroats led them ashore.

On May 11, 1943 Cutthroats in a plastic whaleboat rowed through thick fog to recon Beach Red on Attu, then, as the soldiers of the 7^th struggled ashore, the Cutthroats climbed the steep, rocky ridge, ahead of them, looking for the enemy.

The scouts spent a bitter night high on the mountainside, and in the morning, they discovered that the Japanese had climbed the other side of the ridge to the top. The Japanese shot one cutthroat, Bad Whiskey Red, through the heart while the others dove for cover.

After two days of bloody stalemate, the Cutthroats attacked up the mountain as a diversion so the soldiers of the 7^th could advance through the valley. The scouts crawled, under heavy machine gun and artillery fire, to the top of the ridge then rained death on the Japanese. The soldiers of the 7^th stormed past them and by May 15 they had won the battle.

But they didn’t know it.

Dug deep in caves in the mountainside, cut off from supplies, low on ammunition, the starving Japanese had no chance, but their commander Yamazaki would not surrender.

On May 29 the cutthroats stood on the edge of a cliff overlooking the soldiers of the 7^th in the Chichagof Valley. Quite suddenly the 800 remaining Japanese soldiers launched a hopeless but deadly banzai attack. “Plunging their bayonets into sleeping American soldiers, the Japanese screamed. ‘We die—you die, too’”.

When the attack finally petered out, the surviving Japanese soldiers pulled pins on their grenades, held them under their chins, and gave their bloody last for the Emporer.

The Americans captured but 28 of them alive.

More on Castner’s men