A major land battle of World War II was fought on North American soil, in a place where vehicles were swallowed whole by freezing tundra, naval fleets fired thousands of shells into fog at radar ghosts, and the weather removed more soldiers from the line than enemy bullets. This episode explores the Aleutian Islands campaign from June 1942 to August 1943, and the devastating civilian internment crisis it inflicted on the Unangax people who had lived on those islands for thousands of years.

From General Billy Mitchell's 1935 warning to Congress that whoever holds Alaska holds the world, through the Japanese bombing of Dutch Harbor and the occupation of Attu and Kiska despite American codebreakers under Nimitz knowing the plan, to the May 1943 Battle of Attu, Colonel Yasuyo Yamasaki's inland defense and massive banzai charge that left 2,351 J ...