With their close proximity to Japan, the Aleutian Islands seemed especially prone to an attack. Stretching westward into the Pacific Ocean, the chain of roughly 150 islands lay just 750 miles away ...

As the Japanese Empire was planning to conquer the Pacific, they realized they would have to deploy their forces to many small islands or atolls where building an airstrip would be hard or impossible.

The Aleuts, who call themselves Unangan, lived in the Aleutian Islands off the coast of mainland Alaska. Some anthropologists believe their ancestors migrated to the Aleutians 7,000 years ago.