According to the story, the plans included caches of supplies for these agents to use...caches that were never needed. It brings to mind my favorite story about the Alaska Scouts of WWII. A man who became one of their officers had been dropped on a remote island with a shack full of C rations to spy on Japanese planes. He didn't see any, so he maintained radio silence, and the Scouts went out to "rescue" him when his C rations should've run out. According to a taped interview he gave (which I saw at the Anchorage Museum a few years ago), he cheerfully showed them the shack full of C rations, which he'd never even opened. Between his rifle, his fishing gear, and his crab traps, he was quite happy the way it was.
I checked the original file at "Government Attic" -- too long for me to read all the way through -- and ran across a description of a likely recruit:
An example of a typical person to be one of the principals, as suggested by OSI, is a professional photographer in Anchorage; he has only one arm and it is felt that he would not benefit the eney in any labor battalion; he is an amateur radio operator; he is a professional photographer; he is licensed as a hunting or fishing guide, and well versed in the art of survival; he is a pilot of small aircraft; he is reasonably intelligent, particularly crafty, and possessed of sufficient physical courage as is indicated by his offer to guide a party which was to have hunted Kodiak bear armed only with bow and arrow...It's been a few years since I lived in that happy country, but I can believe they had plenty of recruits like this. My favorite quote from the story, though, is from one of the comments:
Well, back in the 70's the commander of the Alaskan National Guard was asked how long one of his Inuit Scouts could stay out on patrol. The Commander simply answered, "Until he dies of old age."
My late mother-in-law, though not quite an Inuit scout, would have been a good candidate in her youth.
ReplyDeleteThere was this crazy Imperial Japanese officer told to conduct guerilla resistance on an island and to act as a waypoint for intel, and then refused to surrender on one of those Pacific islands.
ReplyDeleteContinued his guerilla warfare with the locals for about a few decades, until his old commanding officer from Japan had to come and personally relieve him of duty. This way he wouldn't violate his orders, which were to hold the island and never surrender. Having been relieved of his duty, that wasn't surrendering.