Video: 'Japanese Attack Oregon! (Bombardment of Fort Stevens)'

(Sunday, June 21, 1942, around 11:30 p.m. PDT; during the fired shells at Fort Stevens, part of the American Theater during World War II) — The Imperial Japanese submarine I-25, commanded by Akiji Tagami, fired tonight on Fort Stevens, which defended the Oregon side of the Columbia River’s Pacific entrance.

Tagami ordered the deck gun crew to open fire on Fort Stevens’ Battery Russell, but his shots were harmless, in part because the fort’s commander ordered an immediate blackout. The commander also refused to permit his men to return fire, which would have revealed their position. Spotting the enemy gun flashes with a depression position finder indicated the submarine was out of range.

Most Japanese rounds landed in a nearby baseball field or a swamp, although one landed close to Battery Russell and another next to a concrete pillbox. One round severed several large telephone cables, the only real damage that Tagami caused. Seventeen explosive shells had been fired at the fort.

United States Army Air Forces planes on a training mission spotted the I-25 and called in her location for an A-29 Hudson bomber to attack. The bomber found the target, but the I-25 successfully dodged the falling bombs and submerged undamaged.

Even though there were no injuries and very little damage, the Japanese attack on Fort Stevens along with the Aleutian Islands Campaign the same month helped create the 1942 full-scale West Coast invasion scare.

The Fort Stevens shelling marked the only time that a military base in the contiguous United States was attacked by the Axis Powers during World War II.