The Japanese put about 2500 men on Attu and a little over 5000 men on Kiska. The 10 man weather team on Kiska was captured and spent the war in Japan--they all survived. Lt. House held out for 50 days before hunger and exposure made him surrender. He too survived the war in Japan. The Japanese evacuated their men from Kiska before an American/Canadian invasion with over 34,000 troops. Confusion and fog led to a number of casualties on land and a ship hit a mine and blew up killing 71 crew.

On Attu the Japanese invaded a civilian village with 44 Aleut inhabitants, a white schoolteacher and her husband. The husband died, probably of suicide. The wife slit her wrists but the Japanese saved her. Two Aleuts died not long after the invasion, the rest were taken to Japan. They were NOT prisoners of war, they had a different status. About half died in Japan of disease and starvation. This is the same proportion who died when the US removed the rest of the Aleut people to camps in southeast Alaska where they died of disease, exposure, and neglect. After the war the Attuans were not allowed to return home. A few settled on Atka Island, the rest are scattered.

According to Brian Garfield in the Thousand Mile War The Battle for Attu in May 1943, was the only large operation in the PAcific since Midway, it was the Army's first amphibious assault on an island, and was the biggest invasion since Gadalcanal. Over 100,000 troops, hundreds of ships and scores of aircraft were involved. Attu was per capita one of the bloodiest battles of the Pacific War. The 10,000 man 7th Infantry Division suffered 549 killed, 1,148 wounded, 1,200 cold injuries, 614 injured by disease including exposure, and 318 other casualties. All but 28 Japanese were killed.

Garfields account is the best and most comprehensive but he is not always accurate. He perpetuates some hoary myths--one of the most persistent being that the Japanese guns on Kiska are from Singapore. They are not. They were salvaged from a variety of Japanese and British war ships. One of the six inchers on Little Kiska seems to be from the first Battleship purchased by the Japanese from Britain in 1894 and renamed the Fuji.