ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) -- The searchers dug for days, ignoring blisters and sore muscles to look for remains of Japanese soldiers buried in mass graves on the Aleutian island of Attu following one of the bloodiest battles of World War II.

But old bullets and bits of barbed wire were all that emerged from beneath the grassy tundra -- until the end of the two-week mission by U.S. and Japanese representatives who traveled to the remote resting place of nearly 2,500 soldiers.

On May 23, searchers struck their shovels on decaying wood boxes and found the well-preserved bones of two Japanese soldiers likely buried by their comrades during the 1943 Battle of Attu.

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Actually, the Imperial Japanese Navy took Kiska Island first, and 60 days later took Attu, and although the fighting on Attu was rather minor, constisting of pushing the Japanese Special Landing Forces to a corner of the island, to which they counterattacked through the Americans and attacked into the secondary line of troops whereby they, when the battle appeared to be lost, the surviving NSLF (Navy Special Landing Force) members killed themselves.

While this was a strange battle to say the least, Kiska was even more strange.

On August 17, 1943, an invasion force consisting of 34,426 Allied troops, including 5,300 Canadians (the 6th and 7th Infantry Divisions), 95 ships (including three battleships and a heavy cruiser), and 168 aircraft landed on Kiska, only to find the island completely abandoned.

The Japanese, aware of the loss of Attu and the impending arrival of the larger Allied force, had successfully removed their troops on July 28 under the cover of severe fog, without the Allies noticing.

That night, however, the Imperial Japanese Navy warships, thinking they were engaged by Americans, shelled and attempted to torpedo the island of Little Kiska and the Japanese soldiers waiting to embark.

Admiral Ernest King reported to the secretary of the Navy, Frank Knox, that the only things that remained on the island were dogs and fresh brewed coffee. Knox asked for an explanation and King responded, "The Japanese are very clever. Their dogs can brew coffee."

Allied casualties during the August invasion nevertheless numbered close to 200, all from friendly fire, booby traps set out by the Japanese to inflict damage on the invading allied forces, or disease. There were seventeen Americans and four Canadians killed from either friendly fire or booby traps, fifty more were wounded as a result of friendly fire or booby traps, and an additional 130 men came down with trench foot. The destroyer USS Abner Read hit a mine, resulting in 87 casualties.

I think the Japanese klilled more Japnese than did the Americans and Canadians, and consequently, the Americans and the Canadians killed more of their own than did the Japanese. but the most interesting thing of the whole invasion was the thought that the Japanese dogs could 'brew coffee.'

So ended a very strang turn of events in the days of WWII.