Well, Bogie fixed that, didn’t he?
Japan invaded part of the USA in WWII. The Aleutian Islands were obviously a target, because we had to fight them there to expel them from Alaska. It wasn’t a state at the time, but we still had a claim on Alaska.
Japan did send biological weapons to China with I believe fleas as a vector.
Wiki excerpt:
According to GlobalSecurity.org, the experiments carried out by Unit 731 alone caused 3,000 deaths.[12] Furthermore, “tens of thousands, and perhaps as many 200,000, Chinese died of bubonic plague, cholera, anthrax and other diseases…”, resulting from the use of biological warfare. The article goes on to tell about the Live vivisections and other experiments the Japanese did.
Japanese war crimes - Wikipedia
That incident happened just up the coast in Goleta.
According to http://www.school-for-champions.com/history/sbattack.htm
Back (slightly) to the OP. I call shenanigans, despite someone making it sound good or plausible enough to get published. UL fodder, says I! Go just about anywhere in the country that’s not really[sup]*[/sup] all that important, and you’ll be within spitting distance of an industry, base, geographic feature, or somethingorother that is “number X on Y’s list of targets.”
Living in New London, CT was the first time I ever paid attention to the claim. Recessed backwater with a sub-building plant and a Navy sub school. Oh, of course the Russians put it number one on their nuclear list. Then out near Moline, IL. I forget what industry was there, but of course the Ruskies had it at the top of their list. On and on. Get to know a place and the perverse pride of how high they (or somewhere close) are on someone’s nuclear list will come out… just give it time.
Oh, I’m not doubting that some generals somewhere and some staff members somewhere and some Politburo somewhere did have something of a list – especially when resources are scarce. But whether or not some hick in BF Montana ever actually got that list, or whether or not when staging an all-out nuclear first-strike such a list has any intrinsic meaning, just doesn’t reach credulity.
Of course, if there is a cite out there somewhere, an SDMB-worthy cite, I’ll get a bit less cantankerous.
[sup]*As in NYC, DC, Chicago, etc.[/sup]
And indeed, we see in this thread how such claims grow in the telling. The Wikipedia cite in post#7 is almost certainly the basis for the OP friend’s claim in post#1, but it has nothing to do with the Japanese. Springfield Vermont was seventh on an American ranking of targets. There is no evidence that the Japanese ever had such a list. Their desperate attempts to “bomb” the United States, involving float planes and balloons, fell several orders of magnitude short of targeting factories in Vermont. The Japanese leaders were vile and self-delusional people, but not so self-delusional as to waste time drawing up lists of fantasy targets.
With respect to the American ranking, I suspect, although I cannot prove, that it was concerned more with sabotage than with aerial bombing. The Germans did land saboteurs on the east coast to try to disrupt American industry, and might have landed more if they had had any success. It’s plausible that the War Department would have felt the need to rank targets in order of importance, and that the machine tool industry in Springfield would have been seventh on such a list.
Some fascinating stuff related to this topic:
The Lockheed-Vega aircraft plant in Burbank was fully hidden beneath a complete suburb replete with rubber automobiles and peaceful rural neighborhood scenes painted on canvas. Hundreds of fake trees and shrubs were positioned to give the entire area a 3-dimensional appearance.
The San Francisco Bay Area had some great targets for the Japanese.
- The Benecia refinery
- The US Navy shipyard storage and maintenance. (Vallejo)
- The Standard Oil Refinery in Richmond (Now Chevron Research where I think Mangetout works.)
- The Kaiser shipyards in Richmond
- The Alameda Naval Air Station in Alameda
- The ports in SF, where many Navy ships did and still do stop to replenish
- Me. I was raised there during the war
In addition, there was Marinship in Sausalito, Mare Island Naval Shipyard adjacent to Vallejo, and Moffett Field in the South Bay.
[nitpick]
Dang, that’s a heck of a commute from the south coast of England ;). You’re probably thinking of mangeorge.
[/nitpick]
Java, Indonesia
Fortransylvania
The Bering C
Pascalifornia
FlorADA