It is often forgotten that during World War II, the Japanese managed to successfully invade and conquer a precious part of American home soil - the first time this had happened since 1815. Capturing the Aleutian Islands, located in Alaska territory, was seen by the Japanese as vital in order to shore up their northern defensive perimeter.

Fighting in the Aleutians was uniquely brutal. It is a barren, rugged archipelago of icy mountains and thick bogs, with a climate of constant snow, freezing rains and windstorms. These geographic conditions tended to neutralize traditional American strengths such as air power, radar, naval bombardment and logistics. The campaign to recapture the islands required extensive combined-ops planning, and inflicted on the United States its second highest casualty rate in the Pacific Theatre. Featuring the largest Japanese banzai charge of the war, first use of pre-battle battleship bombardment in the Pacific and the battle at the Komandorski Islands, this is the full story of the forgotten battle to liberate American soil from the Japanese.

The final months of Allied naval bombardments on the Home Islands during World War II have, for whatever reason, frequently been overlooked by historians. Yet the Allies' final naval campaign against Japan involved the largest and arguably most successful wartime naval fleet ever assembled, and was the climax to the greatest naval war in history. Though suffering grievous losses during its early attacks, by July 1945 the United States Third Fleet wielded 1,400 aircraft just off the coast of Japan, while Task Force 37, the British Pacific Fleet's carrier and battleship striking force, was the most powerful single formation ever assembled by the Royal Navy. In the final months of the war the Third Fleet's 20 American and British aircraft carriers would hurl over 10,000 aerial sorties against the Home Islands, whilst another ten Allied battleships would inflict numerous morale-destroying shellings on Japanese coastal cities. In this illustrated study, historian Brian Lane Herder draws on primary sources and expert analysis to chronicle the full story of the Allies' Navy Siege of Japan from February 1945 to the very last days of World War II.