Japanese air attacks on the Mariana Islands 27 in preparation for operations against Japan itself. The USAAF bases in the Mariana Islands were within range of a number of Japanese air bases in the Pacific. These included Wake Island to the east, Truk and the Gilbert and Marshall Islands to the southeast, Woleai to the south and Yap to the southwest. To the north the Japanese had air bases in the Nampo Shoto chain of islands and Bonin Islands, which included three airstrips on Iwo Jima. Several of the minor islands in the Mariana chain also remained in Japanese hands, and there were airfields on Rota and
Internment of Japanese Americans as Henry Emerson Fosdick so wisely said, 'Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.' The Niihau Incident occurred in December 1941, just after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Three Japanese Americans on the Hawaiian island of Niihau assisted a Japanese pilot, Shigenori Nishikaichi, who crashed there. Despite the incident, the Territorial Governor of Hawaii rejected calls for the mass internment of the Japanese Americans living there. In "Magic: The Untold Story of U.S. Intelligence and the Evacuation of Japanese Residents From the West Coast During World War II", David Lowman, a former National Security