The Hunter Beneath the Waves
The Imperial Japanese Navy submarine I-25 was a formidable instrument of war. A Type B1 cruiser submarine, it displaced over 2,500 tons surfaced and stretched 108 meters in length, crewed by ninety-seven officers and men. Its design prioritized range and reconnaissance. A powerful diesel-electric propulsion system gave it an operational reach exceeding 14,000 nautical miles, while its armament was considerable: six forward torpedo tubes and a 14cm deck gun. Uniquely, it also carried a watertight hangar for a Yokosuka E14Y "Glen" floatplane, a capability that turned the submarine into a strategic reconnaissance platform able to project power far beyond the horizon. The boat’s commander, Lieutenant Commander Tagami Meiji, was a seasoned, aggressive officer of the Imperial Japanese Navy. His mission in the summer of 1942 was part of a broader Japanese strategy to disrupt American shipping and bring the reality of war to the United States' West Coast, a direct psychological response intended to sow fear following the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo months earlier.
Before its arrival off the Oregon coast, the I-25 had already built a significant service record. It patrolled off Oahu during the attack on Pearl Harbor and later conducted reconnaissance flights over Sydney, Australia, and parts of New Zealand. Its journey to the American coast was a calculated intrusion into heavily patrolled enemy waters. The long transit placed immense strain on the crew, confined for weeks within the steel hull. On the approach to the Columbia River, Commander Tagami skillfully used a fleet of local fishing vessels as a screen to mask his submarine’s approach, navigating the treacherous waters and evading known American minefields. By the evening of June 21, 1942, the I-25 lay undetected, a silent predator waiting for darkness to fall at the mouth of one of America’s most vital waterways. The crew prepared the deck gun, the steel shell casings glinting in the dim light of the conning tower.
A Quiet Fort on the Columbia
Fort Stevens stood as the primary guardian of the Columbia River. Established during the American Civil War, its defenses represented layers of military history. By 1942, its primary armament consisted of Endicott-era coastal artillery pieces, including powerful 10-inch M1895 guns on M1901 disappearing carriages located at Battery Russell. These weapons were mechanically complex marvels of a previous generation. They rose from behind concrete and earthen parapets to fire, then used the powerful force of their own recoil to drop back down, concealed from enemy naval gunners. While formidable against the warships of 1905, the guns had a significant limitation. Their carriages did not permit the high angles of fire needed to achieve the extreme ranges of modern naval warfare. Their effective range was a fraction of what a modern battleship could achieve.
The garrison consisted of U.S. Army soldiers, many from the Oregon National Guard’s 218th Field Artillery and the 249th Coast Artillery Regiments, recently federalized into active service. For these soldiers, life at the fort was a mixture of monotonous routine and underlying tension. Six months after Pearl Harbor, the war still felt distant to many Americans, yet for those manning the coastal defenses, the threat was a constant, tangible presence just over the horizon. They drilled relentlessly, maintained their aging but powerful equipment, and stood watch, their eyes scanning the vast, empty expanse of the Pacific. The fort’s commander, Colonel Carl S. Doney, a career Coast Artillery officer, was responsible for the Harbor Defenses of the Columbia. This position required a deep understanding of the region’s strategic importance, its economic value, and its profound vulnerabilities to attack from the sea.
Shells on American Soil
On the night of June 21, 1942, that latent threat became a sudden reality. Just before midnight, under the cover of a moonless sky, Commander Tagami ordered the I-25 to surface ten miles offshore. He believed he was targeting a submarine base, a piece of faulty intelligence that nonetheless directed his attention to the cluster of military installations. The submarine’s deck gun crew went into action. The sharp crack of the 14cm gun shattered the night’s quiet, followed moments later by the scream of an incoming shell and the dull thud of its impact. Onshore, initial confusion turned to alarm. A sentry on watch reported the muzzle flashes. The call to battle stations blared across the post, sending soldiers scrambling from their barracks into the damp, dark Oregon night. One officer later recounted waking to the noise and running out, yelling at his men to be quiet before someone shouted back that the Japanese were shelling them.
Commander Tagami’s gunners fired a total of seventeen shells at the American fort over a period of sixteen minutes. The rounds fell erratically in the darkness. Poor visibility and the lack of a clear aiming point meant the shelling was wildly inaccurate. The soft, boggy ground of the surrounding swamps and beaches absorbed the impact of many rounds, muffling their explosions and minimizing damage. One shell landed harmlessly near a concrete pillbox, another near Battery Russell itself, creating a shallow crater. Most famously, several shells tore up the backstop of a baseball field, a detail that would later become a symbol of the attack’s material futility. The only significant military damage was a single severed telephone cable. No soldiers were killed or seriously wounded, though one man reportedly cut his head while rushing to his post in the darkness.
The Order to Hold Fire
The men of Fort Stevens, now at their battle stations, were ready and eager to fight back. The crews at Battery Russell’s 10-inch disappearing guns had their weapons loaded and prepared. Searchlight operators stood by, waiting for the command to illuminate the enemy submarine and provide a target for the gunners. But the order from Colonel Doney never came. Instead, he commanded a strict blackout and explicitly forbade any return fire. When the order was relayed to Battery Russell, the frustrated gunners demanded to know on whose authority. Colonel Doney took the phone himself, his voice sharp and clear, personally ordering the battery not to fire a single round. He threatened to court-martial the entire crew if they disobeyed.
His decision was a masterful display of command discipline and tactical patience. Doney understood what some of his men in the heat of the moment did not. The fort’s observation posts, using depression position finders and triangulation, quickly determined that the I-25 was firing from a range of approximately nine miles. This placed it well beyond the maximum effective reach of the fort’s aging guns. To open fire would be a futile gesture, a waste of ammunition. Worse, the muzzle flashes from Battery Russell’s guns and the powerful beams of the searchlights would give Commander Tagami the one thing he lacked: a precise reference point. It would betray the exact location, layout, and effective range of the defenses, providing priceless intelligence to the Japanese Navy. Doney chose to deny the enemy that information. By remaining dark and silent, he preserved the tactical ambiguity of his defenses and offered the enemy nothing to aim at. The Japanese submarine was left to fire blindly into the night.
Reverberations Along the Coast
After firing its seventeen shells into the darkness with no observable result, the I-25 ceased its bombardment and submerged, slipping away undamaged. An Army Air Forces A-29 Hudson bomber from the 39th Bombardment Squadron was dispatched to the submarine’s last known position and dropped bombs, but the I-25 successfully evaded the attack and escaped into the deep. The dawn of June 22 revealed the physical insignificance of the attack: a few craters in a swamp, a damaged baseball backstop, and a cut phone line. The psychological impact, however, was immense. The shelling of Fort Stevens was the first foreign bombardment of a military base on the U.S. mainland since the War of 1812. News of the attack spread like wildfire, igniting fear and anxiety along the entire West Coast. If a Japanese submarine could shell a fortified position in Oregon, no coastal community felt safe. The incident powerfully reinforced the reality that the war was not a distant affair confined to Europe and the far Pacific; it had reached America’s shores.
This newfound sense of vulnerability acted as a powerful catalyst. Civil defense measures, which had been implemented with varying degrees of enthusiasm, were suddenly pursued with grim seriousness. Blackout drills became a rigidly enforced part of life for civilians in the Pacific Northwest. The attack prompted an immediate review of coastal defense strategies and accelerated the construction and modernization of fortifications along the coast. For the public, the image of shell craters on an Oregon beach was a visceral confirmation of the nation’s peril, directly influencing public morale and galvanizing war preparedness efforts. The soldiers at Fort Stevens, having endured the attack, now slept by their guns, their awareness of the war’s proximity sharpened to a razor’s edge.
The brief, seventeen-shot bombardment inflicted no meaningful military damage. Yet, the phantom attack by the I-25 achieved a strategic effect far beyond the physical destruction of its shells. It shattered a sense of security and forced a re-evaluation of homeland defense. The disciplined restraint shown by the Army garrison, under the firm command of Colonel Doney, stands as a quiet example of professionalism under fire. They absorbed the blow, denied the enemy vital intelligence, and endured the frustration of holding their fire, demonstrating a form of fortitude as demanding as any battlefield charge.