Project Hula

Project Hula was a secret program during World War II in which the United States transferred naval vessels to the Soviet Union in anticipation of the Soviets eventually joining the war against Japan, specifically in preparation for planned Soviet invasions of southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. Based at Cold Bay in the Territory of Alaska, the project was active during the spring and summer of 1945. It was the largest and most ambitious transfer program of World War II, it included 149 ships delivered (of 180 expected, returned until 1955) and 12,000 personnel trained between 16 April and 4 September 1945 (well after the armistice of 15 August and the surrender of Japan on 2 September) and the US-handed then-Soviet ships took part in the last war operations of 5 September in Manchukuo, northern Korea, the Japanese south of Sakhalin Island, and the Kuril Islands.

The Russian Empire and Japan had previously fought the Russo-Japanese War in 1904–1905, followed by Japan sending troops into Siberia during the Russian Civil War in the Siberian Intervention of 1918–1920. Animosities continued as the two countries remained rivals in Northeast Asia after the establishment of the Soviet Union. Japan's increasingly aggressive political and military behavior in East Asia during the 1930s led to border clashes between Soviet forces and Japanese forces in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo in Manchuria in 1937, at Kanchatzu Island in the Amur River, and in 1939 in the Khalkhin Gol/Nomonhan Incident. But after 1939, the two countries turned their attention elsewhere – Japan to focus on the Second Sino-Japanese War in China and the Soviet Union to the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Eventually, the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact was signed on 13 April 1941.

The Soviet Union entered World War II when Germany invaded in June 1941, and in December 1941 Japan entered the war by attacking Allied forces and territories in the Western Pacific and Southeast Asia. Although these events placed the countries on opposite sides in the war, neither had an interest in engaging in military operations against the other, both being fully occupied with the wars in which they already were involved. Thus, the countries maintained a scrupulous neutrality toward one another until almost the very end of World War II; other than inspecting cargos to ensure they did not include war materials and protesting the reflagging of American ships as Soviet ones, Japan did not deliberately interfere militarily with Lend-Lease convoys carrying war materiel from the United States to the Soviet Union in the North Pacific, and the Soviet Union turned down American requests to base American aircraft on Soviet territory for operations against Japan and ignored Allied requests for any other actions which might provoke Japan. The Soviet Union's leader, Josef Stalin, took the position that Soviet entry into the war against Japan would not be possible until after the defeat of Germany.

During a meeting with United States Ambassador to the Soviet Union Averell Harriman in October 1944, Stalin finally offered to enter the war against Japan, but not until three months after the surrender of Germany, whenever that might be. The Soviet Union had suffered massive military, civilian, and economic losses during the war, so he also made such an entry contingent upon the Allies providing substantial assistance to the Soviet Union in building up its armed forces and military supplies in East Asia and the Pacific in advance of any Soviet operations against Japan. After the Soviet Union provided a list of equipment it required, which the Americans codenamed MILEPOST, the United States began the work of meeting the Soviet requirements outside of and in addition to annual Lend-Lease allotments of aid to the Soviets.

As part of MILEPOST, the Chief of the Soviet Main Naval Staff, Admiral Vladimir Alafuzov, and the deputy commander of the U.S. Military Mission in Moscow, Rear Admiral Clarence E. Olsen, agreed on 20 December 1944 to a list of a dozen types of ships and aircraft the United States would transfer to the Soviets. Among the ships were various types of escort vessels, landing craft, and minesweepers. Olsen also recommended that a "program for training of personnel and for delivery of some of each type of ship should be set up at once" so that Soviet crews could receive instruction from American personnel in the operation of the ships and craft transferred to them.

In early January 1945, the commander-in-chief of the Soviet Navy, Admiral Nikolai Gerasimovich Kuznetsov, suggested that the United States establish the location for the transfer of ships and training of crews in the Territory of Alaska's Aleutian Islands, where the presence of only a very small civilian population would help to assure the security of the program, which was to be conducted in strict secrecy to avoid alerting the Japanese and perhaps provoking Japan into launching an attack against the Soviet Union. He suggested Dutch Harbor, on Unalaska Island, as a good choice; both the Soviet Navy and merchant marine frequently called there and at nearby Akutan, so Soviet personnel were most familiar with those waters.

On 18 January 1945, the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations and Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Navy, Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King, contacted the Commander of the North Pacific Force, Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher, to alert him that the United States planned to transfer approximately 250 ships and craft to the Soviet Union between April and December 1945, and that about 2,500 personnel would be present at any given time at the transfer site with a two-week cycle of personnel turnover; he also inquired as to whether Dutch Harbor could accommodate such a program. Fletcher responded on 29 January 1945, rejecting Dutch Harbor because of the lack of housing and training space there and because its harbor was too small to accommodate the expected numbers of ships and too exposed to heavy seas for safe training. He recommended Cold Bay, on the Alaska Peninsula, as a much better choice because of its protected harbor, shore facilities, and the complete absence of a civilian population, making security of the program much easier than at Dutch Harbor. Kodiak, on Kodiak Island, which had adequate shore facilities but a harbor inadequately protected from rough seas, was Fletcher's second choice, and Dutch Harbor only his third. King duly informed the U.S. Military Mission in Moscow of the choice of Cold Bay.

During a meeting with King at the Yalta Conference on 8 February 1945, Kuznetsov stated that Dutch Harbor was the Soviet Union's first choice, and Kodiak its second. King informed him that the United States had chosen Cold Bay. Kuznetsov was not familiar with Cold Bay, but upon finding it on a map immediately agreed to it as the training site.