Hammond House

08/29/2026

08/27/2026

⚓ On the night of June 21, 1942, the Japanese submarine I-25, commanded by Meiji Tagami, surfaced off the mouth of the Columbia River and did something no foreign power had done to a mainland American military post since the War of 1812. It opened fire.

The sub's deck gun sent roughly 17 shells toward Fort Stevens, aimed at Battery Russell near present day Hammond and Warrenton. Inside the fort, the Oregon National Guard's 249th Coast Artillery had their guns trained and ready, but the order came down not to fire back. Commanders believed the sub was already out of effective range and didn't want to give away exactly where the big coastal guns were hidden in the dark.

When the smoke cleared, nobody had been hurt. The shells mostly landed in sand, scrub, and a swamp, and the most notable casualty of the whole attack was a baseball field backstop. Still, it remains one of only a handful of direct attacks on the continental United States during World War Two, and Fort Stevens holds the unusual distinction of being shelled by a foreign power on American soil in the 20th century. 💥🌊

The fort's massive coastal guns never fired a single shot back that night, all to protect their position in the dark. Did you know Oregon's own coastline came under direct attack during World War Two?

08/27/2026

🌲 Decades before a single wagon rolled down the Oregon Trail, Americans had already built an outpost at the mouth of the Columbia River. In the spring of 1811, the ship Tonquin arrived carrying men of the Pacific Fur Company, a venture backed by New York merchant John Jacob Astor, and they began raising a small fort on the forested point that is now the city of Astoria.

Getting there overland was its own brutal saga. A second group, the Astor Expedition, left the Arikara villages that same spring under Wilson Price Hunt and Ramsay Crooks, only to be battered by the Snake River canyons and a punishing winter crossing. Survivors straggled into the new fort in small groups through the winter and into 1812, some barely alive.

Fort Astoria didn't stay American for long. During the War of 1812, the Pacific Fur Company sold its assets to the British North West Company in 1813, and the post was renamed Fort George. Even so, that first fort is widely remembered as the first American owned settlement in the Oregon Country, a foothold on the Pacific decades before the wagon trains ever set out. 🚩

Long before wagon trains crossed the plains, American fur traders were already building a fort at the mouth of the Columbia River. Did you know Oregon's fur trade history started decades before the Oregon Trail itself?

08/27/2026

On the night of June 21, 1942, the only enemy shells to hit a US military base on the American mainland during World War II landed on a baseball diamond backstop in Oregon. ⚓ The Japanese submarine I-25, commanded by Meiji Tagami, surfaced off the mouth of the Columbia River and opened fire on Fort Stevens with its deck gun, aiming for the fort's defenses near Battery Russell.

Soldiers at Fort Stevens spotted the sub and ran to their stations, but commanders held their fire, worried the sub was already out of range and that shooting back would only reveal exactly where the fort's guns were hiding. The Japanese shells fell harmlessly into the sand and scrub, doing nothing worse than wrecking a power line and that backstop, and only one soldier was hurt, a minor injury from rushing to his post in the dark. 💥

Fort Stevens had been standing guard at the mouth of the Columbia since the Civil War, one of a trio of forts built to defend the river from attack. The 1942 shelling turned out to be the last real test of that mission. It proved coastal guns like the one in this photo could not keep up with modern weapons, and by 1944 most of the Army's coast artillery units, Fort Stevens included, had been stood down for good. 🎖️

The only WWII shells to hit the US mainland landed on a baseball backstop in Oregon and barely anyone noticed at the time. Had you ever heard that the mainland United States was shelled during World War II?