Parsons, Francis "The Outcast"

Parsons certainly scored a bulls-eye in the prophesy — if not propaganda — department in this 1913 short story which was later reprinted at the height of World War 2. An American “outcast,” adrift in the North Pacific in a small boat, makes landfall on a deserted island somewhere in the Aleutians. There he discovers the “high-pitched voices of the Orient,” otherwise known as a Japanese secret military base. As he conveniently speaks Japanese he is able to quickly learn that the Japanese are using the base to plan a four-pronged attack on the United States, with takeovers of the Panama Canal, the Philippines, Hawaii and the Puget Sound all in the offing (and no — there is no geographic logic here: why would the Japanese use an Aleutian island as the base for an attack on the Philippines, Hawaii or the Panama Canal?). Suffice to say, after battling (and besting) several loathsomely-depicted Japanese, the outcast escapes via motorboat and, after several days at sea, is found delirious (he had been grievously wounded fighting one of his foes) by a coastal steamer (the fictitious ANNIE WILSON) bound “south for Sitka” heading in toward the coast of southeast Alaska. American authorities are notified in time (it conveniently just happens that the outcast’s old college roommate is the Assistant Secretary of the Navy), military disaster is averted and our outcast returns to the United States restored to full citizenship. It should be noted that the story is a perfect “fit” for World War 2 propaganda purposes: the Japanese are depicted as a cretinous, dishonorable, nefarious, stab-in-the-back sort of people, though one easily defeated by upright, honorable Americans.