The 'Raid on Ellwood' was a naval attack by a Japanese submarine against US coastal targets near Santa Barbara, California (23 February 1942).

Although the damage caused was minimal, the event was key in triggering the US west coast invasion scare and influenced the US decision to intern Japanese Americans. The event also marked the first shelling of the North American mainland during the conflict.

Following the 'Ai' surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, seven Japanese submarines patrolled the US west coast, sinking two merchant vessels and damaging six more, and skirmishing twice with US Navy air or sea forces. By the end of December, the submarines had all returned to friendly waters to resupply. Of these, several made the passage to Kwajalein island rather than Japan, and were therefore in position to make a return visit to US waters. One of these boats was the Imperial Japanese navy’s submarine I-17, which displaced 3,654 tons submerged and was 365 ft 6 in (111.40 m) long, and carried an armament including six 21-in (533-mm) tubes for 17 torpedoes and one 140-mm (5.51-in) deck gun. The boat’s complement was 94 officers and men under Commander Kozo Nishino.

The Japanese government, concerned about PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt’s radio speech, scheduled for 23 February 1942, ordered a Japanese submarine to shell the California coast on that day. A popular story about the attack is that Nishino had been a naval reserve officer before the war and had commanded a pre-war merchant ship that sailed through the Santa Barbara Channel and had once stopped at the Ellwood Oil Field to take on a cargo of oil. However, after graduating from the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy in 1920, Nishino spent his entire career as a submarine crew member and officer, and did not command a merchant ship, thus the story of his pre-war relationship with Santa Barbara is unlikely.

At about 19.00 on 23 February, I-17 came to a stop opposite the Ellwood oilfield on the Gaviota Coast, and the crew of the deck gun took aim at a Richfield aviation fuel tank just behind the beach and opened fire about 15 minutes later. The first rounds landed near a storage facility. The oil field’s workmen had mostly left for the day, but a skeleton crew on duty heard the rounds hit. They took it to be an internal explosion until one man spotted I-17 off the coast. An oil worker later told reporters that the submarine looked so big to him he thought it must be a cruiser or a destroyer until he realised that only one gun was firing.

Nishino soon ordered his men to target the second storage tank. The oil workers called the police as the Japanese shells continued to fall around them.

It was inevitable that the submarine, firing in the dark and buffeted by waves, missed their target. One round passed over Wheeler’s Inn. A deputy sheriff assured the inn’s owner that warplanes were already on their way, but none arrived. The Japanese shells destroyed a derrick and a pump house, while the Ellwood Pier and a catwalk suffered minor damage. After 20 minutes, the gunners ceased fire and the submarine departed. Estimates of the number of shells fired ranged from 12 to 25. Although he had inflicted only slight damage, Nishino had achieved his purpose, which was to spread fear along the US west coast. A day later, reports of enemy aircraft led to the so-called 'Battle of Los Angeles', in which US artillery was discharged over Los Angeles for several hours in the mistaken belief that the Japanese were invading.

The attack had been the first naval bombardment of the USA by a foreign power since the War of 1812, excluding the incidental shelling by a German U-boat of coastland Orleans, Massachusetts in 1918. Additionally, at about 5,100 miles (8205 km) to the east of Japan, the bombardment of Ellwood was the farthest direct attack on a land target made by the Japanese in World War II, for it was several hundreds of miles farther than the attacks on Sydney harbor in Australia and Fort Stevens in Oregon during June 1942.

New of Nishino’s attack caused hundreds to flee inland, most of them fearful that this presaged a full-scale attack on the US west coast. As several members of Santa Barbara’s population claimed to have seen 'signal lights', a black-out was ordered for the rest of the night. The claims of signals were used to justify Roosevelt’s internment of Japanese Americans, which began just one week later.

Japanese submarines continued to conduct occasional attacks against Allied shipping off the US coast during the rest of the war. Sent to American waters in hopes of targeting warships, the submarines managed to sink only a handful of merchant vessels and to undertake a few minor attacks on shore targets. These comprised of a bombardment of Fort Stevens on the Columbia river, an attack on a Canadian lighthouse on Vancouver island, and two air raids launched from a submarine in an attempt to start forest fires in south-western Oregon.