It was a territory.
I sent the story link to one of my old high school buddies, he replied "The only thing I remember about that campaign was that a Japanese fighter pilot flipped hi plane over on an attempted open field emergency landing and was killed but his plane was recovered and restored by US forces and it became the only Zero fighter that we had access to fly in order to learn about the characteristics of the plane. Supposedly it was a very valuable find."
According to Wikipedia: "In the summer of 1942, the Americans recovered the Akutan Zero, an almost intact Mitsubishi A6M2 Zero fighter. This enabled the Americans to test fly the Zero and contributed to improved fighter tactics later in the war."