Aleut Internment, Aleut Restitution

Interesting to another small event in the war that is not well known.
[SIZE=+3][/SIZE]
[SIZE=+3]Aleut Internment[/SIZE]

[SIZE=+1]In 1942, my wife and our four children were whipped away from our home...all our possessions were left...for mother nature to destroy...I tried to pretend it really ws a dream and this could not happen to me and my dear family.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=+1]--Bill Tcheripanoff, Sr., Akutan Aleut Evacuee[/SIZE]
In 1942, the Imperial Japanese Naval base of Paramushiro lay only 650 miles southwest of Attu Island, the westernmost island in the Aleutian chain. The Attuans, and the Aleutian Islanders in general, were wary of their proximity to the Japanese installation. "Some day they (will) come to Attu... predicted Attuan Michael Hodikoff. They (will) come here; you see. They (will) take Attu some day." On June 7, 1942, in an event for the most part unknown outside of Alaska, Japanese forces did invade this small island, changing forever not only the lives of the forty-two Attuan villagers taken prisoners-of-war, but the Aleut people as a whole.

In response to Japanese aggression in the Aleutians, U.S. authorities evacuated 881 Aleuts from nine villages. They were herded from their homes onto cramped transport ships, most allowed only a single suitcase. Heartbroken, Atka villagers watched as U.S. servicemen set their homes and church afire so they would not fall into Japanese hands.
The Aleuts were transported to Southeast Alaska and there crowded into "duration villages": abandoned canneries, a herring saltery, and gold mine camp-rotting facilities with no plumbing, electricity or toilets. The Aleuts lacked warm winter clothes, and camp food was poor, the water tainted. Accustomed to living in a world without trees, one open to the expansive sky, they suddenly found themselves crowded under the dense, shadowed canopy of the Southeast rainforest. For two years they would remain in these dark places, struggling to survive.
Illness of one form or another struck all the evacuees, but medical care was often nonexistent, and the authorities were dismissive of theAleuts' complaints. Pneumonia and tuberculosis took the very young and the old. Thirty-two died at the Funter Bay camp, seventeen at Killisnoo, twenty at Ward lake, five at Burnett Inlet. With the death of the elders so, too, passed their knowledge of traditional Aleut ways. The death of the young foretold the demise of the future, but the Aleut people did not succumb.

Attempts to keep Aleuts sequestered from nearby villages and towns failed. Evacuees found jobs. They built new living quarters in their compounds, repaired the old structures, and brought in electricity and running water. The villagers of Unalaska erected a makeshift church and named it after their beloved Church of the Holy Ascension of Christ. The religious articles and holy cards brought from the villages took on immense importance, the Aleut again turning to their faith for strength.
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[SIZE=+3]Aleut Restitution[/SIZE]

[SIZE=+2]Some called the ordeal suffered by...Aleut-Americans the “craziness of war,” and dismissed that ugly portion of our history with that excuse. Not many of our people...realized the ultimate insult of the entire story. The evacuations were not necessary; the Aleuts suffered for nothing. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=+1]-- Agafon Krukoff, Jr., St. Paul Aleut[/SIZE]
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Despite their poor treatment at the hands of the U.S. government, the Aleut remained a fiercely patriotic people. Twenty-five Aleut men joined the Armed Forces. Three took part in the U.S. invasion of Attu Island, and all were awarded the Bronze Star. At their camps, the Aleut surreptitiously voted in Territorial elections. Through exposure to the outside world, they had come to understand the importance of their participation in the democracy by which they were governed, and they desired participation with the full rights of citizens.
The Attuans suffered the severest deprivation during the war. For three years, they were imprisoned in the city of Otaru on Hokkaido Island, subsisting almost soley on rice. Sixteen would die there. On the day of their release, the survivors left their quarters through the windows, a symbol of their newly acquired freedom, bringing with the cremated remains of the dead to be buried according to Russian Orthodox custom in their beloved Aleutians. But there would be no return to the village of Attu for its people, nor for the people of Biorka, Kashega, or Makushin. Partly due to financial considerations, U.S. authorities had decided these villages would be incorporated into the villages of Unalaska, Atka, and Nikolski. What the war had not done, a stroke of the pen had accomplished – four communities had met with extinction. Those villagers allowed to reoccupy their homes found them ravaged by the weather and vandalized by U.S. servicemen, the windows smashed, doors and furniture gone. Worse still was the theft of religious icons and subsistence equipment – boats and rifles. Some Aleut worked until their hands bled to repair the damage that had been done, but it would take years to recover, to fashion new communities and a new order for themselves. Politicized by their stay in the camps, the Aleut began the long battle for restitution. The evacuation had taken place for humanitarian reasons, but racism too had played a role in their abrupt evacuation and poor treatment in the camps.
It would be forty years until restitution would be made, but on August 10, 1988 Public Law 100-383 was signed calling for financial compensation and apology from Congress and the President in behalf of the American people. Throughout their recorded history, the Aleut were thought to be a people on the verge of extinction, but like the sea otter, whom the early Aleut believed to have been transformed human beings, the Aleut have proven their tenacity and ability to adapt. Survival against overwhelming odds is their personal victory.

Aleut Internment and Restitution
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Thanks for the post, JC. Very illuminating.

When I ponder some of the bone-headed things that our government has done....

Well...Another time.

David

 

Well as I always say. Hindsight is 20/20. To those who were alive at the time it may have seemed to be a good and logical idea.

 

Just like the interned Japanese-Americans thier patriotism still prevailed.

"Despite their poor treatment at the hands of the U.S. government, the Aleut remained a fiercely patriotic people. Twenty-five Aleut men joined the Armed Forces. Three took part in the U.S. invasion of Attu Island, and all were awarded the Bronze Star. At their camps, the Aleut surreptitiously voted in Territorial elections. Through exposure to the outside world, they had come to understand the importance of their participation in the democracy by which they were governed, and they desired participation with the full rights of citizens."

 

As the Aleutians are often forgotten, the Island of Attu is over 1l00 miles from the coast of Alaska and is a part of Alaska nonetheless and was taken for some time by the Japanese then taken back. Most people only think of Pearl Harbor being attacked and often forget about the Aleutian Islands. I am speaking of what is a part of the U.S. Here are some pictures of things that occurred and I would like it much if someone had even larger pictures of these same things as they show WWII Island landing equipment up close which is always exciting for me to see. http://www.hlswilliwaw.com/aleutians/Attu/html/attu-wwii-pg1.htm

 

I spent a year on Attu. I wandered the battlefield, took pictures of flowers, fished for red salmon and hunted ptarmigan. It was a long year.

The Aleuts weren't really interned like the Japanese. They were free to go anywhere they wanted (except the western Aleutians), free to vote, free to do whatever they pleased. They just weren't culturally ready to move to Seattle and get a job as a streetcar driver or a welder.

Have you ever heard of Castner's Cutthroats? When the Japanese invaded the Aleutians they needed men they could plant on the islands to gather intelligence like the Aussie coast watchers in the South pacific. They had soldiers who could run the radios and so on, but since they couldn't be supplied they needed men who could also live off the land in such a place. So, Castner flew around to the most remote villages in western Alaska to gather recruits, along with an Eskimo to translate for him (unlike Canadian Inuit, Alaskans don't mind being called Eskimos). The people in western Alaska speak variations of Yupik, as do the Aleuts. Anyway, Castner's plane set down on a remote beach near a village and he made a speech about fighting for their country which seemed to create a stir among the people. They began questioning the translator and he turned to Castner and said "They want to know what country they are in." That's a true story, they honestly didn't know they were part of the US. Castner got as many volunteers as he needed and they were seeded all along the Aleutian chain to watch the Japanese.

The Americans landed at Massacre Bay when they invaded Attu. That name was there long before the battle. It dates back to a contest between some Cossacks regarding whose musket was most powerful. They lined up Aleuts chest to back and shot them to see how many their various muskets would penetrate. The winner, according to the most common version of the story, killed seven Aleuts with a single shot. The Russians named the place Massacre Bay on their charts and so it has remained ever since.

 

Apparently the article has been moved and re-written, it can be found here:
http://www.nps.gov/aleu/historyculture/unangan-internment.htm

 

Thanks Kodiak and Takao for the additional information.......certainly stories from this area are not often told ......we hear a lot about the Pearl Harbor attack but not so much about the Aleutians.

 

I tried to like both Victor and KB's posts...but have no likes so again...I can only say good posts, good info, good finds....KB liked his own post so much he gave it a like...Great idea matey...I'm getting at least 3 likes tomorrow...

This sound very much like and I'm not being political...we are the ones that moved em and we were not at war per se...Diego Garcia...We are still today capable of doing things that on the face of it do not sound too good to others..

 

Ha! I did like it! Now I've unliked it. I must have hit that when trying to edit the post.

I don't know what else could have been done. The western Aleutians were in Japanese hands and there was no reason to think they wouldn't hop on down the chain, so best to get those people out of there before that happened. After all, the villagers in Attu had been sent to a Japanese labor camp to mine coal. The white schoolteacher was executed on the spot.

Calling them internment camps is unfair. These people didn't have to stay in these camps. They did because of their own cultural traditions. They are islanders who draw their identity from the extended family - the village. They might see an outsider once a year, and that would be somebody from another island up or down the chain. I suspect the government didn't really grasp how culturally isolated these people were, but you know, there was a war on. The islanders couldn't or wouldn't just go into town and get a job at a cannery or as a hand on a fishing boat. They didn't know how to interact with strangers.

As an aside, the Aleuts are very different than coastal Eskimos or mainland Indians. They speak a version of Yupik, but in appearance they are more delicate and paler than other native Americans. They think now that the Aleuts came up the chain from northern Japan rather than the Asian mainland where other early Americans came from. Some of the most beautiful women I've ever seen are in Sand Point in the Shumagins. They look Polynesian, but with very pale skin - maybe like a cross between Japanese and Polynesian. Whatever, very attractive people!