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Aleut Internment, Aleut Restitution

Aleut Internment

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.
--Bill Tcheripanoff, Sr., Akutan Aleut Evacuee

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.

Aleut Restitution

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.
-- Agafon Krukoff, Jr., St. Paul Aleut

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.

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