![]() I could see mud popping up in front of me. They were shooting at Alec but the bullets needed only one more feet to reach Alec but they didn’t. Alec was running so I thought he was trying to get away from me so I ran after him.He was running to the house, and while we’re running I could see mud flying in front of me. We got by the church and we heard some shooting and we started running. I was on my way down to the beach because I liked the ocean water all of the time.On the way down, this one person, Alec Prossoff – I followed him down to the beach, and he walked the beach towards the church and by this time we got closer to the church we hear some noises. Me, I didn’t know it was Japanese or not, but it was very low. We were waiting for them to come back down, and then a plane flew over, real low. And then maybe three, four young teenagers went up the hill to take a look and see what was going on. We can hear all kinds of noise in next bay. I was born on Agattu Island on December 19, 1935.When Japanese came, we went to church in the morning, and after that was nice calm day. By May of 1942, however, military opinion publicly favored the idea that civilians were to be evacuated if the Japanese threatened Alaska. Federal exposure to other Aleut villages was largely through the territorial school system – hardly the authority to demand that villagers leave their homes. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) as they had been for decades the superintendents for the federal government’s exclusive franchise to harvest pelts from the northern fur seals that birthed their pups on the islands’ beaches wielded a very strong hand in the lives of the Pribilof Islanders – including whether they and their families were allowed to stay on the islands. ![]() George Islands in the Pribilof Islands were clearly the responsibility of the U.S. Civilian evacuation had been discussed among various agencies for months (Kirtland and Coffin 1981:9-12). military knew that confronting the enemy in the Aleutians would risk civilian – particularly Native – lives, but the responsibilities for civil authority were not clear. When a Japanese observation plane found the source of their torment, enemy planes bombed and strafed the hastily evacuated Native village at Atka (Oliver 1988:xvii-xviii), cratering the hillside (Mobley 2006:29-30). ![]() The seaplane tender Casco arrived at the Aleutian island of Atka on June 10 to service PBYs – the Navy’s primary amphibious aircraft – assigned to strafe and bomb the growing Japanese positions (Cloe 1991:159). Navy weather station were captured (Rearden 1986:18-20 Takahashi 1995:37), and Attu – whose Native villagers were detained and eventually sent to Japan for the remainder of the war (Figure 1). Japanese Navy and Army troops on June 7 and 8 invaded the far Aleutian islands of Kiska – where the personnel of a U.S. naval base at Midway Island that resulted in the sinking of all four Japanese aircraft carriers and one U.S. and Japanese carrier-based planes near the U.S. The engagement coincided with an epic and decisive four-day naval air battle between U.S. Naval base at Dutch Harbor, on Unalaska Island in Alaska’s Aleutian Island chain (Cloe 1991:109-135 Thompson 1987:29). On June 3 and 4, 1942, Japanese fighter planes and bombers attacked the U.S. Though Navy submarine and seaplane bases had been authorized at Sitka, Kodiak, and Unalaska in 1939 (Morison 1982:3034), Alaska was poorly prepared to defend itself against Japanese attack. Alaska was still a territory administered by a federal governor, and its sparse population and vast spaces created challenges for military planners. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, forcing the nation into a war that would last almost four years and affect Alaska deeply. On December 7, 1941, airplanes from Japanese Imperial Navy aircraft carriers attacked the U.S. ![]() Some Attu villagers resettled at Atka village. After war’s end, they were shipped roundabout to Alaska and were not allowed to return to their village. Attu villagers were detained by enemy forces and sent to Japan for the duration of the war.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |