Aleutian

Voices

Volume 2, No. 1, 2015

Forced

to Leave

Detail: Children of Unalaska. Photograph, circa 1932-33, 

courtesy Charles H. Hope, the Svarny Collection.
As the nation’s principal conservation agency, the Department of the Interior has 

responsibility for most of our nationally-owned public lands and natural and cultural 

resources. This includes fostering the wisest use of our land and water resources, protecting 

our fish and wildlife, preserving the environmental and cultural values of our national parks 

and historical places, and providing for enjoyment of life through outdoor recreation.

The Cultural Resources Programs of the National Park Service have responsibilities that 

include stewardship of historic buildings, museum collections, archeological sites, cultural 

landscapes, oral and written histories, and ethnographic resources.

Our mission is to identify, evaluate and preserve the cultural resources of the park areas 

and to bring an understanding of these resources to the public. Congress has mandated that 

we preserve these resources because they are important components of our national and 

personal identity.

Published by the National Park Service, United States Department of the Interior, through 

the Government Printing Office with the assistance of Debra A. Mingeaud.

During World War II the remote Aleutian Islands, home to the Unanga{ (Aleut) people for 

over 8,000 years, became one of the fiercely contested battlegrounds of the Pacific. This 

thousand-mile-long archipelago saw the first invasion of American soil since the War of 

1812, a mass internment of American civilians, a 15-month air war, and one of the deadliest 

battles in the Pacific Theatre.

In 1996 Congress designated the Aleutian World War II National Historic Area to interpret, 

educate, and inspire present and future generations about the history of the Unanga{ and 

the Aleutian Islands in the defense of the United States in World War II. In a unique 

arrangement, the Aleutian World War II National Historic Area and visitor center are owned 

and managed by the Ounalashka Corporation (the village corporation for Unalaska) and the 

National Park Service provides them with technical assistance. Through this cooperative 

partnership, the Unanga{ are the keepers of their history and invite the public to learn 

more about their past and present.

This project was funded by the National Park Service, Affiliated Areas Program in support 

of the Aleutian World War II National Historic Area, in cooperation with the Aleutian 

Pribilof Heritage Group.

For information about the Aleutian World War II National Historic Area,

visit www.nps.gov/aleu/ or contact:

Alaska Affiliated Areas

240 West 5th Ave

Anchorage, Alaska 99501

(907) 644-3503

Ounalashka Corporation

P.O. Box 149

Unalaska, Alaska 99685

Visitor Information

(907) 581-1276

Visitor Center

(907) 581-9944

Special thanks to the following proofreaders who gave of their time and expertise: Ray 

Hudson, Janis Kozlowski, Rachel Mason, and Suzy Wooliver. All errors are attributable to 

the author.

Aleutian Voices, Volume 2, No. 1

Francis Broderick

Library of Congress Control Number:

ISBN-10:0990725200

ISBN-13:978-0-9907252-0-6

2015
Uncle Sam, James Montgomery Flagg, 1917,

Library of Congress.
“We [Unalaska Unanga{] were cut off from the rest of our home 

island by a barb wire fence erected by the United State military. We 

had to conform to curfews, blackouts, respond to alerts and establish 

foxholes near every home. Our health facilities were inadequate... We 

were cut off from [our] food supply and had to make do with what 

we could buy from the stores. Our first taste of inflation came. Our 

church...was strafed. It was only after a very long lengthy struggle 

with the military that the leaders of Unalaska were able to have holes 

dug to store furnishings of the church.”

—Philemon Michael Tutiakoff

“[The Unanga{] are a class of people that do little or no thinking for 

themselves...”

—Hugh J. Wade, Social Security Administration

“All the Natives out there need is a [telegraph] wire placing the 

teacher in charge of the evacuation and for them to get aboard ship. 

Those groups will do anything we ask them within reason.”

—Donald W. Hagerty,

Interior Department employee and former Alaska Indian Service field agent

“It was humiliating for independent Aleuts to be treated like children. 

The evacuation made Aleut people feel as though they had no rights 

whatsoever. I noticed that we were referred to as ‘these people’ 

whenever there was a discussion about the evacuees. Well, ‘these 

people’ are now in control of their own destinies, as much as any 

American citizen is, and will continue to do a good job preserving 

their culture and traditions.”

—Alice Snigaroff Petrivelli
FORCED TO LEAVE

The Removal of the Unangaˆx of Unalaska

22 July 1942

Wartime view of Unalaska from Illiuliuk Bay.

Photograph courtesy Alaska State Library. 
Iliuliuk Bay City of Unalaska

Unalaska Valley

AMAKNAK ISLAND

Ferry

Unalaska Lake
THE SETTING

Expedition Island

“Pleasure Island”

UNALASKA ISLAND

Captains Bay

Fort Mears

Photograph courtesy Museum of the Aleutians. 
PRELUDE

Let us say it is a cloudless summer’s day. The waters of Iliuliuk Bay are blue-green 

and glassy, untroubled by even a breath of wind. This day, the light falls fully on the 

crescent-shaped beach that fronts the long, low stretch of the City of Unalaska. The 

wood frame houses and shops are painted blue, yellow, and red—the Russian Orthodox 

Church, rising above all, outlined against a backdrop of green folded mountains rendered 

in dark shadow and brilliant sunlight. The first people of the Aleutians, the Unanga{, 

called this place Iluulu{—”going in a half circle.”

To the Unanga{, the natural world was sacrosanct. They knew and had given names to 

every feature on Unalaska Island, “...every little cape or small point of land... brooklet, rill 

and rock.” For the Unanga{ there was no separation between self and place; they were one 

with the encircling sea, the land and air.

“The [Unanga{] was part 

of all he could see or feel or 

hear.”

—Philemon Michael Tutiakoff

“Habitants d’Oonolaska.”

Image courtesy Archgraphics.
Prewar view of Unalaska. Photograph courtesy Archgraphics.

UNALASKA

“People of the [Aleutian] islands were not desolate and lonely. In their 

souls was a deep contentment that comes only to those who live close 

to the things they love.”

—William P. Zaharoff, Unangax chief, Unalaska

I

n 1942, the village of Unalaska numbers 289 people—151 Caucasians; 138 Unanga{—

the latter occupying 38 houses, some standing side by side with whites’ homes and 

businesses. To prevent a forced takeover by the U.S. military, residents apply for 

incorportation, and Unanga{ chief William P. Zaharoff is the first of 101 persons, white 

and Unanga{, to sign the petition. March 3, 1942, Unalaska becomes a first-class city.

v
“IMPORTED WORKERS”

“[Seventeen] of the native men are employed [by defense contractor 

Seims Drake] but it will no doubt be temporary because of their 

nature.”

—Unalaska school principal Homer I. Stockdale

Early September 1940, an advance party of 59 white civilian construction workers 

arrives at Unalaska Village. They bang together a bunkhouse for themselves, then 

begin raising the frontier military base on neighboring Amaknak Island. In six 

months, they reach 430 in number. Many are from distant places in the “Lower Fortyeight,” their homesickness blinding them to the rough beauty of the place. For every laborer 

who arrives on the islands, another flees south.

These men did not come north for adventure, nor out of a sense of duty to country. It is a 

handsome paycheck—$175 a week—that brought them this great distance. But good money 

alone is not enough to sustain them. They are disgruntled over high living costs; over foul 

weather and dangerous working conditions. Medical care is poor and promises of overtime 

pay and recreation proffered by recruiters in Seattle, unfullfilled. The mood of the imported 

workers is “surly”—one not shared by Alaskan laborers on site who are accustomed to 

working under such conditions. 

And the Unanga{... 

However well qualified, few are hired for defense work, Seims-Drake preferring to 

recruit whites from the states.
All photographs these two pages courtesy 

Museum of the Aleutians. 
Photograph courtesy Museum of the Aleutians. 
Many imported workers crack under the strain of working in the harsh Aleutian environment. 

Others are laid off due to labor disputes. Without employment, without means to buy 

their way back home, they wander Unalaska’s streets. Some turn to thievery, some to 

alcohol. Some beg. Rascism sits easily with many of these broken men, and the Unanga{ are 

openly abused by the outsiders, cursed and called “blacks.” 
A CITY UNDER SEIGE

December 7, 1941, Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Fearing imminent Japanese 

invasion of Alaska, the United States intensifies fortification of the frontier bases 

at Dutch Harbor, Amaknak Island. Soon the military exhausts Amaknak’s useable 

land and turns to nearby Unalaska Island for further expansion. Brigadier General Edgar 

Colladay, Commanding Officer of Fort Mears, sees the flats of the City of Unalaska as a 

prime location. 

As if laying siege, Colladay garrisons Army troops on the City of Unalaska’s perimeter. He 

places machine guns and antiaircraft positions inside town and requisitions city buildings 

for hospital use. But Colladay does not want Unalaska piecemeal; he needs the city whole.

“Army Garrison Number One,” the densely 

packed, cream-colored army barracks of Fort 

Mears, Amaknak Island. Photograph courtesy 

Museum of the Aleutians. 
“[The City of Unalaska] consists of a collection...of dilapidated 

buildings occupied by people of a nationality other than white... I 

would like to clean out... the entire town... The speed at which this 

can be accomplished, of course, will depend a lot on the ability of the 

Navy to help us. [Since] they are particularly anxious for housing for 

their construction battalions, I think we will have little difficulty along 

that line.”

—Brigadier General Edgar B. Colladay,

Commanding Officer, Fort Mears

U.S. Marines reconnoiter the village of Unalaska, 

1935. At anchor in the harbor are ships of 

the scouting fleet. Photograph courtesy 

Archgraphics. 
The white citizens of Unalaska are quick to profit from the massed presence of 

outsiders—civilian and military. A large general store is built, a movie house, curio 

shops, and cafes. Local whites let rooms; they sell supplies; sell Native handicrafts 

and picture postcards of the “Greek” church and local “Indians.” But the true money lies 

in hard liquor and beer. Soldiers, sailors, and construction workers stand hours in line 

suffering biting, wind-blown rain for their turn in one of Unalaska’s saloons. Inside, the 

crush of bodies is so great it is claimed a man cannot fall drunk to the floor even if his legs 

fail him. Not since the days of the Gold Rush has the town so prospered.

“Boatloads of sailors from the U.S. scouting fleet go ashore at Dutch Harbor, Alaska.” 

From Dutch Harbor, Amaknak Island, it is a short ferry ride to the City of Unalaska, 

Unalaska Island. Photograph courtesy Archgraphics.
“...money flowed and liquor overflowed...[and] new saloons open 

almost every night, the red light districts spread and flourish while 

men and women search desperately for time-killers.”

—Dr. Ruth Gruber, personal field representative of 

Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes
“Soldiers from the post and sailors from the Navy ships in the harbor 

wandered about the crooked lanes and along the main street [of 

Unalaska]. They were looking for liquor and women. There was 

much of one and little of the other... Prices were high for both.”

—Gore Vidal, Williwaw

“Blackie’s” Unalaska Bar offers solace in a shot glass—fifty cents a whiskey. For another 

fifty cents, passage by rowboat can be bought from Unalaska across Iliuliuk Harbor to 

Expedition Island. Here there is a small dock, a melancholy stand of spruce trees, and a 

two-story frame house—home to five working women and a madam. Business is brisk 

at “Pleasure Island,” and word of profits finds it way south. In Seattle, like-minded 

entrepreneurs attempt to book travel to the territory. The Alaska Steamship Company 

denies them passage. It is of no consequence. The brothel on Expedition Island is shortlived, the house shut down by the U.S. Navy and the women refused relocation to Unalaska 

Island by the deputy federal marshal. For those men who had taken the journey by rowboat, 

it had cost them fifty cents to reach Expedition Island, but two dollars to leave.
The Unanga{ profit little in the booming “defense town.” One-third the land within 

city limits is Native-owned, but whites have cornered much at cheap lease rates. 

These white middlemen turn around and lease again the same parcels at great gain.

Dr. Ruth Gruber, personal field representative to the Secretary of the Interior Ickes, reports 

that wartime Unalaska is in “upheavel.” 

The city has psychologically “gone berserk,” Gruber writes.

Sailors walk the beach fronting the village of Unalaska, 7 December 1941. In 

mid-distance, the cupolas of the church of the Holy Ascension of Christ rise 

above the surrounding rooftops. Photograph courtesy Archgraphics.
SIDEBAR 1: ALEUTIAN FACES

Dr. Ruth Gruber. Photograph courtesy Dr. Gruber and Lys Anzia.

“In Funter Bay [Unanga{ Internment Camp, SE Alaska], I had 

my first experience with refugees. I learned what it means to be a 

refugee: homeless... disoriented, and on the run. He knows trauma 

and loss. His memory of home turns even the simpest cottage in 

which he once lived into a villa.

“The Aleuts were told by the army that at the end of the war, they 

would be taken home. But how could they believe it? 

“I felt quilty. I was responsible* for turning the islanders into 

refugees. There were a few people who did call the evacuation 

‘Gruber’s Folly.’ I had no idea that the evacution and life in the 

camp would be so painful for them, depressing them...

“The experience, difficult as it was for me to see their hardships, 

helped prepare me for a life dedicated to rescue and survival.”

—Dr. Ruth Gruber

Inside of Time

“I learned what 

it meant to be a 

refugee.” 

Born in Brooklyn, New York 1911, Ruth Gruber earned a Ph.D. from 

the University of Cologne, Germany at the age of twenty—the youngest 

person in the world at that time to receive such an advanced degree. In 

1941 she was appointed Special Assistant by Secretary of the Interior 

Harold L. Ickes—her assignment to access Alaska’s potential for soldiers 

to homestead at war’s end. While at Unalaska, Gruber witnessed firsthand 

the effects of militarization on the Unanga{ of Unalaska City. Believing a 

Japanese attack on the Aleutians imminent, Gruber sent a confidential cable 

to Secretary Ickes urging the Unanga{ be removed from the islands for 

their own safety. Years later she would write of her visit to the displaced:
Considered “exotic” by soldiers, young Unanga{ women can not walk safely the 

city streets of Unalaska at night for fear of attack. “Intermingling” is what the 

authorities call such interactions between Native women and white men. To curb 

such contact, the army raises a barbed wire fence round the City of Unalaska. But the 

fence stands not as safeguard for the Unanga{, but as a means of isolating them. Brigadier 

General Colladay believes that the Unanga{ have a harmful effect upon his men. 

The white principal of the Unalaska School, Homer Stockdale, concurs. He writes that 

the “unmoral nature [of the Unanga{] makes them a menace to soldiers and imported 

workers...” The status of the Unanga{ is so grave, Stockdale continues, as to be “beyond 

the Federal law to express through the United States mails.” The Unanga{ find themselves 

undesirables in a place they have inhabited for millenium—held responsible for the social 

ills visited upon them from outside.

Unalaska girls dressed for a dance at an officer’s 

club in Pyramid Valley, post internment, ca. 1945. 

From left to right: Mary Shaishnikoff, Martha 

Tutiakoff, Nell Chagin, Sara [Merculieff] Flory, 

Gertrude [Hope] Svarny, Elizabeth Yatchmenoff, 

Stepanita Lekanoff, Paula Lekanoff. Photograph 

courtesy the Svarny Collection.
THE ATTACK

“...women and children [at Unalaska]...were machine-gunned...

[Japanese] planes flew over them scattering bullets but by some 

miracle they missed... Contrary to reports I do not think the Natives 

were more frightened than the whites, nor were they shaking like 

leaves. They did as they were told calmly and quietly...”

—Martha Tutiakoff, 

Indian Affairs Hospital Ward Attendant

J

une 3, 1942, almost six months to the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese 

carrier-borne aircraft strike the military installations on Amaknak Island. June 

4, Japanese fighter and bomber planes return. This time, several aircraft divert to 

Unalaska City to silence antiaircraft fire. The Church of the Holy Ascension is strafed, and 

a bomb blast shatters one end of the Indian Affairs Hospital. No one is harmed.On 7 June, 

Japanese landing forces occupy the western Aleutian islands of Kiska and Attu. Forty-two 

Attuans are taken prisoner, and it appears certain a Japanese invasion of Alaska will follow.

Japanese Kate bombers in formation 

over Amaknak/Unalaska islands. Smoke 

rises from burning oil tanks. Photographs 

courtesy Museum of the Aleutians. Digital 

montage by Archgraphics.
“We try to teach [the Unanga{ children] safety, but of course 

they have very primitive tendencies and forget the teachings when 

convenient to do otherwise.”

—Unalaska school principal Homer I. Stockdale

I

n Unalaska City, the Unanga{ bury religious articles from their church for safekeeping. 

They dig foxholes close to their homes, carry gas masks, and black out their windows 

at night. Large military trucks rumble down city streets that not long ago saw only 

pedestrians or the rare automobile. Accustomed to playing free, Unanga{ children must be 

“taught” how not to be run down in traffic. Hemmed in by barbed wire, separated from their 

fishing grounds, the Unanga{ turn to city stores for footstuffs. They are captive customers, 

and prices soar. With the destruction of the Indian Affairs Hospital, medical care falters. 

Unalaska’s chief nurse, Margaret Quinn, recommends “immediate evacuation.”

Above: “Interior (iconostas) of Greek Church at Unalaska, Alaska.” Lowman & Hanford Co., Seattle, 

Washington, No. 5972. Photograph by Nowell. Image courtesy Archgraphics. Background: Historic 

American Building Survey rendering of the Church of the Holy Ascension iconostas at central nave by 

James Creech/Katya Solovjova Wessels. Image courtesy National Park Service.
Two generations of Unalaskan Unanga{: below right, Alexei Meronovich 

Yatchmeneff; below left: his son John. For 45 years, Alexie stood as chief 

among chiefs in the Eastern Aleutains. Born June 1866, he witnessed 

Unalaska’s transition from Russian colony to U.S. territory. Chief 

Yatchmeneff died in 1937 and did not see the swift and terrible changes 

world war would bring to the Aleutians.

Photograph courtesy University of Alaska Fairbanks. 

“...half wards and half free men.”

John Yatchmeneff was the only Unanga{ elected to Unalaska’s wartime 

City Council. On 16 May 1941, the younger Yatchmeneff wrote to President 

Franklin D. Roosevelt that the Unanga{ were denied the same constitutional 

guarantees as whites—that they were held in unenviable status as “half 

wards and half free men.” It was unprecedented that a Native put such 

words to paper. Two anthropologists were sent to Unalaska as undercover 

investigators by the Alaska Indian Service to investigate the Yatchmeneff 

letter. Favored by U.S. Commissioner Jack Martin, John stayed on in 

Unalaska during internment. He drowned there shortly after the evacuation. 

SIDEBAR 2: ALEUTIAN FACES
“[The Unanga{] seemed to have no conception of cleanliness or 

orderliness and the majority of their homes have little value as 

buildings and contained little furniture. Any type of shelter seemed to 

suffice. ”

—Brigadier General Edgar B. Colladay, Commanding Officer, Fort Mears

To address the wartime state of Unalaska, a “defense council” is formed of whites 

only. The Unanga{ number nearly one-half the population of Unalaska City, but are 

governed by whites and policed by whites. Granted full citizenship in 1867 at the 

purchase of Alaska from Russia, they have stood as Americans for 75 years, but are deemed 

“Indians” by the federal government—“wards” of the Department of Interior with no more 

say in the conduct of their lives than children. Army Brigadier General Colladay argues 

that he “would have to take care of them while they are in our midst, to the detriment” of 

soldiers. Hugh J. Wade of the Social Security Administration writes that the Unanga{ “are 

creating a major social problem,” and the sooner they are removed the better. It appears that 

to all in power—even those who believe they have the welfare of the Unanga{ at heart—it 

would be best if the Natives of Unalaska were shipped elsewhere.

Above: “A Family Group – Unalaska, Alaska.” Postcard courtesy Archgraphics. Background: Aerial 

looking NNE at Village of Unalaska (in forefront), 1934. Photograph courtesy Museum of the Aleutians.
REMOVAL

J

uly 18, 1942, the Unanga{ are told they have twenty-four hours to leave their homes. 

They may take only what they can carry—a suitcase, a trunk. There is no time to 

shutter windows and secure doors, to turn off water or cover stovepipes against the 

blowing rain. In their baggage they are allowed only clothing...no photograph albums, no 

keepsakes, no religious article—icon or holy lamp—no physical sign of the life they leave 

behind. Military police will search through their things before the bags are closed and 

locked. Dogs and cats must be left. Young children will carry what remains of their world 

in pillow sacks.
From left: Mary [Chagin] Turnpaugh, Nell 

Chagin (with doll), Myrtle [Hope] Alleman, Mary 

Shaishnikoff, Gertrude [Hope] Svarny, Lillie 

[Hope] McGarvey, William P. Hope. Photograph, 

circa 1932-33, courtesy Charles H. Hope, the 

Svarny Collection.

July 19, 1942, Hobart W. Copeland, Army captain in charge of removal of the Unanga{, 

reports that several Natives refuse to leave the island. Copeland asks “for authority to 

compel them.” Among the Unanga{ to be displaced are elders, pregnant women, and 

four infants one year old or less. No one is told where they will be taken, nor for how long. 

Commander William N. Updegraff, Naval Air Station, Dutch Harbor, orders Copeland that 

all Natives are to go, all persons with “as much as one-eighth native blood” in their veins. 

Since the mid-1700s, Caucasians and Natives in Unalaska have mixed their blood, but on 

19 July 1942, a search is begun to determine who is “native” and who is not. A one-eighth 

“blood quantum test” will decide. 
“[Anfesia] was a very diminutive woman, a very tiny woman. But 

could be extremely fierce at times if she found something out that 

she was unhappy with. And she was often unhappy with the written 

accounts of Aleut history... When I knew her she was an older 

woman...in a sense the matriarch of the community [of Unalaska].”

—Ray Hudson

“Little Grandma”

Senator Bob Bartlett and Mrs. Anfesia T. Shapsnikoff of Unalaska. Edward Lewis 

Bartlett Papers, 1938-1970, UAF-1969-95-312.

Born 1 October 1901 on Atka Island—her father from Atka, her mother 

an Attuan. Anfesia Shapsnikoff moved to Unalaska circa 1905. She was 

literate in three Unangan dialects and in both Russian and English. Small in 

stature, her appearance belied her vitality and strength.

The Twenty-first Legislature of the state of Alaska recognized Anfesia in 

2000 as an “Aleut Tradition Bearer” who “...served as nurse, church reader, 

teacher and community leader nearly all her life...who contributed history 

and well being for all Alaskans.” A master basket weaver, she travelled 

the Aleutians teaching children the fine art of Attuan weaving. Anfesia 

passed away January 15, 1973 and rests in the Holy Ascension Cathedral 

Churchyard at Unalaska, close to the icons and religious articles she so 

loved and protected.

SIDEBAR 3: ALEUTIAN FACES
In 1996, the World Monuments Watch designated the Aleutian and 

Pribilovian icons as among the world’s 100 most endangered sites. 

The National Park Service had organized conservation as early 

as 1990 as part of its inventory and documentation of the icons 

and furnishings of the Holy Ascension Russian Orthodox Church 

National Historic Landmark. Detail of icon courtesy National Park 

Service and National Archives, Alaska Region.

I

n 1942, in defiance of U.S. military 

order, Anfesia Shapsnikoff, together 

with the Church Committee, brought 

the icons of Unalaska’s Church of the 

Holy Ascension south to the internment 

camp at Burnett Inlet. There, the paintings 

were hung in a small church built by the 

Unanga{ men. When weather permitted, 

the Unanga{ aired the icons. They coated 

them with 3 in 1 machine oil—

the only “preservative” that 

could be scavenged. But still 

the ever-present damp of the 

rain forest permeated the 

canvasses. The icons began 

to mold, then flake. Brittle oil 

paint, centuries old, cracked and 

curled and fell away. In desperation, the 

Unanga{ applied shellac to slow the icons’ 

decline, but the mix of oil and shellac 

darkened the once glowing paintings and 

they began to recede into the dusk.

“[The Unanga{] first concern” 

was “for their churches...and the 

treasure of art objects” in them.

—Doris Ann Plummer, Wrangell insurance 

broker selling “war risk” policies for 

Unangax property left behind during 

relocation.
“The most galling and demeaning feature that many of us recall 

explicitly is that those in charge regarded us [Unanga{] as 

incapable...of any form of decision-making. At no time throughout this 

entire process were we given the right to make choices of any kind.”

—Philemon Michael Tutiakoff

J

uly 22, 1942, one hundred and thirty-seven Unanga{ are herded onto the steamer 

S.S. Alaska in Captains Bay. As they board ship, the purser impounds the hunting 

rifles and shotguns the Unanga{ men were ordered to bring. Some in command 

fear the Unanga{ have been so mistreated by the United States, they may take to arms 

for the Japanese. The S.S. Alaska departs late that afternoon, women and men separated 

into different compartments, the men in a common hold with only the blankets they have 

brought. The following morning, the Unanga{ wake to find the ship in dense fog. Standing 

at the railing, they can see nothing of what lies ahead. In Unalaska City, whites continue to 

go about their business. The military expands into the valleys and hills of Unalaska Island, 

unencumbered by the original inhabitants of the land.

Lillie and Myrtle Hope. These swings once stood in downtown Unalaska, circa 1933, east of the Orthodox 

church near the front beach. Photograph courtesy Charles H. Hope, the Svarny Collection.
Aerial view of Unalaska, July 1943, post Unangax evacuation, showing military expansion in the flats surrounding Unalaska City 

and reaching into the flanking hills. Photograph courtesy Museum of the Aleutians. 

Aerial view showing extensive damage to floodplain of Pyramid Valley. 

Photograph courtesy Museum of the Aleutians.

“Aleuts would be safer placed upon other islands 

remote from the Base where they can live by hunting 

and fishing, and in canneries rather than be left here 

as a menace to military maneuvering and victims of 

starvation in case of a siege.”

—Unalaska school principal Homer I. Stockdale

v
National Park Service

U.S. Department of the Interior

Aleutian World War II

National Historical Area

Foreground: Unalaska-born Periscovia Nevzoroff, age 

sixty-five. Background: husband Larry Nevzoroff of Atka. 

Sketches by W. Langdon Kihn, Kilisnoo internment 

camp, SE Alaska. Natural History, February 1943. 

 (Images flipped horizontally.) 

“The [Unanga{] were...the first 

and only people in Alaska to be 

assaulted by our own government 

and an enemy foreign power in 

WWII simultaneously.”

—Philemon Michael Tutiakoff

Chairman of the Board Aleutian/Pribilof 

Islands Association, Inc. 1981