KETCHIKAN, Alaska (AP) – John Radzilowski stood in front of a group of some 50 people Wednesday at the University of Alaska Southeast library in Ketchikan and asked for the survivors of the Aleut internment camps and their descendants to stand and be recognized. More than a dozen people, ranging in age from late 80s to teens, stood and were met with a round of applause.
UAS showed “The Aleut Story” as part of the Ask UAS program this week. Radzilowski, UAS associate professor of history, introduced the film and led a discussion after the screening.
The film documents the story of the forced evacuation of Native people from the Aleutian and Pribilof islands, the civil rights violations they endured at internment camps and their decades-long legal battle for justice.
Between 1941-1945, the federal government evacuated Native villages on the Aleutian and Pribilof islands to internment camps throughout Southeast Alaska with the intention to protect villagers from Japanese air attacks, according to the film. One such camp was located at Ward Lake, north of Ketchikan.
The internment camps were often housed in derelict and abandoned buildings that lacked water, sewer or heating facilities. Food and medicine were scarce, and the evacuees were left with no way to provide for themselves _ the evacuees had little idea how to work the vastly different environment in Southeast Alaska and were given no or insufficient instruction from the government, according to the film.
Evacuees also were restricted to the internment camps because the federal government wanted the Natives to return to the islands and to continue to exist as a source of cheap labor for the government's profitable seal harvest, according to the film.
The failure of the federal bureaucracy to adequately provide for the Aleut evacuees resulted in countless deaths during WWII, according to the film.
In 1951, a group of Aleuts from the Pribilof Islands filed a lawsuit against the federal government for gross mistreatment between 1870 and 1946. The suit was settled in 1978, and in July 1980, President Jimmy Carter established the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians with the goals of considering the claims of Japanese-Americans and Aleutian Natives who were interned during WWII.
But as Aleut communities began rebuilding and the Native cultures started to recover, the Aleut internment camps were largely ignored by history.
“This is a part of the history of Alaska that is often not taught, or not taught a lot,” Radzilowski said. “There's lots of interest in this; there is a lot of new research coming out these days. People are wanting to learn more and more about it, but it's a topic that people are still figuring out.”
One reason for that is some survivors don't want to talk about it. Radzilowski said that is one way camp survivors cope with survivor's guilt.
“It's only been really in the last 15-20 years or so that some of that healing has begun. ... People are starting to come to terms with it and really talk about it,” he said.
Radzilowski said most of the internment camp survivors are part of a passing generation _ people born in the camps are now in their 70s _ and a lot of the experiences are already lost.
Local Jon Dyankanoff, whose family was interned at the Ward Lake camp, said his aunt and uncle have shared some stories about their experiences, but his father refused to talk about his time in the camp.
“There are some pretty neat stories. I'm very sad I didn't write down or record some of them, because it's been over the last 25-30 years that they would talk about it slowly, I just got stories over that period of time and never at one time,”?he said. “We lost a lot of it.”
George Gordaoff, who was evacuated in the 1940s and was featured in the film, was at the film showing Wednesday. He lives in Anchorage now, but is visiting his daughter, Ketchikan local Patricia Green, for the holidays.
Gordaoff was orphaned as a boy and was separated from his fellow villagers when they were evacuated. At 15 years old, he was lost in the bureaucratic system.
“I was slated to come to Burnett Inlet (Duration Camp); I was slated to come to Ward Lake. I ended up in Juneau, so I didn't go to the camps, except to visit them,” he said.
Gardaoff visited the camps in 2010, 65 years after the Aleut people were allowed to leave them. Green said the story of the Aleut internment camps and the culture and people's gradual recovery from the experience is a rich history.
“I think it's something that everybody can learn from,” she said. “These people that have struggled and gone through what they have gone through are what makes our America what it is today.”
The film is available at the UAS campus library.
Reader Comments(0)