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SPECIAL FEATURE the Lonely Islands Attu and Kiska, Alaska

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SPECIAL FEATURE the Lonely Islands Attu and Kiska, Alaska SPECIAL FEATURE The Lonely Islands Attu and Kiska, Alaska Essay by Nancy Lord Photographs by Irene Owsley Nancy Lord Nancy Lord is the author of three collections of short stories; a novel, pH (WestWinds Press/Alaska Northwest Books); a memoir, Fishcamp (Island Press/ Shearwater Books and Counterpoint Press paperback edition); and four nonfiction books: Beluga Days: Tracking the Endangered White Whale (Counterpoint Press and The Mountaineers Books paperback edi- tion), Early Warming (Counterpoint Press), Green Alaska: Dreams from the Far Coast (Counterpoint Press), and Rock, Water, Wild: An Alaskan Life (University of Nebraska Press). She has published seven essays in Alaska Quarterly Review, one of which was cited as Notable essay of the year in The Best American Essays. Other essays have appeared in Sierra Magazine, Hunger Mountain, Ploughshares, Center for Humans and Nature, Catamaran, and Utne Reader. Her awards include fellowships from the Alaska State Council on the Arts and the Rasmuson Foundation, a Pushcart Prize, and residencies including Denali Park, Wrangell Mountains Center, and Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge. Lord served as Alaska Writer Laureate from 2008–2010. Irene Owsley Irene Owsley, a freelance photographer, specializes in the outdoors and travel, particularly in northern regions. Her work has appeared in such magazines as Canoe & Kayak, Sierra, National Parks, Earthwatch, and Natural History and in the publications of several conservation organiza- tions. Since 2011, she has been selected for five artist- in-residence pro- grams: Bandelier National Monument, New Mexico, and four through Voices of the Wilderness in Alaska (Nellie Juan- College Fjord Wilder- ness Study Area, Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge and two in Tracy Arm-Ford’s Terror Wilderness). A panorama from the latter resi- dency was included in an exhibition at the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Wilderness Act. She has exhibited her work in venues including the Anchorage Museum, Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History, and the National Institutes of Health. She has also been profiled in Rangefinder, Photographer’s Forum, and Nikon World magazine. A long-time resident of Washington DC until 2014, Owsley found the “wild” in this metropolitan area by creating a body of work called “Wild Washington,” with images from the riparian areas along the Potomac River. She is now a resident of New Mexico. This photographic essay collaboration was made possible by the Voices of the Wilder- ness artist residency program, sponsored by the U.S. Forest Service, National Park Ser- vice, and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. Nancy Lord and Irene Owsley were selected by the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge to travel to the islands of Kiska and Attu in the summer of 2017. The sea off the island of Attu, Aleutian Islands, Alaska. The North Pacific’s high seas, winds and reduced visibility were constant conditions with which the military struggled during the WWII Aleutian Campaign. 215 Credit: Frank D. W. Witmer, College of Engineering, University of Alaska Anchorage. 216 Credit: National Park Service. 217 218 View across Casco Cove to Massacre Bay and the formidable mountains of Attu Island. 219 220 View of Massacre Valley and the prominent Terrible Mountain from the track leading up to Engineer Hill, the site of the deciding battle fought between U.S. forces and the Japanese for control of Attu Island. Traces of roads and encampments can be seen in the valley floor. 221 Japanese cave bunker built into the cliff at Kiska Harbor to protect against sustained U.S. bombing raids, with a view of the wreckage of the Japanese cargo ship the Nissan Maru. Kiska Island was occupied by the Japanese from June 1942 to July 1943 during the Aleutian Islands Campaign of WWII. 222 THE LONELY ISLANDS I Attu. Kiska. These place names belong to the Unangan language, a tongue spoken deep in the throat, with a vibrating palate and quak- ing consonants not unlike the calls of geese. Unangans would have voiced the words differently than the way the Russians transcribed them, or the flat pronunciation in modern English. Properly emplaced in their watery cosmos, the words would have referenced something meaningful: Prickly sea urchins, beaches of drift logs caught from far- off forests. Now, their meanings are lost. Today, some pronounce Attu as At- too, others Ah- too, sometimes At- TOO, like a sneeze. In Alaska, Kiska is a popular dog name; in Rus- sia, it’s a girl’s name, a diminutive of Katarina, meaning “pure.” Most Americans have never heard of Attu or Kiska. What? Where? Islands in Alaska. Islands at the far end of the Aleutian Chain. Islands at the end of the Earth. But the first people who lived there felt no confu- sion. Unangans’ name for themselves means “we the people.” They knew who they were. They knew those islands not as the ends of the Earth, but the center. II The Russians came. They arrived in the Aleutians from the west, start- ing in 1741, to confirm rumors of new land and in search of furs, the soft wealth of the sea otter trade. The Unangan people were skill- ful paddlers, able hunters, and the Russians quickly enslaved them. Russians called them Aleuts, which means “coastal dwellers” or “islanders,” in the language of the Chukchi, indigenous to the far eastern coast of Russia. This foreign name persists today, while the people themselves choose Unangan. 223 According to scholars who have inspected shipping records, the Russians exported at least 80,000 sea otter skins from the North Pa- cific between 1785-1797. By the end of the same time period, the Un- angan population had fallen by as much as 80%, to 2,500 people in all of the Aleutian Islands. Some Unangans starved because the men were forced to hunt otters for Russian profit instead of caring for their own families. Many died of diseases to which they had no resistance. More than a few were blatantly murdered. Unangans left alive were often shuttled among islands by the Russians, to further their hunt- ing and trade. Attu’s Massacre Bay and Murder Point bear honest names: there, Russian fur traders – the promyshlenniki – slaughtered fifteen Attuans in 1745, the first time they landed on the island. The specific trigger for the killings is lost to history. Shell middens all around eroding now to sea: once these were villages. III The Americans came, after “buying” Alaska from Russia in 1868. They brought their missionaries and teachers. They brought government housing and government laws. They came with Coast Guard cutters. In 1941, Etta and Foster Jones arrived on Attu Island, she as school- teacher, he to handle radio communications and school maintenance. Their friends on the mainland cautioned them against those far- off jobs – so close to Japan! The couple laughed. They couldn’t imagine what Japan would want with Attu, a barren island lost in fog. The Native population of the island at the time totaled 43 Attu- ans, who lived in their single village on the northeast side, where they hunted and fished and attended the Russian Orthodox church on Sundays. For cash income, they trapped foxes, animals introduced by the Russians, mostly on a neighboring small island. Attuan women were known for their very fine basket weaving. Green grass gathered from hillsides. Not too near the ocean – coarse. Not too far – brittle. Meanwhile, Kiska had been uninhabited for years, since perhaps the 1790s, except by visiting hunters. As World War II began, the Navy 224 installed a small weather and radio station, operated by a handful of men. The war required silence by all ships at sea, and so, the men were told, this far- flung station needed to deliver the region’s weather. Fog, wind, wind- driven fog: Only one place in the world pairs them together. IV The Japanese came. On June 6, 1942, more than 1,000 soldiers landed on the beach at Kiska. They captured 10 Navy men at the weather sta- tion, although the commander, William House, escaped to the hills and evaded the Japanese for forty- nine days by hiding in a cave, eat- ing grass and scavenging the tideline at night. When help did not come and House’s options dwindled to starvation or surrender, he chose the latter. “Traditionally a white flag is used, so I ripped off a piece from my undershorts and waved it as I marched in.” House, weighing 80 pounds, was given tea and biscuits. V The Japanese kept coming. The same night as the Kiska invasion, 1,200 soldiers landed on Attu and, in the morning, captured the villag- ers and Etta Jones, the schoolteacher. Her husband, Foster Jones, was killed, perhaps because he had hidden or destroyed radio equipment and communication logs. The Japanese raised their flag and told the Attuans that they had been liberated from their American oppressors. Little Nick Golodoff remembers: mud “popping up,” bullets tearing ground. The Attuans were confined to their village for the next three months, a hardship that prevented them from gathering food or wood for fuel. The soldiers played with the children and gave them treats, but, eventually, all those captured were shipped to Japan as prisoners. 225 VI What did the Japanese want? Historians still debate this question. Control of the North Pacific. Defense against American advances. Di- version from attacks and attention elsewhere. A psychological “win” by establishing a foothold on American soil. Brian Garfield writes in The Thousand-Mile War, “At great expense, Japan had captured a pair of islands she did not really want and had precious little use for. Whether the Aleutians would ever have a strategic use remained to be seen; in the meantime both nations carried on the fight, simply because this was where the fight was.” The Japanese dug in on both Attu and Kiska.
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