Why weren’t the people sent to Juneau, asked Carl Stepetin, following a ceremony at Funter Bay honoring the 32 Native Alaskans who died while interned there during World War II. Sadly, there’s no good answer to his question.
In June 1942, the Japanese attacked Dutch Harbor and two islands in the Aleutian chain. Soon afterward, the U.S. military ordered the evacuation of about 480 Aleut people from St. Paul and St. George Islands.
They were taken to internment camps at a cannery and gold mine in Funter Bay, just 20 air miles from downtown Juneau. Housing was grossly insufficient. The cannery bunkhouses had been destroyed by a fire and the remaining facilities neglected after operations at both facilities ceased a decade earlier. Regardless, the Aleuts remained there for almost two years.
[Retracing the Wartorn Path to Funter Bay]
Haretina Krukoff attended the ceremony last week. One of the camp’s few living survivors, she and Agafon Krukoff were married while living in Funter Bay. They’re Stepetin’s grandparents.
Like any American of his generation or older, Stepetin didn’t learn this story at his school in St. Paul. Even though it’s more likely to be taught today, his question wouldn’t be part of the curricula. That’s because, according to KJ Metcalf, there’s no record of any discussions about bringing evacuees to existing communities.
Metcalf is far more knowledgeable than most about this subject. He’s president of Friends of Admiralty, the nonprofit that organized the Funter Bay ceremony. In 2014, there was a similar one held on Killisnoo Island across from Angoon, where lived for 18 years.
It’s unrealistic to suggest Juneau could have been a temporary refuge for the Aleuts. Adding housing for that many people would have been an impossible demand on a city which had a population of 5,000 when the war began. But collectively, every city along the Inside Passage could have offered a more humane solution than Funter Bay and the other internment camps.
It could be argued that the public at large was unaware of the issue. In the six weeks after the bombing of Dutch Harbor, the Daily Alaska Empire published one short article about the Aleuts at Funter Bay. Records indicate the military was censoring local war stories. And a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service memo implies agency officials used that as an excuse to keep the local press from learning of people “being herded into quarters unfit for pigs; denied adequate medical attention; lack of healthful diet and even facilities to keep warm.”
However, this reasoning breaks down while Ernest Gruening was Alaska’s Territorial Governor. As Chairman of the Alaska War Council, he was responsible for ensuring the safety and security for Alaska’s entire civilian population.
Numerous sources cite Gruening’s efforts to find adequate housing even before the Aleuts were evacuated from their homes in the Pribilofs. But his pleas were ignored by the U.S. Interior Secretary and officials under his command at the USFWS and Alaska Indian Service.
It’s difficult to imagine the federal government could have kept the governor in the dark after the Aleuts arrived at Funter Bay. But even if they had succeeded, his attorney general visited the site in September 1943 and reported that no language could describe the shocking conditions he witnessed there.
Gruening’s lifelong commitment to civil rights for all peoples suggests he would never have turned his back on the Aleut people. But in that regard, he was way ahead of his time.
The truth is, government censorship would have completely failed if white Christians had been housed under those conditions. Instead, few people cared because the refugees were Native peoples. And the prevailing racism among white Americans during that era meant that any proposal to move the Aleuts into Southeast Alaska communities would have been met with overwhelming resistance.
Almost 30 years ago Congress formally apologized and authorized payment of reparations to the Aleut people for the “injustices suffered and unreasonable hardships” they experienced during World War II. Last week at Funter Bay, a USFWS official solemnly acknowledged the acts of her predecessors were unconscionably inhumane. Now it’s our turn to ask Juneau Assembly members to apologize to the Aleut people for the failures of those who settled here before us.
• Rich Moniak is a Juneau resident and retired civil engineer with more than 25 years of experience working in the public sector.
