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The Wartime Internment of the Unangax (Aleut) of Alaska

1942–1945 · Americas

Confinement

Confined

923

881 Unangax from nine villages were removed by United States authorities in 1942, according to the National Park Service, and held for about two years in abandoned canneries, a herring saltery and a gold-mine camp in Southeast Alaska; 42 villagers of Attu were taken by Japanese forces to Hokkaido. Death figures in the American camps are recorded by site: 32 at Funter Bay, 20 at Ward Lake, 17 at Killisnoo and 5 at Burnett Inlet, a total of 74.

Share of the population affected

84%

of the Unangax (Aleut) population of the Aleutian and Pribilof Islands on the eve of the 1942 evacuation, 1942

Killed

74–100

deaths in transit or in camps

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What happened

After Japanese forces bombed Dutch Harbor and occupied Attu and Kiska in June 1942, United States authorities evacuated Unangax residents of the Aleutian and Pribilof Islands, in most cases at a few hours' notice, and held them for roughly two years in disused industrial buildings in Southeast Alaska. Conditions were severe: at Funter Bay several hundred people shared a single toilet and drank contaminated water, and 74 people died across the camps, a death rate far above normal for the population. Villages left behind were looted and burned by American and Japanese forces, and four were never resettled; the Pribilof men were meanwhile taken back seasonally to harvest fur seals for the federal government. The 42 Attu villagers captured by Japanese forces were deported to Otaru on Hokkaido, where about half died. In 1982 the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians reported to Congress on the treatment of both Japanese Americans and the Aleuts, and Congress provided restitution under the Aleutian and Pribilof Islands Restitution Act of 1988, paying surviving evacuees 12,000 dollars each and funding community and church compensation.

Parties

United States authorities evacuated Unangax villages in the Aleutians and held the people in camps in Southeast Alaska; Japanese forces deported the villagers of Attu to Japan

Disputed

Whether the evacuation was a protective measure or an act of racial discrimination is debated: the federal government presented it as removal from a war zone, while the 1982 commission and Unangax representatives emphasised that white residents of the same islands were not treated the same way and that conditions in the camps were unjustifiable.

The denominator

The National Park Service records 881 Unangax evacuated from nine villages by United States authorities, with a further 42 taken from Attu to Japan; contemporary Alaska Native rolls put the total island population at roughly 1,000-1,200, so the evacuation covered nearly the whole community. The number is small enough that the range chiefly reflects who was counted as resident.

Where the baseline comes from

On the death toll

74 deaths are documented by camp in the United States facilities, from tuberculosis, influenza, pneumonia and the conditions of confinement; roughly half of the 42 Attu villagers deported to Japan died there, which brings the combined toll to about 95-100. The figures come from federal records and from the 1982 commission's investigation.

Documented forms of violence

Arbitrary DetentionDestruction of PropertyForced Labour

Detention in unfit camps, the burning and looting of the evacuated villages and the seasonal return of Pribilof men to work the federal fur-seal harvest are documented by the National Park Service and by the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians.

Formal findings

United States Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (1982) — Reported to Congress in Personal Justice Denied on the evacuation and detention of the Aleuts as well as of Japanese Americans, finding the conditions of their detention indefensible and recommending restitution, which Congress enacted in 1988 — source