Aleut Story

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [inaudible] This place is called East Landing, and this is one of the docks used during the evacuation of the Aleut people to Funter Bay. They were told to take one bag and get ready to leave the island. [NARRATOR]: The Aleuts of Alaska would experience war as few other Americans. [PLANE FLYING] The only campaign of World War II fought on American soil, the battle for the Aleutians would extract a heavy toll. But in the end, it would not be invading Japanese forces who posed the greatest threat to the Aleuts' survival. That would come from the country Aleuts pledged allegiance to: the United States of America. [FLORE LEKANOF]: The government owned us,

and they treated us as property. People learned that they weren't being treated as full citizens. [NARRATOR]: Aleuts would be sent to isolated internment camps. [THUNDER] There they would find pain and grief, and strangely enough, possibility. [HARRIET HOPE]: The story was never told, and it was such a big story. It was just like it was purposely held secret, and nobody should know this, because I think it's a big black mark on the United States government. I know there are some elders here, they refuse to utter a word about it, they'll just say, "No. I won't talk about it." And that's the saddest part. I think if we can all get together and talk about it, like we all got together and went through it, I think we'd all be a lot

less burdened. It needs to be told. And I think it will now. [MUSIC] [foreign language] [foreign language] This story has been passed down through many years. [NARRATOR]: Ancestors of modern Aleuts, migrants from Asia, settled along this sweeping arc of volcanic islands. [BILL ERMELOFF]: It happened to be a clear day, and they saw the islands on the horizon. [NARRATOR]: The Aleutian chain separates the Pacific Ocean from the Bering Sea, stretching 1300 miles west from the Alaskan peninsula to the international dateline.

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] Here, on the edge of tomorrow, Aleuts have lived for 9,000 years. [MUSIC] Two hundred miles north of the Pribilof Islands, St. Paul and St. George are home to the world's largest Aleut population. [MUSIC] Most written histories say Aleuts first came to these islands as slaves of Russian fur traders, but Aleuts tell the story differently. [AQUALINA LESTENKOF]: There was a man named Igadik, who lived in a village on the Aleutian chain, and he was out paddling his single hatch Iqyax, or kayak, and he was washed away in the storm. [WAVES CRASHING]

And he lived to tell the tale of coming to a land where there were fur seals, and sea otters, and abundant bird life. And he told his people that he had been to a place that he calls Tanam Amiq, "Land of Mother's Brother," and that anyone that ever goes to Tanam Amiq would always carry a longing to return. [NARRATOR]: The United States bought Alaska from Russia's tsar in 1867. The Department of Interior, headquartered more than 4000 miles away in Washington, D.C., assumed charge of the Aleuts, as it had other Native Americans.

[DOROTHY M. JONES]: In many regards, it was the same paternalistic setup that other Indian groups in the United States experienced, but it was unique in that the government wanted land from American Indians, but in the case of the Pribilofs, they wanted and needed the Aleuts' labor. [NARRATOR]: Under the terms of the treaty, Aleuts were United States citizens, but for decades to come, virtually every aspect of Aleut life was subjected to federal scrutiny and control. [DOROTHY M. JONES]: We bought Alaska right after the end of the Civil War, and after we've emancipated the slaves, while we continue the system of enslavement in these remote islands. [STEPHEN HAYCOX]: Greed and racism in 19th century America are handmaidens to one another, they march in lockstep, they are married. Slavery was profitable. If slavery hadn't been profitable, slavery would've disappeared

in the 1830s, it might even have disappeared in the 1780s. The legacy of that lasts into Reconstruction after the Civil War. Blacks are cheap labor; Indians aren't even matter. Anybody who came into the Aleutian Islands, or the Pribilof Islands hoped for maximum profitability. One piece of that formula was to employ the local people on the cheapest possible terms. [NARRATOR]: Federal officials under pressure to justify the purchase of Alaska wanted to maximize income. Commercial sealing was an obvious source of revenue, and Aleuts the obvious source of labor. Many in government believed that to profit from one, you had to control the other. [DOROTHY M. JONES]: To subdue a people, to render them submissive, you degrade them. That's part of any colonial system.

And one of the ways they degraded the Aleuts was by segregating them and humiliating them. The agents, for example, issued orders, what time they were to go to bed. They controlled the choice of marriage partners. There was a recreation hall, but only the whites were allowed to use it. They were treated like dogs. And though there were some protests, nobody heard them in those years. [NARRATOR]: Well into the 20th century, Aleuts would remain unheard and unseen. Then World War II found Alaska, and the Aleuts' lives, already a study in oppression, took an ugly turn. [MUSIC]

[MARY BOURDUKOFSKY]: I was born and raised on St. Paul Island. We had a boat that comes four times a year that brings the mail. There was no radios hardly, and no TV, nothing like that. And I start school when I was seven years old. And the one thing that I really learned in English was I pledge the allegiance to the flag of America. One day I told my dad what I learned in school, and he was so proud of me, he said, "We're part of the United States, you know. I'm glad you learned that." And so from then on, I used to be proud to be an American and not just an Aleut.

We celebrate 4th of July, and they dress us up in a nice Sunday dresses. And my mom and dad ordered a flag, so we hold a little flag and just go around town and have picnics and lemonade. We didn't know the outside life too much. The Fish and Wildlife was the one that run the island. There was an agent, and he has an assistant, and there was a storekeeper. There was a doctor. I think there were about seven or eight employees. Oh, they had all the power they could. You couldn't - you couldn't go over them. If you do, you're punished for that. As we we're growing up I got married to a local boy there, and we had a wonderful life together.

And he was a baseball player, so I used to look forward to that Sunday afternoon baseball game. It happened one Sunday afternoon. I was home staying with my children, and my husband was playing ball. Then he came running in and said, "They stopped the ball game. They come to evacuate us people." [NARRATOR]: The evacuation of nearby St. George Island began that same Sunday in June 1942. [FLORE LEKANOF]: And we had just got home from church. We had a priest there. His name was Father ?Vienossi?. And my father was a reader in the church, so we all went to church and came home and had some hot biscuits and coffee and so on. And somebody came to our door and said we have to get ready

because we will be taken off the island very soon. [VOICEOVER, AGENT'S LOG]: Having received orders from the Navy to prepare for immediate evacuation, the entire village has been mined with TNT; the cattle rounded up and stanchioned and then shot; pails of gasoline stationed at each house to facilitate destruction. [FLORE LEKANOF]: We were allowed to take one bag a piece and clothing on our backs, and that was the way we were to get on the ship. [NARRATOR]: A total of 19 Fish and Wildlife Service employees and 478 Aleuts were herded aboard the U.S. Army transport, Delarof. [FLORE LEKANOF]: We don't know where we're going, but we left the island. [NARRATOR]: Nobody, not even the federal officials in charge, knew where they were going. Ordered to follow a devious course, the Delarof began to zigzag its way south. The evacuation had begun

suddenly, but not without warning. Unidentified planes had been buzzing the islands for months, and U.S. Army intelligence had repeatedly warned Japanese Imperial Forces were preparing to invade Alaska, America's northern frontier. [VICTOR MALAVANSKY]: People scared of hearing the planes. Nighttime you could hear those planes. People, sometimes they hear the planes, they knock on the doors, you know, like outside, "Hey! Turn your lamps off! Turn your lamps off!" Everybody was scared. They blacked out everybody. They don't want to see lights down at the village. [NARRATOR]: The world was at war, and a new enemy close at hand. The Alaskan Defense Command had been created under the control of General Simon Bolivar Buckner. More than 5,000 soldiers were ordered to garrison a heavily fortified post at Dutch Harbor near the Aleutian village of

Unalaska. [HARRIET HOPE]: There were dugouts and foxholes being dug everywhere. The sirens, when they went off, we had to move. We had to move to our designated areas, and everyone had a designated area, and ours, our family happened to be down by the town creek. And ah, we were in a large dugout on the side of the riverbank. I remembered my mother, we always brought holy water and holy bread with us. Because I guess each time, you never knew if it was the real thing. I remember one particular morning. It was a bright sunny day, and I woke up and looked out of the big hole entranceway and across the creek. All the military men -- all of a sudden they were there. It seemed to me like overnight. [NARRATOR]: When Pearl Harbor was bombed in December 1941, Buckner ordered the evacuation of all white women and children

from Unalaska. Even the prostitutes were told to go, allowing the Navy to take over a brothel for storage space. But there was no agreement on whether to remove the Aleuts, American citizens all, from harm's way. [new male speaker] These decisions must be made by military authorities. The Aleuts would be safer placed upon other islands. These people could never adjust themselves to life outside- Request authority to evacuate all natives- [NARRATOR]: Federal and Alaska territorial officials seemed incapable of reaching a decision, Their arguments clouded by paternalism, prejudice, and political jealousies. [new male speaker] Their immoral nature makes them a menace to soldiers and other workers at the base. [NEW MALE SPEAKER]: We try to teach them safety but, of course, they have primitive tendencies and forget. Some of our Alaskan natives are in for serious trouble. I would like to clean out the entire town. [ALICE PETRIVELLI]: In my mind, we were just a nuisance, ok, as far as the government was concerned. Yes, it is time of war, but we are citizens of the United

States. [NARRATOR]: Around the world, GIs were fighting a desperate war against fascism, but at home America still placed race above individual rights. [ALICE PETRIVELLI]: The treatment we got was not right. Never think anybody else would go through what we did. [NARRATOR]: Shortly after midnight on June 2, 1942, air raid sirens shattered the peace. Japanese aircraft carriers and bombers had been sent to attack Dutch Harbor with the aim of diverting U.S. forces from the naval Battle of Midway 2,000 miles to the south. [MARIA TURNPAUGH]: Everything went so fast. Had to get to the bomb shelter. So many people scared. It was just unbelievable. [NARRATOR]: The airstrike set in

motion a full scale, 15 month battle second only to Iwo Jima for bloody hand-to-hand combat. Unopposed Japanese troops seized the islands of Kiska and Attu 850 miles west of Dutch Harbor. On Kiska, 10 U.S. weather crew were captured. On Attu a white radio operator was killed, and 42 Aleuts and a white school teacher were taken prisoners. [WALTER DYAKANOFF]: Well it's sad because we couldn't do nothing about it. The chief of Attu who told the Coast Guard the Japanese will be here -- that was Mike Hodikoff. They didn't listen to him. [NARRATOR]: Hodikoff would die in a Japanese POW camp in 1945. Sixteen other Attuans perished along with him. Incredibly,

even as enemy forces became more entrenched, officials continued bickering over whether to evacuate the Aleuts. Finally, Navy Admiral Charles Freeman made a command decision ordering the immediate evacuation of all natives from the Aleutian Islands. [ANGUS MACBETH]: It was an unhappy story of the government bungling some, and I think they were trying to- they were trying to do the right thing. They were trying to protect people. But they didn't have the wherewithal to do it very well. They managed it miserably, and it had terrible, terrible costs for a great many of the Aleuts. [HARRIET HOPE]: We were evacuated out of here. My father couldn't go because he was white. [NARRATOR]: Aleuts had intermarried with Caucasians for nearly two centuries, but officials adopted a blood quantum rule. Anyone of one eighth

or more native blood was compelled to ship out immediately. [HARRIET HOPE]: My father was from Manchester, England. And he was in the Navy, and he got stationed up in Alaska -- and he was stationed in St. Paul. That's where he met my mother. And they got married, and they moved to Unalaska. We had a big family. And we always had people, extra people for dinner, people visiting us. We always had a house full. [new female speaker] Our family was never again together. Never again. When we left here, when we were evacuated from here, we never were- never got together again, so. [STEPHEN HAYCOX]: I think that the

context that explains the Aleut episode after the invasion of the Japanese and the bombing of Dutch Harbor, I think what explains all that is racism. It's a blatant racism, and by blatant I mean it's a racism that no one feels they need apologize for. And that reflects where American culture was in the 1940s and still into the 1950s. [NARRATOR]: Like Americans of Japanese descent, Aleuts would find themselves shunted into government camps. Suspected of nothing, accused of nothing, Aleuts never imagined they too would be segregated, isolated in American gulags -- dark, dank camps mired in the coastal muck of southeast Alaska's dense, intemperate rain forests. [ANGUS MACBETH]: One of the problems was that they weren't really respected as individuals. What this country stands for very much is personal dealing

between the government and the citizens. That was one of the things that had gone off the rails in a very profound and important way in the beginning of the Second World War. And given the terrible conditions in which people were placed, that puts a heavier weight on the government's shoulders. [HARRIET HOPE]: Everybody on board from Unalaska was at the railing, you know, just saying goodbye to home and hoping to be back soon. And my father had come out, and my mother had held me up to the railing so I could say goodbye. And I was dressed in my Sunday School coat, and for going to Sunday School every Sunday I had earned a Sunday School pin. And I had a pair of my Sunday School gloves. And now we had a good view of our house, and my dad was out there jumping up and down and doing this, and I could still see his white

sleeves. [NARRATOR]: After leaving the Pribilofs, the Delarof picked up 83 more Aleuts from the village of Atka in the Aleutian Islands. [MARY BOURDUKOFSKY]: The boat was really crowded. So you line up and it takes about an hour to get where you're going, like going up the steps and so on. [NARRATOR]: The aging transport ship had a capacity of 376 passengers. Now the ship's company numbered 570 men, women, and children. Illness spread rapidly, but the government doctor on board refused to enter the Delarof's hold, where the Aleut lay sick and dying. [MARY BOURDUKOFSKY]: And then, um, this lady that was having a baby wanted a doctor and there's no- She asks around and her husband asked around to see if he could check on the baby.

And they never did, and that poor little baby died. The priest was on there, and they used holy water and named the baby. [PRIEST]: Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy- [MARY BOURDUKOFSKY]: Later on they wrapped her up in canvas, and they just slid her overboard, her little body. [PRIEST]: Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. [MARY BOURDUKOFSKY]: That was our first casualty we had. [PRIEST]: Now and ever- [new female speaker] Four o'clock in the morning my mom waked us up. "Girls! Girls!" she said. "There's trees! We've never seen trees before!" Oh, we got so excited, four o'clock in the morning we got up to see the trees. But we didn't know we were going to be tired of them for two and a half years.

[NARRATOR]: This was a strange new land unlike the treeless, windswept world the Aleuts called home. But as the Delarof put in at Funter Bay on June 24, 1942, the Aleuts looked with relief on the densely forested landscape of southeast Alaska. [MIKE ZACHAROF]: Being so young, I didn't know what was going on. Where other people were worried about being taken off the island, in a way I was happy, because, you know, I didn't realize there was a war going on. When we got to Funter Bay, I saw my very first tree, you know. I thought there was no other place except St. Paul when I was a kid. I really did. I mean, I just thought this is it. [VLASS SHABOLIN]: Myself and the other boys when we first got here, the first thing we saw was a frog. By golly, we went hunting for a frog. We never knew what that was, so we- I got one. I came home all

muddy. Mom looked at me and said, "Now what am I going to do with you?" you know. [LAUGHTER] [FLORE LEKANOF]: Shortly after we arrived in Funter Bay I think the novelty wore off, and we started unloading the ship there. We were all unloaded on the cannery side -- the old cannery that had not been operating for several years. The facilities were really deplorable. [NARRATOR]: Hidden by the tall, fragrant spruce was a terrible reality. The deadly conditions on the ship were more than matched by the conditions on shore. [Male quoting from a journal] If you think any of this is fun, you should be here. The water system cannot, under any condition, be made usable for winter. The outdoor privies empty into the water at high tide, but the sewage still washes back onto the beach for the children to track around. All houses have gone from rot. [NARRATOR]: A long abandoned fish cannery and crumbling gold

mining camp offered the only shelter. [FLORE LEKANOF]: There were no toilets, no wash rooms, no partitions between the rooms that we were put in. For privacy's sake, they put up some blankets between one family and another. A lot of us young people -- I think there were about a dozen of us -- ended up in a attic of a warehouse. I don't even remember how we slept that night. Probably on the floor somewhere. [MARY BOURDUKOFSKY]: And that night, I saw the elder women crying, and I hide away and cry, and I just feel hurt. My little babies, you know, they were crying. I said, "How we're going to live here?" Everybody asked each other, "How are we going to live here?" [NARRATOR]: They would live, but barely -- sustained only by their powerful

faith and will to survive. [JAKE LESTENKOF]: I'd lost my mom. Losing a mother is a traumatic time. It is more traumatic, I think, if you are in strange surroundings. Some years later, I became the head of that agency that was responsible for Aleuts during that evacuation period. I used to reflect on the charge of my predecessors during the war years, and while I was not faced with the magnitude of problems that they were faced with, the inattention that was paid to the living conditions of those evacuees, I think, is

criminal. [NARRATOR]: The 479 Pribilovians at Funter Bay represented more than one half of all Aleut evacuees. [Male speaker] Technically, we were not internees, but neither were we free to leave the camps. I think some people in government believed we needed to be confined for our own good. [Narrator reading from journal] "They'll get into all kinds of, scrapes, drunk. They'll be robbed, fleeced in bunco games; the first thing some government office will be getting calls." [Same male speaker] But there were others; they wanted to keep us in the camps so it would be easy to round us up to take us back to the islands for seal harvesting. [Narrator reading from journal] "It is our desire to keep the native organization as intact as possible. No individual should be permitted to take his family and leave camp. If he insists on doing so, he should lose all rights and should not be allowed to return to the islands. - Seal Division Superintendent Edward C. Johnston." [Same male speaker] We were treated little better than animals for service to the government.

[NARRATOR]: Officials hadn't found the time to plan for the Aleuts' relocation, but they did find time to organize a press tour. [Narrator reading from journal] "Never before had any ship brought such a strange cargo to American shores. Lining the rails of the big transport towering over a little craft, were hundreds of Aborigines -- men, women and children. Especially children, from the north Pacific in the Bering Sea outposts of the empire." [NARRATOR]: Reporter Joseph Driscoll of the New York Herald-Tribune looked on as the last of the Delarof's passengers, 83 evacuees from Atka, were loaded onto a fish scow, to be taken to Killisnoo, an abandoned whaling village about 50 miles south. [Narrator reading from journal]: Shepherding the natives were two white teachers who had been evacuated with them. As the native children lined up in the fish-stinking scow, they sang 'God Bless America' to the tune of Irving Berlin. [CHILDREN SINGING 'GOD BLESS AMERICA] Somehow, it was

rather touching to hear the little Aborigines singing their heads off before breakfast to prove that they were just as patriotic, and just as Rotarian, as the rest of us. I must say these little yellow-skinned barbarians were much better mannered than many children back home." [ALICE PETRIVELLI]: When we first got here, it felt good because we had been on the boat for so long -- and to breathe the fresh air, smell the trees and the roses. I didn't know at that time that eventually I would not like the trees, but it was nice to be ashore. And we saw this kind of an open field, so the kids were running -- all of us -- and they were saying, "Ouch! Ouch!" Here we ran into nettles, and we didn't know what they were. Left blisters on our legs, you know. [LAUGHTER] [NARRATOR]: The Atkans arrived at Killisnoo equipped with the accumulated knowledge of 9,000 years of survival; But this environment was completely alien. [ALICE PETRIVELLI]: We were kind of lost,

because back home we had routine -- there were certain things we had to do to survive. Here, they kind of dumped us; nobody told us what we needed to do. We knew we had to do something, but what? [NARRATOR]: The last of the evacuees from the villages of Unalaska, Akutan, Nikolski, Kashega, Makushin, and Biorka arrived in southeast Alaska later that summer. Taken to Wrangell Institute, a boarding school for native children, villagers were quartered in wooden-floored tents. Doctors inoculated the Aleuts against typhoid and smallpox, but other medical measures were tainted by racism. Assuming Aleuts were of low moral character, government doctors require all females 12 years of age and older to undergo physical examinations for venereal disease.

[HARRIET HOPE]: I remember, in particular, the urgency of once we got there, they had to give us all medical treatment of some kind. And my sister, again being in a certain age group, she was subjected to physical examinations that were so degrading to her. And we felt really bad about that, but we had no say in the matter. [NARRATOR]: From Wrangell, the Aleuts were moved to more isolated camps. [WALTER DYAKANOFF]: I was in pretty bad shape, very bad shape. And they put a whole bunch of us in the bunkhouses, and that was not good. Families and all. Just, not good. We had to rebuild. They supplied the lumber, and we put houses together, built a church, built a school, and built the boardwalks, repaired everything. [HARRIET HOPE]: The elders

just did the best they could. Of course, my mom, she was one of the ones in charge. She was one of these people that everybody looked up to her. She took care of medical problems like broken bones and sewed up wounds and delivered all the babies in town. All by herself. I don't know where she got that strength from, but she sure had it. [NARRATOR]: A handful of evacuees was lost in the system. George Gordaoff -- a 15 year old orphan boy from Kashega, a tiny Aleutian village, was left to fend for himself. [GEORGE GORDAOFF]: It was kind of weird. I felt like I was -- well, I was separated -- but it was kinda strange. I knew I had to work

to support myself the best I can. So I worked in Juneau until I joined the service. And I just kind of lost track of everybody after that 'cause I was moved from place to place. You look back on it, you know, it really hurt a lot of people. I mean, taking people away from their environment and their homes, such as they were such as they had, and to take [them] to a strange place and strange people and ordered around like we were, you know, dogs or something. It's just back then, never thought too much of it but now that you think about it, you know, they could have done a lot better. [NARRATOR]: In fact, America was doing better for its prisoners of war. Just

22 miles northwest of Funter Bay at a place called Excursion Inlet, 700 Nazi prisoners of war were eating regular meals, sleeping in warm beds, and receiving regular medical care. Protected by the Geneva Conventions, the prisoners' living standards were much higher than the Aleuts'. [MARIA TURNPAUGH]: They made you feel like you were nothing. I mean, we didn't do anything wrong, and yet we were treated like- like that. It was hard to understand. [HARRIET HOPE]: I'm sure everybody thought with the amount of supplies and clothes we were allowed to take that we'd only be gone a few days at the most, and then pretty soon it was weeks and then months and then years. Nobody ever knew from day to day how much longer we'd be there. And

then, people started getting sick. People were getting boils. They were running rampant through the camp. And then we had eye infections. We had impetigo. It was just one thing that was so contagious. We had hair lice that was just rampant. TB was another big problem. We lost several people to TB, tuberculosis. [New female speaker] We lost lots of elders. I think that that's why our culture just stood still for a long time. I think that the poor people from Funter Bay, I think that they suffered the most. The things that they went through were really terrible. [Narrator reading journal]: Pribilof Evacuation

Camp, Funter, Alaska, October 7, 1942. I wish to submit my resignation as agent and caretaker. I feel I cannot stay and watch a people I have grown attached to. Only a miracle can prevent a tragedy of sickness and extreme suffering to them." [FLORE LEKANOF]: I don't know how the families survived that summer. Some people were sick. They really belonged in a hospital, like my sister and grandmother. [MARY BOURDUKOFSKY]: So we all got together and had a meeting, and then we wrote this letter. I'll read it: "We the people of this place wants a better place than this to live. This place is no place for a living creature. We drink in pure water and then get sick. The children get skin disease, even the grownups . . ." [NARRATOR]: The evacuees' protests were echoed by Territorial Attorney General Henry Roden. [VOICEOVER OF HENRY RODEN]: I have no language at my command which can adequately describe what I saw. If I had, I am confident you would not believe my statements. In short, the situation is shocking. I have seen some pretty tough places my days in Alaska, but

nothing to equal the situation at Funter. [MARY BOURDUKOFSKY]: Why they did not take us to a better place to live and work for ourselves? Do we have to see our children suffer? We all have rights to speak for ourselves. [NARRATOR]: Federal officials responding from their warm offices in the lower 48 states refused the appeal. [VOICEOVER OF WARD T. BOWER'S RESPONSE]: Let them know we are all called upon to make sacrifices in connection with the war program.- Ward T. Bower, Director of Alaska Fisheries." [NARRATOR]: With little help, Aleuts worked to improve the camps, but all their labors could not protect them from destitution, disease, and death. During the years 1942 and 1943, one in ten Aleut evacuees would die -- a death rate comparable to that of American soldiers in foreign prisoner of war camps. Like the fine, cold mist filtering through the rainforest, grief

settled on the camps, chilling the Aleuts to their very core. [VLASS SHABOLIN]: During the evening, there's no heat. There's no heat in the house at all. There's three, four of us kids got together and slept in one bed with if you're lucky you had a blanket you know one Army blanket that covered you up and if you're lucky you had a slice of bread and a cup of hot water with sugar in it. Even though I was cold I used to run over to my uncle's, he was sick with TB - name was (Vlass Pankoff) You know, he's the one that raised me on St. Paul, actually, and then some. I used to run over in the morning make sure he -- I could light the stove for him and get him warm, you know? And then fetch him a cup of tea, and and he'd tell me some stories, you know -- believe in God and do this right God on your side, you know. He was a religious man, so I enjoyed his

life. [ANDRONIK KASHEVAROF]: "They weren't afraid anymore, they just go." [VICTOR MALAVANSKY]: Yeah, they moved from Funter Bay to Juneau. [ANDRONIK KASHEVAROF]: I was 15 when I got my first job in Juneau - was in (?Purse's?) cafe as a dishwasher -- five dollars for one day. That was good enough. Then they had a fire there after three weeks, then I Iose my job, you know, all closed up. Then I looked into the newspaper, and they wanted somebody to work in the governor's house. I got my job there. [MARY BOURDUKOFSKY]: The ones that weren't drafted went and start going to Juneau. After they work two weeks or so they sent for their family,

and I was just kind of upset because here my husband, is, I don't know where he was -- he can't do that to me, he's in service. And I had no choice, I had to stay there. I was going to have my third child. [FLORE LEKANOF]: It was a big, um, educational process that took place from thereon. People learned that, really, they weren't being treated as full citizens. [NARRATOR]: The U.S. Interior Department, which had administered the Pribilof Islands like a virtual prison colony for 80 years wasn't about to give up control. In nineteen forty-one, the year before the Aleut evacuation, the annual seal slaughter delivered $2.4 million to the U.S. Treasury. In 1942, the year of the evacuation, the operation lost a million dollars. Now the Interior Department wanted to make up its losts. Problem was, the Aleuts didn't want to go. The seals were in a combat zone,

and an entire summer of sealing wouldn't amount to a month's wages in their newfound jobs. [FLORE LEKANOF]: The people who were working in Juneau were told that if you don't go, you won't -- we won't take you back on the Pribilof. You'll lose the house that we were allowing you to live in. If you don't come and work with us during the summer, we'll just disown you. [NARRATOR]: The sealing gang finally assembled included 116 evacuees and 12 Aleuts on active military duty furloughed for the seal harvest. [VOICEOVER, AGENT'S LOG]: Pribilof Evacuation Camp, Funter, Alaska. Thursday, May 6. As we drew away from the dock, a choir of native voices began a farewell chant in Russian, which was answered by those remaining on shore. Many of the women were crying their farewells, never having experienced the parting with their loved ones. It was a sight -- not soon to be forgotten. [NARRATOR]: Sealing resumed in the Pribilofs

on June 10, 1943, with phenomenal success. [BILL ERMELOFF]: I remember the largest kill that ever was made up there was over 5,800-some-odd on St. Paul Island, and I got uh, 153 out of that but... [FLORE LEKANOF]: Times three cents or five cents... [BILL ERMELOFF]: Nickel piece. I think it is the hardest work imaginable. [NARRATOR]: Commercial sealing in the Pribilofs ended in 1984. Pressure from wildlife conservation groups and declining consumer demand shut down the wash room and the salt house. But in 1943, the U.S. sealing operation was unrivaled. [VICTOR MALAVANSKY]: "Pretend this is skin. Take the skin and put it right here like that. Take your blubbering knife. 'Ok, everybody start blubbering.' And then you turned it over, pull it up a little and

start from middle and all the way down. Everybody was tired, sweating. You could see the row from right here to over there just steaming, like, people sweating up. [ANTHONY B. MERCULIEF]: "We went out early in the morning -- we took pride in what we did, you know, and there was, uh, people assigned to different tasks out there. I was assigned when I first started to be a watchman - I watched the big herd of seals that were rounded up. [NARRATOR]: An experienced crew could stun, kill, and skin a seal in little more than a minute. Federal agents supervised the Aleuts in partnership with the employees of the Fouke Fur Company of Missouri, which acted as a wholesaler of the sealskins. [VICTOR MALAVANSKY]: The government and the Fouke Fur Company -- they balance you. They talk to

each others and stuff like that. They have respect for the agent up here, something like that. [ANDRONIK KASHEVAROF]: He was a pretty hard man to talk to. He used to be out there with us, because he's an agent. If you would make a little mistake in what you're doing, boy, hey, that guy used to just jump on us. [ANTHONY B. MERCULIEF]: There was a lot of, you know, talk between the blubberers. They'd talk to each other and make -- tease each other and, you know, about how many skins they were getting. [ANDRONIK KASHEVAROF]: Some of those temporary men, they were from the Aleutian Islands. Well, sometime I used to talk to them in Aleut. [speaking Aleut] [ANTHONY B. MERCULIEF]: "You got all the small skins, and I'm getting all the big skins." The tough ones were the big ones -- they were very stringy. [NARRATOR]: That summer saw an all-time record harvest -- some 125,000 skins taken. The agents were jubilant, but reluctantly paid the Aleut sealers.

[ANDRONIK KASHEVAROF]: My share from here for my sealing division for, uh, the summer was $45.00. 45 bucks. I made that in 2 weeks as a dishwasher in [?Purse's?] cafe. [VICTOR MALAVANSKY]: Just like slaves, you know. They used us just like slaves. [NARRATOR]: Worse for the men, a deadly epidemic of influenza was sweeping the camps. Their families were suffering. The unceasing toll of disease and death was recorded in official camp logs. [VOICEOVER, AGENT'S LOG]: Thursday, July 8, St. George Evacuation Camp. Every man except the cook, priest, and I have the flu. Monday, July 12. Still having the flu. Friday, July 16, about 5 a.m. Alexandra, the wife of Isidore [?Nesderoff?] died. One man helped build a casket; two men dug a grave. [VLASS SHABOLIN]: My mom had a little Sergei, baby Sergei we call him

and, uh, he was 3 months old when he got double pneumonia. And there is the government nurse there, sent them back home with my mom saying nothing you could do for him. So my mom took him to the midwife's -- she told 'em to keep him warm, but where we lived they only had a 55 gallon drum to, uh, warm up something like a forty-by -80 cannery. My mom and the midwife tried their best to get him healthy, but he couldn't. He just cried and, uh, he died in my mom's arms. And they went and got the priest -- a priest came over and gave a blessing to the child, and next day the carpenters were down at the shop making a little coffin for him. And... and then, uh...

Those are the hardest childhood days we had. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [NARRATOR]: Evacuees from the Pribilofs returned home in the spring of 1944. [UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN]: We were so happy. We were just crying and so happy to be back.

[UNIDENTIFIED MAN]: I had lost my mom the year before, so i was going back with my grandfather, and I remember the great excitement, the anxiousness and expectation. [ANDRONIK KASHEVAROF]: I was only 14, and I was really happy to come back home. [VLASS SHABOLIN]: The first thing we had here after we got back, and my dad went out and got a seal, and then we had seal, uh, seal meat for dinner that evening, which was good - it was home again for all of us. [NARRATOR]: Evacuees from the Aleutians returned home in 1945, nearly a full year after the Japanese had been vanquished from the islands. [MARIA TURNPAUGH]: Well, it was a very happy time, first -- just to get home. We stopped on top of that hill up there, and looked down and saw the church. Our whole life revolved around that church before the war, our whole family. It was just like a dream, I mean, it

was, uh, is this really happening? [NARRATOR]: But home was not as they'd left it. The U.S. military had billeted troops in native homes. Army and Navy inspectors confirmed what was obvious to the eye. [MARIA TURNPAUGH]: Ransacked. Doors and windows broken - it just, was terrible. We had no furniture. The BIA bought a few little pieces of -- wasn't hardly anything at all, just cheapo. And here they were dismantling the base, and they were taking furniture up to the dump -- rugs, beautiful furniture -- and burning them. Burning them. [NARRATOR]: Even their churches had been vandalized. Centuries-old religious icons had been damaged, destroyed, or stolen. [HIS GRACE NIKOLAI, BISHOP OF SITKA, ANCHORAGE, AND ALASKA (ORTHODOX CHURCH IN AMERICA)]: Tragic, just tragic. And what happened here, on our own

continent, in this, in this very place, is a tragedy. [NARRATOR]: After all the Aleuts had endured, this was devastating. [MARIA TURNPAUGH]: It was just a waste of time. We lost so much. [NARRATOR]: Like the patterns woven into the Aleuts' fine, grass baskets, their experiences would be woven into their culture. So too the loss of four Aleutian villages: Attu, Biorka, Makushin, and Kashega. Deciding it would be too costly to repatriate the villagers, U.S. authorities declared their homes off limits -- for ever. [GEORGE GORDAOFF]: I guess you might say I was homeless. I didn't know where to go. My parents were long gone. I had a few cousins, and I -- It was a hard decision, for me. I guess I took,

took a plunger -- whatever you want to call it -- to face the world. [NARRATOR]: The world had changed, and so had the Aleuts. [MARY BOURDUKOFSKY]: Little by little, we -- they, the men start having secret meetings in their homes. They didn't want what they're talking about to leak out to the government. [FLORE LEKANOF]: They learned from being in Juneau, being in the armed forces, and having seen how other people live other places -- they began to realize that they were losing out on a lot of things -- freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of movement -- and I think it was those kinds of freedoms that the Aleut people decided they better do something about. [STEPHEN HAYCOX, PH.D.]: They have to become the agency of their own mattering. In a very real sense, the WWII experience gives them a reference point -- a negative, declined reference point -- from which to step forward. [NARRATOR]: In 1951, Aleuts from the Pribilof

Islands, filed a precedent-setting claim against the United States government for gross mistreatment between the years 1870 and 1946. The Aleut independence movement had begun. [DOROTHY M. JONES]: The Justice Department contacted me to write a report that they needed in response to the Pribilof Aleuts' suit against the government for a hundred years of servitude. What I learned was shocking. I had access to their confidential files that spanned a hundred years in the Federal Archives. I had heard things, but I didn't know the extent of the enslavement and oppression of the Aleut people. The government agents were police, they were investigators -- they acted as prosecutors and judge

and jury. They had totalitarian authority. [FLORE LEKANOF]: I think one of the important things was to be treated as bonafide American citizens. I think that's where the idea of citizenship came up, and the fact that they weren't given any opportunities to vote. And it really went into a blown-up affair when Carl Moses, who was running for the state legislature, came to St. Paul Island, and the agent that was there on the island then wouldn't let him off the airplane. [STATE REP. CARL MOSES]: That was 1964, I was just astounded. Apparently he knew I was coming, because he, he picked me out of the group and came over and told me that I couldn't stay -- I'd have to get back on the plane. It got national attention, the fact that a politician was refused entry into a local precinct. But that was last time that would ever

happen. [NARRATOR]: The Aleuts' lawsuit against the U.S. government was providing a more difficult challenge. [FLORE LEKANOF]: The case took a long time. Although it started back in 1951, it wasn't settled until i think 1978. But even then, the distribution, that was made based on treatment, ill-treatment, and deprivation of civil rights and so forth didn't amount to very much. [STEPHEN HAYCOX, PH.D.]: We have a tendency to forget, although we're reminded now more often than we used to be, that we've never been without a race problem in American history. The change that the Aleut people have made is really quite remarkable. [NARRATOR]: Aleuts were making incredible gains. But the WWII experience continue to haunt them. [ALICE PETRIVELLI]: My oldest daughter, Patricia, was about fifteen years old, and I was telling her about, uh, her Aleut family and et cetera, and I told her that one time the U.S. Navy burnt our

village and evacuated us, and told her about how hard the life was in Killisnoo. She looked at me and says, "Mama -- are you sure?" "It happened?" I said "Yes, it happened." And she says, "But it's not in history books." He didn't believe that it actually happened. We almost lost our culture, it came to a halt. Although it wasn't our fault, it made you feel that you had something to be ashamed of. [JOHN C. KIRTLAND]: The nature of injustice is such that it is not quantified by the numbers of people who are affected, in my view. Injustice is something that happens to individuals. Individuals

suffer injustice, perhaps groups of individuals -- but they are individuals. I think that our, our society recognizes that individuals matter. [NARRATOR]: Attorney John Kirtland took up the Aleuts' cause in 1978. [PREVIOUS FOOTAGE OF LEGAL ARGUMENTS BY JOHN C. KIRTLAND]: "This is vandalism by US forces. So we're recommending that compensation, a lump-sum amount [NARRATOR]: Retained by the Aleutian Pribilof Islands' Association, he would prove an effective ally in a historic campaign to seek reparations from the U.S. government. [LEGAL ARGUMENTS CONTINUE] [JOHN C. KIRTLAND]: We went through literally thousands of documents in scores of boxes just focused on this period -- letters, logs, Western Union telegrams, minutes of meetings -- that

established fundamentally the case for the Aleut people to show the injustices that they had suffered. [NARRATOR]: A decorated military veteran, Kirtland shared the Aleuts' view that America could have done better. [JOHN C. KIRTLAND]: In many ways, there was a humanitarian impulse for the removal of the Aleuts, but there was an abysmal bureaucratic failure in terms of the duty to care for the Aleuts once they have been removed from their homes and relocated to these camps. We don't have, I don't believe, an absolutely accurate enumeration of those who passed away. But we do know that at least 10 percent died while they were in the camps in the government's care. Um, that mortality rate was shocking. [NARRATOR]: Japanese Americans interned during WWII were already lobbying

Congress for reparations. An alliance was formed between the two, affording both groups greater political influence. But the Aleuts, still invisible to their nation, would have to make their own case. [JOHN C. KIRTLAND]: It was completely different from the Japanese-American experience in the internment camps in WWII. There was no question in anyone's mind about the loyalty of the Aleuts. [NARRATOR]: In Washington and across the nation, the attitude was conciliatory. No question WWII had been an epic struggle for good, but Vietnam and Watergate had taught that governments make mistakes. [JOHN C. KIRTLAND]: So, President Carter on July 31, 1980, signed into law a bill which established the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, with two principal mandates -- to consider the claims of the Japanese Americans, and to consider the claims of the

Aleut people. And so, the process began. [NEWS CLIP VOICEOVER]: This is the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather. [DAN RATHER]: Tens of thousands of them were sent to concentration camps... [NARRATOR]: News around the globe focused on the Japanese-American internment. The Aleut story was a mere footnote. But that hardly mattered. For the first time in US history, Aleuts had a place on the nation's political agenda. [DAN RATHER]: Now some forty years after the fact, a federal commission is investigating that dark chapter in the nation's past to seek appropriate remedies. [ARTHUR J. GOLDBERG]: Today we open our hearings, first with concern about the Aleuts. [JOHN C. KIRTLAND]: One of the real leaders in this cause was Philemon Tutiakoff. He was a wonderful little man, and yet he was a towering giant of a person.

He was effective, he was articulate, and he spoke from the heart. We had compelling Aleut witnesses that appeared before this very distinguished commission. [ALEUT TESTIMONY TRANSLATOR]: Food was hard to come by all during the time we were there. And, uh, Mr. "?Sisikoff?" says 'I don't know how I made it.' [JOHN C. KIRTLAND]: And we had the depositions of scores of more of them. And all of this effort, caused the Commission to recommend back to the Congress -- to recommend back to the Congress -- restitution for both the Aleuts and the Japanese Americans. [NARRATOR]: The Commission concluded that the United States had failed its citizens. The government's failure to care was directly responsible for widespread disease and death in the camps, and the loss of community and personal property in the Aleuts' villages. The government had as a

matter of simple convenience, limited the Aleuts' personal freedoms, treating them as a herd of animals. [ANGUS MACBETH, SPECIAL COUNSEL]: I think that one thing you, one takes away from this is it's very important to respect the dignity of individuals and to give people the, the authority to be in charge of their own lives. And I think, I hope, that is a core value of this country. And that, that made what happened in the Second World War to both these groups of individuals important to remember and to learn from. [NARRATOR]: In the camps, Aleuts' protests had fallen on deaf ears. The Commission's report gave them a voice, and Alaska's lawmakers, closely aligned with Japanese-American leaders, would provide the political muscle for the coming debate on Capitol Hill. [US SEN. TED STEVENS]: No one other than the Japanese or Alaska natives were actually taken from their lives and interned and treated as though they were

aliens. Other Americans who were moved out of harm's way were not interned. But they were. They were put on islands, they had no ability to leave, they had no ability to work, and they were really, totally left in isolation during the period of war, so I thought they should be compensated, as well as those who were interned as Japanese. We were seeking just simple justice, that's all. [NARRATOR]: Between 1983 and 1988 seven different redress measures were introduced in Congress. [FOOTAGE FROM CONGRESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS??] [US REP. DON YOUNG]: My father instilled in me the injustice of what we did to the Japanese, and I'd extend it to the Aleuts. [FOOTAGE FROM CONGRESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS, REP. DON YOUNG]: They were actually used as slave labor. by the United States government. [US REP. DON YOUNG]: It was this very emotional thing for me because it's probably one of the unjust things that have happened during our civilization. [REP. PETER W. RODINO, JR.]: Mr. Chairman, today as we celebrate the signing of our

Constitution 200 years ago, we have an opportunity to reaffirm that this great document of human liberty applies to all Americans. [BARNEY FRANK]: We are going to admit that we made a mistake, and i think it is part of a great nation to be able to admit that we made a mistake. [US SEN.TED STEVENS]: Governments do things wrong. And only democracies have the ability to right those wrongs. [NARRATOR]: On August 10, 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed public law 100-383. The long battle for redress, had been won. [JOHN C. KIRTLAND]: This was truly a tremendous achievement. The new law provided for a five million dollar trust fund for the benefit of the villagers who had been returned and their descendants. It also provided 1.4 million dollars for restoration of church properties, 15 million dollars for the loss of Attu Island, and individual payments of twelve thousand dollars to those Aleuts who

had survived the camps and were still alive at the time the public law became effective. [PRES. RONALD REAGAN]: Thank you all again and God bless you all. I think this is a fine day. [JOHN C. KIRTLAND]: No amount of money can restore priceless icons that were lost from the churches, or the loss of a loved one due to neglect and disease. No amount of money can, can compensate for the loss of a traditional village site on, on Attu, but it's necessary sometimes, to compensate a people for injustices by helping the next generation and the generation thereafter -- generations that have been set back by the losses. We have to remember that our country is going to suffer calamities,

threats, attacks by foreign enemies. But in the course of these events, we must ensure that the liberties of our individual citizens are not shunted aside in some misguided effort to protect the greater good. The experience of the Aleuts is significant. It's just a few people. It's just a few people. But many of their fundamental rights were ignored or shunted aside in the course of WWII, and we cannot allow the same thing to happen to others today. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [VLASS SHABOLIN]: When we got back from Funter Bay, my mom used to be so quiet. She'd come here and sit in this chair I'm

sitting in now, and then looking out and looking at the cemetery. So one day I asked her, "Mom, you're so quiet because you're missing Grandma, huh. You look at that cemetery every day." And she said, "Yeah." And I said, "Well, maybe some day, some years, we'll go back and visit Grandma again and Baby Sergei and Uncle (?Vlass Pankoff?) and the rest of the people we left behind." [NARRATOR]: After nearly sixty years, that day has come. A distance of some 1500 miles separates the Aleutian and Pribilof islands from Funter Bay. But the distance this group will travel is more rightly measured in memories than miles. [FLORE LEKANOF]: But I was a young man, you know, I was only 15 years old when we came here. It was tough. The mountain that you see in the background there, several of us went up to the top of that mountain and stayed overnight to hunt for deer.

And we came back with six deer, and fed the people with venison stew. That was great, I mean I enjoyed that very much. It was an experience of my life. [GROUP SINGING] [NARRATOR]: Returning is hard. But a lifetime of achievements have given them insight. Individuals are not defined by what is done to them, but rather by the choices they make. Jake became a 2-star general in the US Army, one of only a few Native Americans to achieve that rank. [FLORE LEKANOF]: Like to welcome you to Funter Bay, General Jake -- yes, sir -- you'll be here for two years now. [NARRATOR]: Flore became an

influential business and political leader. Mary is widely respected as a keeper of Aleut traditions. And Vlass served in the US Marine Corps, and then the Alaska State Troopers. Peter Bourdukofsky, the third child of Mary and George Bourdukofsky, was born at the camp. Most of the old cannery has rotted away. What remains are memories. [MARY BOURDUKOFSKY]: This is the cabin of my friend George and (?senior Rustivistikof?) used to stay. See, he used to have candy. They're from Imperial Candy Company, Seattle USA. And she said her husband went to Juneau for medical reason and brought this big can of hard candies for her and her children. So this brings me a lot of memories, yes. [speaking foreign language] [speaking foreign language]

[speaking foreign language] [speaking foreign language] [speaking foreign language] [MARY BOURDUKOFSKY]: I'm looking for my father-in-law's grave, his name is Peter Bourdukofsky. [VLASS SHABOLIN]: No Vlass Pankoff either. Some place around here. [MARY BOURDUKOFSKY]: Brought some flowers for him. Peter Bourdukofsky -- oh he's right over there. [FLORE LEKANOF]: Oh this is in memory of my grandmother (?Pelegay?) Lekanof. She died here summer of 1943. There we go. [UNIDENTIFIED PRIEST CHANTING]: (?unclear?)... the holy garden (?unclear?) (?unclear?) of the Holy God (?unclear) Father of all the saints establish the souls of the Servants of God, all those who lost their life during the World War II encampment who have been taken from us in the (?paths?) of righteous, give them rest, and Abraham, Moses, number them among the just, have mercy on us for as much as he has (?loveth?) mankind.

[ALL SINGING] Amen. [ALL SINGING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE] [Scrubbing] [VLASS SHABOLIN]: Just sixty years, I'm finally gettin to clean this stone. Great-grandma, this woman here. (?unclear?) She passed on after she broke her leg on one of those plank roads we have here -- plank walkways. I can, uh now say that "Why?" was the biggest question, as we got here the first time. I know why now, I mean...oh, that's a little better, isn't it. [MUSIC] [UNIDENTIFIED MAN]: WWII was a traumatic experience for

Aleut people. They have lived with that experience and those memories for a long time, and now it's time to rebuild, and replace some of those things that were lost. [NARRATOR]: Today, six Russian Orthodox churches in the Aleutian and Pribilof islands are being carefully rebuilt. [RADIO ANNOUNCER]: You're tuned in to listener-supported KUHB St. Paul 91.9 FM. It's time for the Pribilof Postcard for Friday, June 9, 2000. The Russian Orthodox church is being restored this summer. If you can help remove and store the church icon, or... [UNIDENTIFIED CRAFTSMAN]: This is my first restoration project. I've never done anything like this before. You've got to put a lot of heart and effort into your work, since this is the church that most everybody in the community comes here to pray, so, I mean, it's gotta be a good job.

[UNIDENTIFIED MAN]: Symbolically, the, uh... the last nail in St. Paul's Church closes the World War II chapter of the Aleut history. [AQUALINA LESTENKOF]: My father and my grandfather and people of that generation, their history has given us energy that we could use for our time, but at the same time, we can't carry some of the burdens of it with us. We didn't go through the internment, we are not slaves of the harvest, those days are gone. [ELDERLY MAN]: Oh the Lord our God, hearken to the prayer, which are now addressed unto thee, and bless this cross. [AQUALINA LESTENKOF]: We have an opportunity to restore ourselves and our purpose here. [NARRATOR]: Much more than a physical act, the historic restoration of these churches

symbolizes the resurrection of a people. [MUSIC] [UNIDENTIFIED MAN]: Restoring the spirit, restoring the soul, restoring the culture of the Aleut people and will go on forever. [MUSIC] [SINGING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE]

[SINGING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE] [SINGING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE] [SINGING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE] [SINGING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE] [SINGING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC]

[MUSIC] [VOICEOVER]: This program was funded in part by the Aleutian Pribilofs Islands Restitution Trust, the Rasmussen Foundation, The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, and by [contributor images appear on two screens] [CLOSING BRIEF THEME MUSIC]