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History See other History Articles Title: World War II Internment Of Alaskan Aleuts Recounted In Film Documentary Saturday, December 10, 2005 6:21 PM CST ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - Mary Bourdukofsky, an Alaska Native, was at home on rugged St. Paul Island one Sunday in the summer of 1942 when her husband rushed breathlessly through the door from his weekly baseball game. The federal government was in the process of forcing 881 Aleuts to move from their homes on the Pribilof and Aleutian Islands in the Bering Sea to dank wartime internment camps in the rain forest of Southeast Alaska 1,500 miles away. “He came running in and said, ‘They've stopped the ball game. They've come to evacuate us,'” Bourdukofsky said. A new documentary film, “Aleut Story,” recounts the little-known internment of Aleuts during World War II. Many in the film speak publicly for the first time about their experiences in the camps, where they were sent after troops from Japan invaded Alaska's western outposts in June 1942. Aleuts were not suspected of spying or sabotage, as were tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans interned after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941. However, they were not allowed to leave the camps unless they were drafted into the military or coerced into working the Pribilof fur seal hunt, which brought millions of dollars to the U.S. government. “My mother, when she was living, she used to start crying, so we wouldn't talk about” the internment, Bourdukofsky told The Associated Press. Bourdukofsky, now 82, was a young mother of two during the evacuation. Many Aleuts were thankful to be ferried out of the war zone - until they arrived at five overcrowded, disease-ridden sites scattered throughout damp spruce rain forests. “There was a lot of sickness at the camp,” said Jake Lestenkof, 73, who was 11 years old when his mother died of pneumonia at a camp at Funter Bay. “There was a lot of pneumonia and tuberculosis ... . There were certainly no medical facilities or personnel.” Sanitation and pipe systems were never installed. Residents drank water tainted with sewage and - at one camp - runoff from the expanding cemetery. One in 10 people died in the camps from 1942 to 1945, according to federal estimates cited in the film. “It was terrible,” said Maria Turnpaugh, 78. “We lived in little shacks full of holes and no running water. People got sick all the time.” The film includes letters from officials who thought internment would protect Aleuts from the fighting in Alaska's distant western islands. “No one knew what to do with the Aleuts. They wanted to keep them under control of government agents,” said Dorothy Jones, who researched the Aleut case for the Justice Department during lawsuits in the late 1970s. Families returned to the Aleutians and Pribilofs in 1944 and 1945 to find their homes and Russian Orthodox churches looted by U.S. soldiers and rotting from years of neglect in the wind, rain and salt air. “My grandmother's house, she had a lot of old things up in her attic, lots of Russian antiques,” said Turnpaugh of her family's return to Unalaska. “There was nothing left.” Aleuts joined Japanese-Americans in the 1950s through the 1980s in lawsuits seeking federal restitution for loss of property and civil liberties during internment. In 1987, Congress approved reparations of $12,000 each to interned individuals who were still living; $1.4 million for damaged homes and churches; a $5 million trust for evacuees and descendants and $15 million to the Aleut Native corporation. Restitution money partially funded “Aleut Story,” which was nominated for best documentary honors this year at the American Indian Film Festival. The film is airing on public television stations across the country and was shown Dec. 4 at the Anchorage International Film Festival. Many internment survivors saw the film in screenings in Anghorage or at home with younger family members. Turnpaugh watched “Aleut Story” on public TV by herself at the Senior Center in Unalaska, about halfway down the Aleutian chain. “I watched it alone and I'm glad I watched it alone,” Turnpaugh said. “I cried. To me, it was letting it all out.” On the Net: Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 1.
#1. To: Brian S (#0)
I had no idea - thanks for the information.
There are no replies to Comment # 1. End Trace Mode for Comment # 1.
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