Aleutian Internment and the Battle for Alaska

Aleutian American woman and children prepare to leave Dutch Harbor, Alaska for internment camps in 1942. Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.

Many people are familiar with the topic of wartime Japanese American confinement on the Home Front that is featured in The National WWII Museum’s special exhibit, From Barbed Wire to Battlefields: Japanese American Experiences in WWII.  Yet very few people think of the frozen islands of the Aleutians as a place of evacuation and battle. From June 1942 until August 1943, the Alaskan islands of Attu and Kiska were the site of fighting between the Allies and the Japanese, as well as the location of governmental round-ups of Native Alaskans who were then sent to camps in the Alaskan interior. Why were these people evacuated and why has it taken so long for their story to be told? How is their experience of confinement similar to and different from that of Japanese Americans on the U.S. mainland?

To learn more about this fascinating history, join K-12 Curriculum Coordinator Megan Byrnes at noon on Wednesday, August 6th, for the Lunchbox Lecture, “A Forgotten History: The Internment of Alaska Natives During World War II.”