Category: Military

Commemorating 76 years.

WWII MemorialJune 3, 1942 was the third event in the modern history of the Unangax of the Aleutian Islands that indelibly changed our pathway.  The first, in 1741, was contact with the Russian fur procurers which resulted in a near genocide.  The second, occurring in 1867, was the purchase of Alaska by the United States, known for years as a folly.  This event that sold the indigenous peoples of Alaska and the land for $7.2 Million put the Unangax people into the assimilation machine that forced Natives to stop speaking their language,  eating native foods, practicing native religions, and associating with other natives, and being forced into speaking only English.  Only then could they be considered civilized.  Only then could a native who came close to this interpretation of civilized life become an American citizen.  The third event, the invasion of the Aleutian Islands by the Japanese Imperial Army, led to the forced evacuation of all of the Unangax from the Aleutian and Pribilof Islands to abandoned mines and fish caneries in southeast Alaska, absolutely stripping them of their civil and personal liberties.  Their return, in late 1945, over three years from departure, brought them back having lost 10 to 15 percent of their population to death and back to homes and churches that had been vandilized and/or burned by the military that was supposed to protect them.

So we honor our lost villages, our lost people, our disappearing language and culture as we also honor those who gave their lives and youth to our fog-enshrouded islands in the protection of the United States.  We have mitigated our anger and dispair and have come, once again, to accept our past as a way of growing and becoming strong so that we can reclaim those parts of our culture that swim at the edge of the abyss.   Our mantra is, and always will be, adaptation.

Justifications.

Rommel Stake Float 10I love a parade.  Small town parades are the best.  They are full of heart and soul.

Military parades in Washington DC are not unprecedented.  But, in my humble opinion, they really are not a very good idea.  This, coming from an Army brat.  First and foremost, previous military parades have been held to celebrate military victories or when danger was imminent.   The parades were not just an exercise in stroking egos.

According to sources like the Washington Post, the NY Times, and the federal budget, the last military parade in Washington DC was in June of 1991 and celebrated the liberation of Kuwait and the defeat of Hussein’s army in Desert Storm when George HW was President.  It deployed 8,800 enlisted soldiers watched by nearly a million Americans who showed up for the spectacle.  There were tanks, fighting vehicles, missile launchers, fighter jets, and fireworks.  The pavement on Constitution Avenue was deeply rutted by the 67-ton tanks.  The parade generated over a million pounds of garbage, cost over $12 million and left an egregious impact on public and private assets.  Like the Mar a Lago trips, we can’t afford a parade if we can’t solve the problem of our homeless veterans.

Blink

Goosevia Daily Prompt: Blink

I was sitting with my mother this past summer during an early evening in June.  My husband was discussing some of the finer points of the agenda for the 75-year Commemoration of the bombing of Dutch Harbor and the evacuation of the Unangan people.  Events were to include a memorial ceremony, historical presentations, personal stories, many luncheons and dinners, and flyovers by historical aircraft.  The commemoration of a little-recognized part of history is significant and educational not only for those connected to World War II in the Aleutians, but for a much broader international public.  My mother, who was 87 1/2 in June, had been 12 years old when the events of WWII enveloped the islands that she called home and changed her life forever.

On the morning of June 3, 1942 and continuing June 4, Japanese planes rained bombs on her home town of Unalaska and the Navy and Army infrastructure that had been constructed for the protection of Alaska and the lower 48 states.  Within a month, her family was split apart as older siblings joined the military or, in the case of her two older sisters who had married servicemen, were evacuated to their husbands’ families in the lower 48.  She, three of her siblings and her mother were forcibly evacuated to an abandoned fish cannery in Southeast Alaska.  Her father, not being native, was not allowed to accompany them.  They were not allowed to return to their home until late in 1945.  Although the war ended, and things were supposed to return to normal, nothing was ever normal again.  Families were smaller, having suffered the loss of 10 percent of their population in the detention camp.  Economies were changed as industries that had been in place prior to the war had disappeared.  Many Unangan homes had been ransacked by the military personnel and were unfit for habitation.  The trust that they had in their government was badly damaged.  My mother’s family was never, ever all together again after July of 1942.

So, a 75th year commemoration was a pretty important event in the life of my mother.  It would mark a time when she knew that it most likely would be the last time she would see any of her friends who might come back for the commemoration.  Only a handful of original evacuees remain living in Unalaska, so she was looking forward to seeing her now distant friends.

As she sat in the living room of the home in which she grew up, a drone of engines, starting out faintly, grew louder and louder, soon passing directly over the house.  She turned toward us and in a surprised voice said, “The Japanese.”  In the blink of an eye, with the sound of the plane engines, she was transported back to what was, most certainly, a hellish part of her life.