Indian New Deal, Tribal Termination, and Urban Relocation 1934-1967

1942

Aleut Alaska Natives put in internment camps

A village on Attu Island, Aleutian Islands. Image: University of Alaska Fairbanks
A village on Attu Island, Aleutian Islands. Image: University of Alaska Fairbanks

More than 880 Aleuts and their families are forcibly relocated and transported to internment camps in southeast Alaska, more than 1,500 miles from their homeland. The Aleut are held there against their will throughout the war. Aleuts are put on crowded boats with no instruction as to where they are headed. The military set fire to their villages. Nine villages across six islands are relocated to an abandoned cannery and gold mine camp with squalid conditions. Pneumonia and life-threatening illnesses such as tuberculosis take hold; 1 in 10 die (Native Voices, "1942: Unangan evacuated, interned during WWII").(https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/us-forcibly-detained-native-alaskans-during-world-war-ii-180962239/#Kk2gcGcBfDs9RpAP.99)

Settler Colonial Policy