Aleut American World War II Removal Memorial

During World War II, after Japan invaded the Aleutian Islands, the United States government removed Aleut Americans from their homes and sent them to isolated internment camps in Southeast Alaska. Between June 1942 and August 1945, Aleuts were confined in camps where abysmal conditions and government neglect led to disease and death, and ten percent of the men, women and children died. While Aleuts prayed for deliverance, Allied friendly forces sent to defend the Aleutian and Pribilof islands looted their homes and churches. The Aleuts were suspected of nothing, accused of nothing, and their loyalty to the U.S. was never in question. Decades later, a special commission determined that federal officials had, as a matter of simple convenience, limited Aleuts freedoms, concluding that the many who died in the camps were a huge loss and that America thereby lost a distinctive part of itself.

Juneau, Alaska · United States