Forced To Leave: The Detention of Alaskan Japanese Americans and Aleuts During World War II

Forced To Leave looks at the civilian impact of the WW II military campaign in Alaska. Under the circumstances of war, two groups of Alaskans experienced those years under particular duress: the Alaskan Japanese Americans and the Aleuts.

When the Japanese bombed Dutch Harbor, the fate of the indigenous peoples in the region was uncertain. The Japanese captured 41 Aleuts in Attu and removed them to Otaru in Hokkaido for the duration of the war. Fearing a similar fate for the indigenous residents of the other Aleutian and Pribilof Islands, 881 Aleuts were removed from their homes and placed in minimally-provisioned remote camps in Southeast Alaska for the duration of the War.

Feared because of the possibility of collaborating with the enemy, Alaska's small number of Japanese aliens, barred from citizenship by the alien laws of the period, and their Alaskan-born children were evacuated to the lower-48 and treated as were the other Japanese-Americans evacuated from the West Coast states and interned in remote camps.