One Year: 1942 | 5. When Internment Came to Alaska

Slow Burn

Slate Podcasts

News, Society & Culture, History, Documentary, Politics

4.6 • 25.1K Ratings

🗓️ 17 November 2022

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Six months after Pearl Harbor, Japan launched another attack on the United States. This time, Axis forces actually invaded, turning the Aleutian Islands into a battleground. What the country did next, in the name of “protecting” Alaska’s indigenous people, is a shameful chapter of the war. And it’s one the nation has never fully reckoned with. This episode of One Year was produced by Evan Chung, Sophie Summergrad, Sam Kim, Sol Werthan, and Josh Levin. Derek John is senior supervising producer of narrative podcasts and Merritt Jacob is senior technical director. Slate Plus members get to hear more about the making of One Year. Get access to extra episodes, listen to the show without any ads, and support One Year by signing up for Slate Plus for just $15 for your first three months. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Gertrude Savarni was raised on the Aleutian Islands off the Alaskan mainland.
0:06.0	She's still there today, in the tiny city of Unalaska.
0:09.7	She lives in the house her parents bought in 1934.
0:13.0	That's a long time ago.
0:15.0	Back then we were very busy, subsisting,
0:20.0	gathering berries, digging clams, fishing.
0:23.0	I had a very happy childhood.
0:25.0	Gert is 92 now.
0:27.0	When she was growing up back in the 30s,
0:30.0	there were just 300 people in Analaska.
0:32.0	About half were white, including Gert. There were just 300 people in on Alaska.
0:32.8	About half were white, including Gert's father.
0:36.5	The other half were Native Alaskans,
0:39.1	the people known as the Ununga.
0:41.2	Gert's mother was Ununga. My mom always talked to us about our culture and the way we lived and she taught us quite a bit about surviving out here.
0:50.3	Survival in remote on Alaska meant knowing how to cure fish and how to make it through the
0:56.1	winters. And actually it's not that cold here. Our problem was the wind and the storms.
1:02.0	The day Gert and I spoke was the wind and the storms.
1:08.1	The day Gert and I spoke, the wind was gusting outside her house at 60 miles per hour.
1:14.4	The Unungak have persevered through those kinds of harsh conditions for thousands of years. But on the morning of June 3rd, 1942, survival meant something very different.
1:20.8	I woke up and I heard all this yelling and shouting out in the kitchen and my mother come in and she says get your clothes on get the kids dressed
1:30.3	We're being attacked. We've got to get out of here.
	...

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