ATTU ISLAND, Alaska -- A U.S. military plane flew flowers from the emperor of Japan to Attu Island where officials gathered Tuesday to honor the American and Japanese soldiers who waged a bloody World War II battle there.
An Alaska National Guard C-130 cargo plane bound for Attu -- the westernmost place in the United States, at the end of the Aleutian Island chain some 1,600 miles southwest of Anchorage -- took various American and Japanese officials to the site where the former enemies did fierce battle 44 years ago.
A 19-foot Attu Peace Memorial now rises from the tundra where Japanese and American soldiers engaged in hand-to-hand combat for 19 days from May 12 until May 30, 1943. The monument, sponsored by the Japanese government, with inscriptions in English and Japanese, is dedicated to all those who lost their lives in the North Pacific in the war.
Lt. Mike Haller, a National Guard spokesman, noted the irony of an Americam military plane being used first to ferry Japanese workers out to Attu to construct the monument last week, and then to take out a handful of Japanese government officials to dedicate the monument to peace.
But Perescovia Wright, one of 40 Aleuts who lived on Attu and was taken prisoner by the invading Japanese forces in 1942, said the peace ceremony being held on her former island home was not an occasion for celebration.
'It's not fair,' she said. 'It (Attu Island) belongs to the native people.'
Nothing remains of Chichagof, the Attu native village bombed out of existence in the war, but battle debris remains, scattered across the landscape below Attu's snowy peaks.
Attu is part of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge, and its only residents are 24 Coast Guardsmen.
Wright, 62, now an Anchorage resident who still limps slightly from the broken hip she suffered as a Japanese POW, said of her former captors, 'I don't hate them for what they have done. I forgive them.'
When Wright returned once in 1973 to visit Attu, she said, 'All I could see was sadness.'
About half the Aleuts taken prisoner died in Japan. Most of the survivors were resettled on another Aleutian island. During the war, U.S. forces uprooted the other Aleuts from their homes, forcibly relocating them elsewhere in Alaska. For this treatment, the Aleuts still are seeking compensation from Congress.
During the monument ceremony, Japan recalled the tragedy of Attu. Of 2,665 Japanese soldiers who invaded Attu and held it for 11 months, only 27 survived.
Some 550 American soldiers died fighting on Attu, but more than 3,000 others were wounded or suffered frostbite, exposure and other ailments on the cold, wind-whipped island.
After the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan bombed Dutch Harbor, in the eastern Aleutians, and also invaded Kiska Island.
Japan discovered that its initial plan to divert American attention to the far north could be put to better use by building air bases in the Aleutians in an intensification of the Pacific War -- which turned against Japan when they lost the battle of Midway.
