“Alaska Native Resilience: Voices from World War II”
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By Holly Miowak Guise; University of Washington Press, 2024; 279 pages; $30.
Alaska’s Natives played significant roles in World War II, in the United States military and in protecting Alaska during and after attacks by Japanese forces. Additionally, residents of the Aleutian and Pribilof Islands were evacuated to Southeast Alaska and held in camps there, and those from Attu Island were captured by the Japanese. Native lives throughout the state were disrupted by the war and the changes it brought to the land and society. The story, though, is more complex than we may have thought.
Holly Miowak Guise, Inupiaq with family from Unalakleet, is a historian who currently teaches at the University of New Mexico. As an undergrad in 2008, Guise began collecting oral histories related to the war in Alaska; she continued this work in graduate school and beyond. An appendix to “Alaska Native Resilience” charts a timeline of her extensive research travels around the state from 2008 to 2022, during which she met with Native elders and their families. Over the years she also worked with tribal organizations, community leaders, libraries and museums, and informal Native networks to collect individual stories and build her understanding of how the war influenced Alaska’s Natives and sovereignty issues.
In her analysis, Guise relies upon the concept of “equilibrium restoration” to refer to “actions taken consciously by Indigenous Alaskan women and men during World War II to restore an Indigenous order that disrupts colonial actors, thereby thwarting colonial efforts of complete control.” As she states elsewhere, “equilibrium” suggests a stable and balanced condition, and “restoration” emphasizes a positive rebuild. “An analysis of Alaskan Native history during World War II shows that Indigenous peoples indeed shaped colonial structures, finding ways to maintain Indigenous spaces while retaining Indigenous sovereignty.” Wartime resistance (not to the war but to what the war brought as loss, suffering, and disruption), Guise argues, resulted in Indigenous defiance and resiliency.
While the book’s subtitle, “Voices from World War II,” suggests that the content would largely be drawn from oral histories and interviews, actual voices are few, mostly expressed with short quotations to support Guise’s own scholarship. The primary value of the book lies not with individual stories but in the placement of Alaska’s Indigenous experience within a larger context of Native American history and colonial experience, which Guise generously references. The academic content and tone, with limited appeal to general readers, will instead advance the study of Alaska Native and Native American relationships with the United States government and our histories of land takings, discrimination, and social patterns.
During the years of Guise’s research, Alaska Natives who served in or lived through World War II were elderly if not already passed, and Guise is to be commended for her efforts to talk with them while she still could. Her familial connections with many and her apparent openness to listening and sharing encouraged trust and intimacy.
The six chapters are organized around the relocation of Unangax from the Aleutians and Pribilofs and their subsequent treatment, the ways in which Natives from across the state supported one another, the war in the Aleutians, the Alaska Territorial Guard, discrimination and assimilation, and gender segregation and violence.
The story of the forced removal of Unangax to abandoned canneries in Southeast Alaska has been well-told elsewhere and is probably not new information for most Alaskans. Details, though, about how Southeast Natives brought food, clothing, and supplies to the camps to relieve suffering, and that some of the Unangax were welcomed to work or even relocate to neighboring communities will be newer — and welcome examples of inter-tribal support and resilience.
The Japanese invasion of Attu and Kiska has also been well-told elsewhere, but the particular roles of Alaska Natives in the war are less known and less appreciated. The skills of Unangax men in knowing the land and waters were essential to the war effort, as were the skills of Native women who contracted with the military to sew clothing and boots suitable for cold and wet conditions.
The Alaska Territorial Guard “was chosen, designed, and implemented by and for Indigenous Alaskan communities during the war.” Six thousand Alaskans, mostly Natives, joined during the war years to patrol the coast, with duties that included evacuating civilians from danger zones, providing transportation over mountains and along rivers, caching food, and watching for Japanese planes and invaders. Although the ATG was disbanded in 1946, it was followed by the Alaska National Guard, which remains very active today, with a high number of Native enlistees. Patriotic Alaska Natives since World War II have served in the U.S. military at the highest rate in the country.
There were, throughout the war, many instances of discrimination against Alaska Natives. Guise refers to this as “frozen Jim Crow,” equating the north’s discrimination to practices from the American South. Indeed, many military leaders and enlisted men came from southern states where Blacks were actively prevented from accessing places and services, and they carried their attitudes to Alaska. Guise examines the roles of Native youths who resisted segregated seating in theatres; she also covers the work of Elizabeth Peratrovich and adoption of the 1945 Alaska Equal Rights Act. She provides examples of Alaska Native women who found their ways around prohibitions of dating or marrying military men, even as they also faced gender discrimination and sexual abuse.
Our American history needs continual revisiting and reevaluation, and Holly Miowak Guise has made an important contribution. She’s shown that Alaska Natives, far from being passive participants in a war brought to them, actively protected their lands and cultures — leading to strengthened tribal connections and greater equality.
Guise also maintains a website, ww2alaska.com, which includes a wealth of audio and video recordings of her interviewees. This accessible archive is a treasure all its own, bringing to life voices, faces and personalities along with their stories.
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