Death of last surviving Alaskan taken by Japan during WWII rekindles memories of forgotten battle

ANKERAGE, Alaska — Gregory Golodoff spent most of his years on a quiet island in Alaska, where he lived an ordinary life, running a cooperative store, fishing for crab and serving as chairman of the village council. But Golodoff's recent death at age 84 has reopened a chapter in American history, bringing back memories of a long-forgotten Japanese invasion that sparked the only World War II battle on North American soil.

Golodoff was the last survivor among 41 residents captured in Japan after Japanese forces captured the remote island of Attu during World War II. He was three when the island was captured. He died Nov. 17 in Anchorage, his family said. His sister, Elizabeth “Liz” Golodoff Kudrin, the second-to-last surviving Attuan, died in February at the age of 82. Three of their siblings died in captivity.

“The oldest generation has died on the other side,” says Helena Schmitz, the great-granddaughter of the last Attu chief, who died with his son in Japan.

Attu is a desolate, mountainous tundra shelf, approximately 20 miles (32 kilometers) wide and 35 miles (56 kilometers) long, located between the North Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea on the volcanic Ring of Fire. It is the westernmost island in the Aleutian chain — closer to Russia than mainland Alaska — and was one of the few U.S. territories, along with Guam, the Philippines and nearby Kiska Island, to be captured by enemy forces during the war.

The American attempt to reclaim Attu in 1943 amid freezing rain, dense fog and hurricane winds became known as the “forgotten battle” of World War II. About 2,500 Japanese soldiers died, many in hand-to-hand combat or by suicide; 28 survived. About 550 American soldiers were killed. Initially trained and equipped to fight in the North African desert, many suffered from frostbite and exposure due to inadequate equipment.

Even after the surviving prisoners were released at the end of the war, they were not allowed to return to Attu because the US military decided it would be too expensive to rebuild the community. Most were sent to the island of Atka, about 200 miles (322 kilometers) away.

With the loss of their homeland, the Attuans' language, Sakinam Tunuu, has all but disappeared and is only spoken by members of Schmitz's immediate family. The island's signature basket weaving style is practiced by only three or four weavers, and not all of them are of Attuan descent. Schmitz runs a nonprofit organization called Atux Forever to revive cultural heritage.

Much of what is known about the Alaska Natives' time in Japan is captured in the book “Attu Boy,” written by Golodoff's older brother Nick, with help from his editor, Rachel Mason, a cultural anthropologist with the National Park Service in Anchorage . .

Mason knew the three siblings. Gregory and Liz had few memories of Attu or Japan, and neither liked to talk about them, she said.

Nick Golodoff, who was 6 when he was captured, had a childlike innocence about his time as a prisoner, Mason noted. The cover of his book featured a photo of him riding on the back of a Japanese soldier, both smiling.

That experience was far from typical. Of the Attu residents interned in Japan, 22 died of malnutrition, starvation or tuberculosis. Schmitz's great-grandfather, Mike Hodikoff, died along with his son from food poisoning from eating rotten garbage while in Japanese captivity, the book said.

Japanese soldiers landed on Attu Island on June 7, 1942, as residents attended services at the Russian Orthodox Church. Some ran for their guns, but Hodikoff told them, “Don't shoot, maybe the Americans can still save us,” according to the book.

Instead, the village radio operator, Charles Foster Jones, was shot and killed before he could alert authorities, becoming the only American citizen killed by the invading forces in North America, according to a tribute to Jones by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The other residents – all Alaska natives except for Jones' wife, a white New Jersey teacher named Etta Jones – were held captive in their homes for three months before being told to pack up and take with them what they could for the trip to Japan.

They went first to Kiska, another island in Alaska; one resident of Attu died en route. Crammed into the cargo hold of a ship, the others embarked on a two-week journey to Sapporo, the largest city on Japan's Hokkaido island, where they were housed in four rooms in an abandoned dormitory. Only Etta Jones was separated from them and taken in another boat to an internment center in Yokohama, south of Tokyo.

A Japanese guard complained that the Attuans ate better than the Japanese, but conditions worsened when the Alaskans ran out of food they had brought with them.

The Golodoffs' mother, Olean, and others were forced to work long hours in a clay mine. As their numbers dwindled, she also became the cook for the surviving POWs, although there was little to be earned. She was limited to collecting orange peels from the street and cooking them on a stove, said George Kudrin, who married Olean's daughter Liz in Atka after returning from the Vietnam War.

“I fed them to my children, and only then did they stop crying for a while,” Olean once told an interviewer.

Her husband, Lawrence, and three of their seven children died in Japan. Nick Golodoff lived until 2013. Another son who survived captivity, John, died in 2009.

Kudrin said Olean did not talk about her experiences in Japan, and that his wife, Liz, was too young to remember anything.

“She always knew she was part of the history of World War II and she always said, 'I am a survivor along with my mother,'” he said.

American forces recaptured Attu on May 30, 1943, after a brutal 19-day campaign. Much of the fighting was fought in dense fog and with winds of up to 193 km per hour. Today part of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge, Attu Island is best known as one of the top destinations in North America for bird watching groups, especially those from Asia.

Pauline, Greg Golodoff's 50-year-old wife, said he never talked to her about his experiences in Japan or about being the last living resident of Attu.

“I tried to ask him, but he didn't want to talk about it,” she said.