Attu - The island where you can see tomorrow
PROJECT: RUIN LANDSCAPES
‘Chichagof Harbor under attack during the Allied liberation of Attu’. 5th May 1943. Image source here.
Attu is the largest island in the Aleutian Near Islands group, Alaska. At nearly 1,100 miles from the Alaskan coast, it’s also the westernmost piece of American territory. This lonely and remote outreach, around 20 x 35 miles in size, is also situated on the peripherals of its time zone - its latitude is very close to the 180 degree date line, and so the line was drawn very slightly curved to the west around the island, meaning that if you stand on Attu and look westward, you in theory ‘see tomorrow’.
Attu has some of the worst weather of the group, experiencing very high winds and mostly rainy and foggy days throughout the year, with rain falling as snow on its peaks (the highest being 2,946 feet). Formed volcanically, Attu is a rocky and exposed artic landscape. Almost no trees grow and there is a two- to three-f00t deep spongy tundra covering much of the slopes and hills, with dangerous boggy areas where volcanic ash and water make mud the consistency of slime. These conditions make Attu a very harsh place. Despite this, every year many now visit Attu to see rare birds found no-where else in Northern America, paying up-to $10,000 per person to travel there and add as many sightings as possible to their count.
But remains of warfare are still scattered across the landscape. In 1942, the native inhabitants of Attu began seeing mysterious figures in the hills which they thought were ghosts. In fact they were Japanese military personnel, mapping the island in preparation for their invasion on June 7th 1942. That day, a force of 1,140 infantry took control of the island and the whole of Attu’s population - 45 Aleuts and two white Americans (a husband and wife) - were now prisoners. We cannot know the exact objectives of this attack, but it is possible Japan wished to push through the Aleutians and Alaska as part of a route to invade North America, or wished to create a barrier between Russia and the U.S should Russia join the fight against Japan, or wanted to improve eastern observation and defence posts for their empire. The islanders were at first kept on Attu, and Japanese soldiers were both hostile and friendly to them. Some reports seem to suggest the Japanese thought of themselves as ‘liberators’ of the native people. One of the Americans (Charles Foster Jones, a radio operator and weather observer) had been killed during the invasion after a short time of interrogation, but the remaining Aleuts and Charles' wife Etta Jones (a teacher and trained nurse) were transported around June 21st in the hold of a freighter to be held as prisoners of war in Japan. Once in Japan, they faced malnutrition and disease, and only 25 survived their imprisonment.
On 11th May 1943, American forces launched their attack to recapture the island. The dense fog and high winds meant air power couldn’t be effectively used, and landing craft snagged on outcrops of rock as they attempted to reach Attu’s shores, even colliding with each other in the fog. Soldiers found as they landed that their heavy vehicles, supplies and artillery soon sank into the beaches. They quickly realised the only way to fight the battle would be on foot across Attu’s unforgiving terrain. After brutal and often hand-to-hand bloody combat, the Japanese forces were killed almost to the last man by the end of May. The Americans suffered heavy loses too with 3,929 casualties, including 1,200 severe cold injuries - many suffered frostbite and later had amputations, their uniforms failing to protect against Attu’s snow and cold.
Japan would not take Attu back again. America maintained a LORAN station on Attu until 2010 when it ceased operation, which left the island uninhabited, The native inhabitants never returned to Attu. The survivors of Japan’s prison camps would be shipped back by America to other Aleutian Islands or to Mainland Alaska to somehow build new lives after their displacement. There were not enough of them after the war to sustain a community on the island, and their village on Attu had been destroyed during the battle. The island had also now become too dangerous, with unexploded and toxic remnants of war littering the once remote landscape.
This military presence is still polluting Attu. Lead-based batteries, leaking fuel drums and various oils are seeping into and running through the boggy tundra, contaminating the ecosystem and endangering wildlife. A clean up has recently begun, digging out contaminated soil and removing it from the island, but a total clean-up could cost tens of millions of dollars and last more than a decade. This highlights the far-reaching and terrible consequences of warfare, not only on humans but also on the environment: “Attu is one of about 10,000 (American) Formerly Used Sites nationwide. The Department of Defence has about $250 million each year to whittle away at some of the 2,700 sites that need cleaning up”.
‘Attu Village, occupied by the Japanese and retaken during the Battle of Attu, 11th - 30th May 1943’. Image source here.
The photograph at the start of this post shows the lofty hills of Attu, which rise from the sea and appear out of the mist with a sublime but harsh beauty. The grainy black and white photograph almost makes the image seem dream-like - but a cloud of smoke rising from the shore suggests the more sinister context of this image. Taken during the American re-capture, the dreamy lofty-ness of this photograph belies the violence and suffering occurring down below on the ground. Many World War II aerial photographs at first sight have a strange beauty. During the global conflict, operations occurred at many remote outposts, and it seems strange and sad that war photographs would have in many cases been among the first detailed aerial images of many remote landscapes. In these reconnaissance photographs, disputed mountains valleys and coasts appear timeless. Seen from floating otherworldly aerial viewpoints, they are seemingly unaware of human conflict, and bring to mind the rising peaks and serene mountains found in traditional Chinese landscape paintings. Despite the lofty serenity of Chinese painted landscapes, this centuries-old tradition developed through many ages of turmoil between dynasties, and many painted landscapes carry evidence of the troubled time in which they were made. Remote landscapes in nature are also rarely untouched natural havens or spiritual wildernesses. They can be disputed, colonised, occupied, invaded, polluted. They can be irrevocably changed by human actions. Even the creation of protected areas or reserves changes a remote landscape. Attu is actually part of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge, but this protection further confirms the threat that humans pose to landscapes and nature.
On Attu, it seems the memory of war - as well as the spilled oil and fuel - has seeped into the soil of the land. In Shetland, the pollution of warfare also litters the landscape, though not to the extent of the devastating chemical pollution at Attu. Lookouts, radar stations, RAF stations, gunpoints and defence constructions are to be found at many remote corners of the otherwise wild-seeming Shetland landscape. These constructions have also changed the wildernesses they occupy with their eerie and sinister presence, though long ago abandoned. In my drawing work looking at alternative landscape perspectives in my images, where the viewer is immersed in a different kind of viewpoint and more shifting sense of space, I hope to also suggest a lofty yet strangely sinister experience. The ‘landscapes of the mind’ I wish to draw will unfold in time as the viewer looks at them, and will also evoke the past and yet also be eerily futuristic, making the viewer uncertain whether they are looking at an image of a long gone wilderness, or ‘seeing tomorrow’.
Ruin Landscape Sketches, January - February 2019
part of a PROJECT SUPPORTED BY VISUAL ART AND CRAFT AWARD. SHETLAND ARTS IN PARTNERSHIP WITH CREATIVE SCOTLAND AND SHETLAND ISLANDS COUNCIL
For more about the pollution on Attu, see: Why Attu Island is still fighting WWII
For much more information about Attu, including its Native Population and the Battle of Attu, informed by veterans and including photographs, see: The Attu Website
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