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The park and its facilities on Amaknak Island in Unalaska, Alaska, are owned and managed by the Ounalashka Corporation, the village corporation for Unalaska. The National Park Service provides technical assistance to the corporation and its staff to plan, develop, and preserve the resources on site. Through this cooperative partnership, the Unangax are the keepers of their history and invite the public to learn more about its past and present. The best time to visit the park is May through October, but the park is open year round. Visitors may access the area at any time but overnight camping is not permitted.

The Aleutian World War II National Historic area can be accessed in the summer via an unimproved gravel switchback road from the city of Unalaska. In the winter you’ll need snowshoes or skis.

Within forty-five years after Russian contact, the native Unangan or Aleut, as the world at large has come to call them, generally estimated at twelve to fifteen thousand in number, plummeted to a few thousand persons at most-the population decimated by warfare, epidemics, and starvation. Exploited by Russian fur traders to harvest the sea otter, Aleut hunters were often enslaved, others forcibly relocated, some as far south as the Santa Catalina Islands off California, their wives and children held hostage to ensure acquiescence. The Russian monarchy attempted to enforce fair treatment, but it was not until the arrival of the Russian Orthodox Church in the 1800s, that the Aleuts’ rights were argued in Russian courts. After the purchase of Alaska by the United States in 1867, the Aleut found themselves classified as “Indians” and made wards of the government. Under U.S. protectorate, the Aleut entered a time of what can best be described as benign neglect, receiving little or no support from the Territorial or Federal authorities.

The Aleut worked the introduced fox and sheep farms for wages, became construction workers or longshoremen, but almost all still looked to the sea for sustenance. The Aleuts’ hardships lasted for over two centuries, under the governing hand of two countries, culminating finally in the forced evacuation from their homeland during World War II, where the unique geography of their islands, the link between east and west, again played a pivotal role in their history.

The traditional Aleut winter house, called a barabara or, in Aleut, an ulax, was a semi-subterranean dwelling with a driftwood/whale bone frame overlain with grass, earth, and sod. Entrance was through a portal in the roof, the inhabitants descending into the interior by means of a notched log ladder. Woven grass mats divided the dwellings into familial units with storage, sleeping quarters, and hiding places excavated into the walls-the latter often linked to secret passages providing a means of escape during warfare. Barabaras reached lengths of 60 meters or more and held upwards of 40 families. They functioned as the site of manufacturing, communal and ceremonial activities, and at times, burial of the dead. Although it is thought each house acted independently, an elder of a leading barabara in the community was recognized as village leader. Shared dancing and feasting insured harmony between individual villages.

Aleut basketry is some of the finest in the world, the continuum of a craft begun in prehistoric times and carried through to the present. Early Aleut women created baskets and woven mats of exceptional technical quality using only an elongated and sharpened thumbnail as tool. Today Aleut weavers continue to produce woven pieces of a remarkable cloth-like texture, works of modern art with roots in ancient tradition. The Aleut word for grass basket is qiigam aygaaxsii.

A proliferation of wildlife drew humans to the island chain as early as 8,000 years before present. By 4,000 years before present a great maritime nation had arisen, one adapted to efficiently exploit a single subsistence resource: the sea. From their skin boats, Aleut hunters harvested whales and pinnipeds-the sea lion, sea otter, and seal; sea birds were taken and their eggs collected; women fished for spawning salmon and scoured the rich intertidal zone for shellfish, seaweed, and driftwood. From the waters not only came their food, but the raw materials for the vast majority of their manufactured goods, garments, and tools. The sophisticated technology the Aleut developed to harvest the ocean was unparalleled; their ability to do so remarkable, considering their environment.

The Aleutian World War II National Historic Site follows the historic footprint of the U.S. Army Fort Schwatka located at Ulakta Head on Mount Ballyhoo. The fort is one of four coastal defense posts built in 1942 and 1943 to protect the Dutch Harbor Naval Operating Base. The army built over a hundred buildings at Fort Schwatka. At 897 feet above sea level, the installations on Mount Ballyhoo were the highest coastal defenses built in the United States. The fort was named for Lt. Frederick Schwatka, who conducted several military surveys of Alaska, including Unalaska, in the 1880s. Engineers designed the concrete observation posts and command stations to withstand earthquakes and 100 mile-per-hour winds. The fort overlooks Dutch Harbor and is the key to its protection. Although today, many of the bunkers and wooden structures of Fort Schwatka have collapsed, the gun mounts and lookouts are among the most intact in the country. Visitors to the area may explore the remaining structures and ruins, and sense the scope of the War effort mounted in the Aleutians to protect the United States from the Japanese invasion. The Japanese occupied U.S. territory for over a year before being routed at Attu. Not since the War of 1812 had a foreign battle been fought on American soil.

June 3, 1942, six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese aircraft struck U.S. Army and Navy installations at Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Island Chain. Two days of aerial bombardment left over one hundred civilians and servicemen dead and wounded; barracks, fuel tanks, and other structures set afire.

U.S. forces at Fort Mears met the first attack on June 3, with antiaircraft and small arms fire, but on June 4, the Aleutian Tigers (eight P-40s), engaged the Japanese planes in aerial dogfights. The U.S. planes were launched from Cape Field at Fort Glenn, a secret airbase on neighboring Umnak Island. The Japanese had thought the nearest airfield was on Kodiak, and Cape Field, disguised as a cannery complex, had remained undetected. The surprise aerial counter-attack destroyed four Val dive bombers and one Zero.

In the following days, U.S. amphibious and bomber aircraft searched the Pacific Ocean for the Japanese carriers and their escort ships, with Zeros. Low visibility weather exacted a heavy toll on the search planes. Of six Catalinas that came within sight of the Japanese fleet, four were downed by Japanese fighters; another was lost in the fog.

Notwithstanding the tragic loss of American lives, the first forty-eight hours of the Aleutian Campaign exacted little substantive damage on U.S. or Japanese forces. No Japanese vessels were damaged and Fort Schwatka at Dutch Harbor was quickly repaired. What had quickly become apparent to both sides however was the role the capricious Aleutian weather would play in the campaign; at times an unpredictable ally, at times an uncertain foe. Weather claimed more than its share of lives. Soldiers shot their own in the fog; unable to penetrate fog and clouds, ships were thrown against rocks and sunk in heavy seas; pilots met the sides of mountains in low overcast skies, or flew off course never to be seen again.

The Eleventh Air Force alone dropped 26,910 bombs on Kiska and Attu islands in an attempt to soften Japanese emplacements prior to amphibious landings of U.S. and Canadian forces, but the Japanese troops were well entrenched, and the terrain was often obscured by fog. The boxy B-24 bore the brunt of the early missions, one of the few heavy bombers capable of making the 1,200 mile round-trip from Cape Field to the western end of the Aleutian Chain. Once over their targets, U.S. aircrews often had to drop their bomb loads blindly through the cloud cover, using the crests of volcanoes as landmarks, then fight their way home through antiaircraft fire. Under their protective blanket of fog, the Japanese ground forces found the continuous bombardment little more than a nuisance.

Construction of their own airfield on Kiska proceeded slowly for the Japanese, a lack of heavy equipment forces workers to use hand tools and wheelbarrows. With the departure of the carriers Ryujo and Junyo and their Zeros, the air defense of the islands rested on the Rufe float fighter plane. The U.S. Eleventh Air Force and the Aleutian weather took their toll on these fighters, leaving only a handful to meet Allied raids. U.S. forces continued to move westward through the Chain. With the aid of heavy earth-moving equipment, engineers constructed a landing field in a water soaked tidewater flat on Adak Island in twelve short days.

Just 250 miles from Kiska, this forward field brought the Japanese within range of U.S. fighter and dive bomber planes. In the Pacific Ocean, American aircraft and submarines patrolled for Japanese shipping, effectively shutting off resupply and reinforcements. Isolated, their air power virtually eliminated, the Japanese troops dug in and prepared for the inevitable invasion.

Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the Commander of the Japanese Combined Fleet, had traveled extensively within the U.S. and was familiar with her industrial capabilities and seemingly limitless oil reserves. When the Admiral counseled against waging war with the “sleeping giant,” he was met with veiled threats of assassination. “If you insist on my going ahead,” he told the Prime Minister, “I can promise to give them hell for a year or a year and a half, but can guarantee nothing as to what will happen after that.” The impetus for Yamamoto’s attack on the Aleutian Islands was twofold” to divert forces of the U.S. Pacific Fleet from the central Pacific Theater and to gain a largely psychological foothold on American soil. He accomplished both goals with a minimal commitment of men and materials.

U.S. and Canadian forces grew to 144,000 troops in the Alaska-Aleutian area by 1943, but the ships dispatched northward by U.S. Admiral Chester Nimitz from his fleet were but a token force having little or no impact on the outcome of the Battle of Midway. The Japanese occupation of Attu and Kiska islands at the western tip of the Aleutian Chain would in the end call for over 2,300 Japanese soldiers of the North Sea Garrison to sacrifice their lives for the Imperial Edict.

Battle of Attu the “Akutan Zero,” was one of the prizes of the Aleutian Campaign. Downed during the attack on Dutch Harbor, the aircraft was later recovered and shipped to San Diego for repairs. Flown in mock engagements with U.S. fighters, the plane was found to possess superior maneuverability and range, but was fragile—lacking armor plating and self-sealing fuel tanks. Of the aircraft available to U.S. forces at the time, only the most recently produced, the Hellcat, was superior in performance. Summing up the Zero as an aerial foe, U.S. Navy and Army Air Forces warned: Never attempt to dog fight the Zero.

On May 11, 1943, two contingents of U.S. soldiers, numbering approximately 12,500 men in total, landed on the north and south ends of Attu Island and began pressing towards the Japanese strongholds at Holtz Bay and Chichagof Harbor. Progress was slow and costly. Eight days of heavy fighting passed before the South Landing Force climbed its way out of Massacre Bay. The North Landing Force, amongst their numbers the unorthodox Alaska Scouts, forced the Japanese from Holtz Bay, and then continued towards Jarmin Pass and the North Landing Force to complete the pincer movement.

The approximately 2,300 Japanese troops that remained had retreated to the wild heights of Fish Hook Ridge above Chichagof Valley, waiting for reinforcements. None arrived. On May 23, a force of sixteen Japanese Betty bombers was met by U.S. P-38 Lightnings over Attu. Five of the Japanese bombers were downed. It was the last attempt by the Japanese to support their Aleutian troops by air.

On the ground, American forces had increased to 15,000. Air strikes and U.S. ground force assaults up the precipitous Fish Hook Ridge further diminished Japanese forces. On May 29, Colonel Yamasaki, and the remainder of his Attu troops, numbering 750 or less, broke through American lines in a desperate attempt to reach Massacre Bay and needed stockpiles of U.S. supplies. They were finally halted at Engineer Hill, as a hastily organized U.S. defense repelled wave after wave of banzai attacks. Those Japanese troops that were not killed by U.S. fire, took their own lives. In the end, of the 2,300 Japanese troops, fewer than thirty soldiers of the North Sea Garrison were left alive, many ashamed that they had dishonored themselves by surrender. American dead numbered 549.

After the expulsion of the Japanese from Attu, U.S. naval and aerial bombardment of Kiska increased in fervor. Japanese submarines attempted to evacuate the estimated 5,100 Japanese troops on the island, but the process proved too slow, and far too dangerous with a tightened U.S. blockade. On July 28, under the cover of thick fog, Japanese cruisers and destroyers managed to slip through U.S. naval forces and aerial reconnaissance without detection. In thirty minutes, the 5,100 Kiska troops were boarded, and the fleet headed back to the safety of Paramishiro Harbor.

The evacuation was so bold and well executed, U.S. commanders refused to believe it had taken place. However, U.S. fighters strafing Kiska no longer received return anti-aircraft fire. In one instance, four U.S. P-40s landed on the shell pocked Kiska airfield. The pilots left their planes and strolled near the runway, seeing no sigh of the enemy. In spite of this evidence, U.S. intelligence argued that the Japanese adherence to the Bushido Code forbade them from surrendering Kiska without a fight. The lessons of Attu, America’s first experience with Japanese suicide attacks had been too well learned. The invasion of Kiska proceeded as planned. On August 15, 1943, U.S. and Canadian troops landed on Kiska. In the three day operation that ensued, over 313 allied soldiers died from “friendly fire,” booby traps, and land mines. The Japanese had occupied U.S. territory for over a year before being routed at Attu. Not since the War of 1812 had a foreign battle been fought on American soil.

Like precarious stepping stones, the Aleutian Islands span the seas between the New and Old worlds – reaching westward from the Alaska Peninsula to within 500 miles of the Asian peninsula of Kamchatka. Situated between the Bering Sea and the Pacific Ocean, along the seam of the Pacific and American geologic plates, this 1,100 mile long archipelago has been, and continues to be, the focus of climatic and tectonic events. Conflicting weather systems generated in the bordering seas are responsible for severe cyclonic storms, heavy rains, and dense, impenetrable fog. Yearly precipitation averages fifty inches, with measurable rainfall occurring 200 days per annum. The Aleutian Chain’s foundation of shifting geologic plates results in active volcanism and earthquakes – the birth processes of the islands themselves. The Aleutians betray their violent origins in their rugged landscape: mountainous terrain, precipitous coastlines, and black sand beaches. It is thought that at least twenty-six of the Chain’s fifty-seven volcanoes have erupted within the past two centuries.

June through August, wildflowers cover the lush spongy subarctic tundra. Wild iris, orchids, violets, and alpine azalea are but a few of the island’s species that attract botanists and artists. In the fall, bushes are heavy with salmon berries and blueberries.

On some of the islands, such as Adak and Amaknak, there are a few coniferous trees growing, remnants of the Russian period. But while tall trees grow in many cold climates, Aleutian conifers—some of them estimated to be two hundred years old—rarely reach a height of even ten feet, and many of them are still less than five feet tall. This is because the islands, much like the Falklands and other islands of similar latitudes, experience such strong winds that taller trees are vulnerable to snapping off. Instead of trees, the islands are covered with a luxuriant, dense growth of herbage, including grasses, sedges and many flowering plants.

Sport fishing is very popular and charter boats regularly land record halibut. The Aleutian Islands are among the world’s richest fishing grounds.

Visitors to the area may explore the remaining structures and ruins, and sense the scope of the War effort mounted in the Aleutians to protect the United States from the Japanese invasion. The Aleutian World War II National Historic Site follows the historic footprint of the U.S. Army Fort Schwatka located at Ulakta Head on Mount Ballyhoo. The fort is one of four coastal defense posts built in 1942 and 1943 to protect the Dutch Harbor Naval Operating Base. The army built over a hundred buildings at Fort Schwatka. At 897 feet above sea level, the installations on Mount Ballyhoo were the highest coastal defenses built in the United States.

Backpacking, bird watching, fishing, hiking, Interpretive Programs, kayaking, and nature walks make for great outdoor adventures in these remote, but beautiful islands. All who have visited have been awed at the true wilderness and raw nature to be seen.

The Aleutian Islands are known for unpredictable and stormy weather. Rain, fog, and wind are common. Dress warmly and carry rain gear even in summer. Summer temperatures range from 45 to 65 degrees F. Early summer and fall often have clear sunny days with spectacular views of the surrounding volcanoes.

Current Weather

The area is very rugged and wild. Make sure you have proper equipment for the weather, especially if you will be backpacking. You should be self sufficient and have proper emergency gear and supplies for any contingency.

This dramatic environment supports the largest concentration of marine mammals in the world and a nesting seabird population greater than that found in the rest of the United States combined.

Birding watching in the Aleutians is world renown. Unalaska is one of the only places in the world to see the whiskered auklet. Puffins, cormorants, ancient murrelets and birds in breeding plumage, especially the snow bunting, can be seen in Unalaska.

Marine animals include whales, sea lions, sea otters, seals, shell fish, salmon, halibut, but not in the numbers that were historically there. Scientists are uncertain as tio the cause of the declines and are hopeful that they may be rebounding slowly.

A Land Use Permit must be obtained to visit this privately owned park. Permits can be purchased at the World War II Visitor Center located on Airport Road or Monday through Friday at the Ounalashka Corporation Office located at 400 Salmon Way. The fees range from free for veterans to $4.00.

There is no camping allowed within the historical grounds.

Aniakchak National Monument & Preserve is 400 miles away. Katmai National Park & Preserve is 550 miles away. Lake Clark National Park & Preserve is 675 miles away. Kenai Fjords National Park is 775 miles away. Unalaska and Barrow, AK have several surrounding attractions as well.

Anchorage is the nearest large urban center. It can be reached by air through commercial and charter flights from Anchorage.
Public transportation is available in the form of the Alaska Marine Highway (Ferry System).
The Aleutian World War II National Historic area can be accessed in the summer via an unimproved gravel switchback road from the city of Unalaska. In the winter you’ll need snowshoes or skis.

Ounalashka Corporation, P.O. Box 149, Unalaska, AK 99685
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Superintendent, Alaska Affiliated Areas, 240 West 5th Avenue, Anchorage, AK 99501
Visitor Information (907) 581-1276
Visitor Center (907) 581-9944

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