Attu Boy: A Young Alaskan’s WWII Memoir by Nick Golodoff (review)

on june 7, 1942, the Japanese invaded the Aleutian Island of Attu. They murdered the Bureau of Indian Affairs schoolteacher and her husband, and took the Alaska Native residents to Japan as prisoners of war. Attu Boy: A Young Alaskan’s WWII Memoir is the firsthand account of Nick Golodoff, a six-year-old Unangan boy who survived the invasion and three years as a Japanese prisoner of war in Otaru on Hokkaido Island. Many of the village members died from starvation, malnutrition, and disease. At the war’s end, the U.S. military resettled the remaining Attuans on the Aleutian Island of Atka. Nick Golodoff never saw his village on Attu again.

Golodoff’s granddaughter, Brenda Maly, compiled this powerful memoir from tapes that Golodoff began recording in 2004. With the help of editor and friend Rachel Mason, Attu Boy was first published for the National Park Service in 2012. Maly and Mason supplemented and intertwined Golodoff’s story with additional firsthand accounts from other Attuans taken by the Japanese. This rich and moving account of the Attuan experience brings long-overdue attention to a heretofore-obscure history of Alaska Natives and World War II. Scholars have recently begun to examine the Japanese invasions of Alaska, Alaska Native military service, and the removal and internment of Aleut citizens by the United States. Golodoff’s memoir constitutes an integral component of, and fundamental resource for, the scholarship emerging from these studies and for the literatures that examine Indigenous people in WWII generally.

Organized into three sections, the first part of the book comprises Golodoff’s personal memories. His story begins with his recollections of life in the village of Attu and the prewar fears and clues foreshadowing the Japanese invasion. He recounts the anxiety of village members returning from trapping and hunting with stories of the Tuginagus, or boogiemen. At the time, Elders talked about seeing mysterious people or ghosts, finding strange tracks, and hearing boat engines. He describes his fear when the Japanese invaded his village, and confusion as to why the Japanese did not simply leave the Attuans behind when they departed in mid-September. He remembers the arduous boat trip to Japan, the illness suffered by many of his village members, and the death of his father. After the war ended, he remembers waiting for the Americans to find them and that it took several months for the U.S. military to bring the Attuans back to Alaska. Of the forty-two Attuans taken to Japan, only twenty-five survived to return. Importantly, readers are reminded that these are the recollections of a young child. Golodoff remembers daydreaming about pies and cakes while hospitalized in Japan, and collecting golf balls for fifty cents a day, which he used to rent a bicycle during the monthlong stay in Seattle on the journey to Alaska.

Part 2 of the book consists of Golodoff’s reflections after resettlement at Atka, working life, hunting and fishing, learning from the Elders, and memories of his family and community. The third part of the book combines additional firsthand accounts of the invasion and life as a prisoner of war. The memories of Innokenty Golodoff (Nick’s father’s brother), Olean Golodoff Prokopeuff (Nick’s mother), Mike Lokanin, and Alex Prossoff are compiled and interwoven with information on the historical background of Attu and commentary provided by the editor. The book closes with a brief description of Nick Golodoff’s return to Japan in 1995 as part of a conference on wartime compensation. Accompanying him on this trip were Sylvia Kobayashi and her husband, both of whom had been in a Japanese internment camp in the United States during the war.

Attu Boy draws our attention to the lived experiences of a small community of Alaska Natives, swept up into an international military conflict. It is at once a local Unangan story and a global story, and as such draws together complex and entangled histories of Indigenous people...