In Attu Boy, Nick Golodoff was six years old when his peaceful life in a remote Aleutian village was interrupted by the invasion of the Japanese army in 1942.
How does Nick’s story of enemy invasion, occupation, and finally becoming a prisoner of war fit within the larger story of resiliency in Alaska History?
Because Nick tells his story through the eyes of a child, do you think resonate with students? In what way can this story be used in the classroom? Elementary and/or Secondary?
Replies
Nick's childhood account of the war, I think, would be really easy for students to connect with, engage in, and understand. A lot of my students struggle with English, and Nick's account uses a lot of sentence structure and vocabulary that my students would be able to grasp. I think they could understand his thinking and experiences better than texts written from the point of view of an officer in the war. The fact that it is about a Native Alaskan would help grab their interest as well.
How I might use this in a secondary classroom is to get students thinking about why the War in the Alaska is generally left out of textbooks. It was an important part of the war (especially for those directly affected), but there isn't a lot about it in most school books. Why? You could also then tie that into a geography lesson about why the Aleutians were an important location for both sides of the war. You could also get into some interesting discussions about how white Americans treated the Natives (and why), Japanese treatment of POWs during the war (and make connections to POWs in/from other warring countries). There's a lot to work with in this book.
Nick’s ability to recover from the adversity of being removed from his home village by the Japanese is remarkable. It relates well to the larger history of Alaska’s indigenous peoples because many Alaskan Natives have been negatively impacted by outside groups including Russian and American. Their history is riddled with true stories of persecution, exploitation, destruction, and death at the hands of outsiders. For example, the Russians threatened the Aleut hunters with harm to their families if they did not hunt for the Russians. The Aleuts performed these duties long ago and still thrive today.
Another aspect of resiliency that Nick and many Alaska Natives face is the harsh environment of Alaska and the costs of living in this environment. Nick describes how he had to subsist on the resources of his local environment because staples are extremely expensive to purchase. At times the Alaska Natives must choose between honoring the land, which is preferred, and exploiting the land for profit, which is anathema to their traditional culture.
I think this story would resonate with our students because it is told very matter factly and it can be considered a “success story”. From an instructional standpoint Nick’s story could be used in many ways in an Elementary setting. It could be used as an important history of World War II in Alaska and the mistakes made by the US government in regard to the Alaska Native internment camps. It could provide context to a geography lesson on Alaska because it happened in such a remote area of the state on the Aleutian chain. It could also be used as a story of resiliency which is a key theme for the Common Core State Standards(adopted by the Anchorage School District).
Broadly, Nick's story is a parallel of the way in which indigenous North and South Americans have experienced European subjugation. With Russian explorers and exploiters, the Aleut were essentially on the front lines when history "began" in Alaska in the 1700s. Yet, despite such horrific treatment, the Aleut are still here today. All major indigenous groups in Alaska were affected by many groups of "others" and we are still trying to figure out ways to deal with the aftermath. Nick's story is one way to do this, to face hard history head-on and to have truthful and productive conversations about such events.
Absolutely, the story would resonate with students, especially those who are or have grown up in such rural and remote areas. So many of our communities in Southwest Alaska are accessible only by boat, airplane or snowmachine. To a large extent, families are still reliant upon subsistence which figures largely in Nick's overall story.
I think for elementary, students could locate WWII territorial veterans and give them a place to tell their stories and experiences and compare or contrast them with Nick's experiences. Secondary students could locate primary source documents and corroborate that information with what is in the text, the precursor of which is formulating a good question.
Overall, Nick's story fills a large gap that is missing in current WWII histories and far from being supplemental, it could in itself be a unit of study.
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