A picture in the tourist brochure shows the Russian Orthodox Cathedral on the Aleutian island of Unalaska with a bald eagle atop the crosses on each dome and a third on the red-tiled roof to the side. But the eagles are avoiding me on my spiritual passage.
How the tourist brochure sees the church
How I see the church
By a steep cliff face opposite Unalaska City Hall, a sign with the black silhouettes of an angrily swooping eagle and a hysterical hand-flailing human proclaims in red 'Warning Eagles nesting.' But the eagles are avoiding me on my temporal passage also.
Look out! Bombers over head
Close-up
That is until I go on a tour of war sites and nature with Bobbie, an Oregon lady who has been here for 40 years. We sight eagles everywhere, flying and guarding their nests. Since there are no trees they build their nests on crags and cliffs for all to see right close up. They just look on imperiously, accustomed to nosey humans who don't get too close to threaten them.
Bald eagle and chick on cliff top
The war hit the Aleuts with a vengeance. The Japanese bombed Dutch Harbor in June 1942, killing 41 military and one civilian, and seized the western islands of Attu and Kiska, making them the only part of American territory occupied in World War II.
The American response was typical in two ways - they built air strips and reinforced with troops to beat back the Japanese, but they evacuated the entire Aleutian population of 881 people, for what seems pure racism, since they looked oriental. They were interned in deplorable conditions in makeshift camps in southeast Alaska. No people with non-Aleut blood were forced to leave the islands.
War relics on Unalaska - reinforced tunnel
Lack of care resulted in high death rates especially among the young and old, including 74 from TB and pneumonia. This had a particularly devastating impact on the survival of Aleut culture and language. The Japanese shipped 40 Aleuts from Attu and Kiska back to Japan as prisoners of war. Only 24 survived.
On Atka Island the Americans burned Aleut homes and a church, so that the Japanese could not use them. They did so before their owners' very eyes, further compounding their misery. Surely they could have waited till they had loaded them on board.
Gun emplacement
In 1988 the 420 Aleuts who survived were given $12,000 each and $6.4 million for community use in compensation, and the U.S. government formally apologized.
Some 16,000 American troops invaded Attu in 1943 and retook it in a tough 19-day-long battle against 2,650 Japanese entrenched in the mountains, culminating in a crazed banzai charge by the 800 still surviving Japanese. Those not killed in combat committed suicide by exploding hand grenades on their bodies.
War fortifications
With 6,000 Japanese stationed on Kiska, the Americans mounted an even larger invasion force of 34,000. Imagine their surprise and embarrassment when after days of slogging over bog, mountain and precipice they found there were in fact no Japanese to be found.
Japanese destroyers under cover of fog had slipped past the U.S. Navy and evacuated every last one of them. Nevertheless the Americans managed to run up a toll of 99 dead and 74 wounded from friendly fire, partly when two groups landing from different beaches assumed each other was the enemy.
Another gun emplacement
The Japanese also have another last laugh: the seafood processing, hospitality and food and beverage industries in Unalaska are largely controlled by Unisea, a member of Nippon Suisan Kaisha Ltd, more commonly known as Nissui, based in Tokyo. Tokyo Rose calling!
During the war some 40,000 to 50,000 U.S. troops were stationed on this little mountainous speck of Unalaska, only 70 miles long and 15 at its widest, and today eagles and war relics go hand in hand.
This is especially true on 1,634-foot Ballyhoo Hill, apparently thus named for reasons unclear by author Jack London, he of Call of the Wild and White Fang, when he passed by in 1899 on his way to or from the Klondike gold rush in the Yukon.
Top of Ballyhoo Hill
It's the site of many bunkers, tunnels, trenches, fox holes, gun emplacements, command posts and other military installations. Below a radar building at its top, some 900 feet down an almost vertical precipice, is an eagle's nest with a little eaglet in it - if you use your zoom lens or binoculars.
OK, so I don't manage to get it
Let's try again
Closer at hand near a foxhole, an actual endemic red fox is calmly curled up in repose, blasé to the presence of humans. Talk about familiarity breeding contempt.
Red fox
Close-up
On a trip round Captains Bay, you don't even need a zoom lens or binoculars to look at baby. The cheeky little bugger, perhaps no more than a month old, is rubbernecking at us, still in its infant all-over grey swaddling clothes, as it poses next to brilliantly white-headed Mum.
Eaglet and Mum
My eagle famine is over. They're everywhere, perched on a dead Sitka spruce planted by the Russians, topping a lamppost on the main thoroughfare, wheeling over the sage green cliffs.
Eagles, eagles everywhere
Towards the end of town is Unalaska Memorial Park with several monuments to dead military and fishermen - and the propeller shaft of the SS Northwestern used by contractors building wartime military installations.
Memorial Park
Another view
The Japanese bombed it, then claimed it was a battleship that signified a great military victory. Nobody aboard was killed and its rusted red bow now pokes up skywards at the end of Captains Bay.
Wreck of the Northwestern
Zoom-in
Propeller in Memorial Park
An hour-long tour on Unalaska's only inland road, in real Aleutian weather - heavy clouds, showers, whining winds, swirling mists enveloping all, with the briefest breaks of sunshine - is perfect on both war and eagle accounts.
Inland Unalaska
Sage-green crags loom out of the fog as the gravel road pitches its tortuous path upwards along precipitous ridges past yet more foxholes, gun emplacements and tunnels from WWII.
More war relics
Some more
The ground is completely crumpled like the rocky volcanic terrain that it is, with steep narrow defiles for streams, and soaring hill sides ending in pinnacles and saw teeth. Yet the sage green carpet covering all blunts its starkness, giving it a mystic air.
Several bald eagles seem to almost pose, but a pair on their nest just above us, look most peeved at our intrusion and we do not exit the car for fear of being dive-bombed.
A nesting eagle just above the road
Now there are two
A little further on, a juvenile, perhaps two or three years old, still mottled grey and without the white head, is flitting along the shore and wheeling over the water, being taught the ropes under the watchful gaze of Mum or Dad, with a flock of nosey, noisy ravens cawing on.
[Upcoming blog on Wednesday: Looking at crime and security on Unalaska Island]
That's an eagle's aerie?
Well, if you zoom in
Zooming in a bit more
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By the same author: Bussing The Amazon: On The Road With The Accidental Journalist, available with free excerpts on Kindle and in print version on Amazon.
Swimming With Fidel: The Toils Of An Accidental Journalist, available on Kindle, with free excerpts here, and in print version on Amazon in the U.S here.