LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Aleutian Islands
built 171 days ago
Though the only reported casualties across the Aleutian Islands were sheep, the tsunami did generate some impressive wave heights, as shown on the map above (black triangles). Eight-foot waves struck at Adak Island. The tsunami destroyed houses and boats at the harbor of Atka Island. Wave heights reached 40 feet near the Scotch Cap Lighthouse at Unimak Island, and were reportedly up to 75 feet high on the Pacific side of Umnak Island. As was the case with tsunami of 1946, the Aleutian Islands shielded the Alaskan mainland from the effects of the tsunami.
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The Aleutian Islands campaign was a struggle over the Aleutian Islands, part of Alaska, in the Pacific campaign of World War II. A small Japanese force occupied the islands of Attu and Kiska, but the remoteness of the islands and the difficulties of weather and terrain meant that it took nearly a year for a large U.S. force to eject them. The islands had very little actual strategic value for either side, but the Japanese reasoned that control of the Aleutians would prevent a possible U.S. attack across the Northern Pacific. Similarly, the U.S. feared that the islands would be used as bases from which to launch aerial assaults against the West Coast, but Japan lacked both a long-range bomber and the resources to establish and operate an air base in the Aleutians
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Formerly called the Catherine Archipelago, the Aleutian Islands comprise some 150 mostly volcanic islands extending twelve thousand miles west of the Alaskan Peninsula; the four island groups are a continuation of the continental Aleutian mountain range. They separate the Bering Sea from the Pacific Ocean and are the boundary between the Eurasian and Pacific tectonic plates. When sea levels were low, as during the various ice ages, the islands provided a land bridge between Asia and Alaska, although the first migrants to America probably crossed the then-dry Bering Strait. The native people, Aleuts, numbered around sixteen thousand when encountered by the Russian-sponsored expedition of Alexey Chirikov and Vitus Bering in 1741. From 1799 the Russian-American Fur Company controlled the region and encouraged the proliferation of fur trapping. Aleut populations declined as a consequence of slavery, disease, and massacres (as with the Carib peoples of the Caribbean Islands).
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The Aleutian Islands are located off of the southern coast of Alaska. In World War II, when Japanese Admiral Yamamoto was to invade Midway Island in 1942, he sent a small force to occupy the islands of Attu and Kiska, located in the Aleutian chain. This move was meant to nullify any attempts to use Alaska as a staging area for troops in the Pacific by the Allies. However, the occupation of American soil only caused the United States to feel seriously threatened. The only choice was to retake the islands. In May of 1943, U.S. troops began landing on Attu.
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The Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association (APIA) was chartered as a nonprofit organization in 1976 and is a federally recognized tribal organization of the Aleut people. APIA will conduct an economic and technical feasibility study for six communities on wind-power/diesel-plant development. An important goal is to educate and involve community members in this project, particularly youth who will become the future leaders of the community.
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After gaining JCS approval on 1 April for the Attu operation (code-named SANDCRAB) and obtaining the needed shipping, work began to recapture the little, fog-shrouded island at the western end of the Aleutian chain. Attu is 35 miles long and 15 miles wide, with snow-capped peaks that reach upward to 3,000 feet. Steep slopes extend down from the peaks to treeless valleys below, carpeted with muskeg, a "black muck" covered with a dense growth of lichens and moss. Because the Japanese current has a moderating effect on temperatures, much of the time in the outermost Aleutians the muskeg is barely firm enough for a man to cross on foot. The same current accounts for the pea-soup fogs, the constant pervading wetness, and the frequent storms that make the outer Aleutians so forbidding.
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