World War II internment of Aleuts recounted in film documentary

[NVMojo]

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - Mary Bourdukofsky was at home after church on rugged St. Paul Island one Sunday in the summer of 1942, when her agitated husband rushed breathless through the door from his weekly baseball game.

The game had been canceled without warning, he told her. The federal government was forcing them to leave their home on the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea for a wartime internment camp in Southeast Alaska, 1,500 miles away.

"He came running in and said, 'They've stopped the ballgame. They've come to evacuate us people,'" Bourdukofsky said.

A new documentary film, "Aleut Story," includes this testimony from Bourdukofsky and other Aleuts in chronicling the little-known internment of 881 Alaska Natives from the Pribilof and Aleutian Islands during World War II.

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http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/ap_alaska/story/7255445p-7167144c.html