Word: attu
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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ELMENDORF Air Force Base, which stretches across 13,400 frosty acres of tundra on the outskirts of Anchorage, is a carryover from the days when Alaska had not yet become an American state and Japanese soldiers were swarming through the fog and cold of Attu and Kiska. Constructed 16 months before Pearl Harbor, Elmendorf was designed to blunt a Japanese thrust at the Aleutians. This week the base was to play a far different role in Japanese-American relations. According to the prepared script, a gleaming Japan Air Lines DC-8 jet swoops down at night for a refueling stop...
...Arctic desert that gets only four inches of precipitation a year. At Fort Yukon in the vast central plateau region, temperatures plummet from 100° in the summer to 75° below zero in the winter. To travel from the state capital of Juneau to the outermost Aleutian island of Attu is to span 2,000 miles and four time zones. Yet Alaska has fewer people than any other state: 293,000, the equivalent of Akron...
World War II changed the pattern. With the construction of big military bases at Dutch Harbor, Kodiak, Fairbanks and Anchorage, Alaska became more than a massive map sprinkled with names full of harsh ks and ts. Americans actually had to stay there. On Attu, they fought the second bloodiest battle of the Pacific war (549 American, 2,350 Japanese dead), and the only one on U.S. soil. Nor did peace close the bases. Because Alaska lay close to Russia, the Arctic shore soon sprouted heavily instrumented DEW line stations...