David estimates that a majority of his congregation is Alaska Native from the area. The church has been an important figure in Aleutian and Pribilof Island history. (The Bishop’s last name is Mahaffey, but bishops are monastic, and as such, he’s given up his last name.) Once carried into the woods by a group of volunteers, the Right Reverend David, Bishop of Sitka and Alaska for the Orthodox Church, blessed the cross and the gravesites. About 23 graves lie next to a brook in the graveyard, behind a beachfront cabin.Īfter having read about the Aleut internment in a Capital City Weekly story, inmates at Lemon Creek Correctional Center built a “healing cross” to mark the graveyard. Paul grave site had been rebuilt in the early 2000s, the old crosses laid down on the tops of graves and new ones installed in their place. By New Year’s Eve, “it seemed that only one man from each camp was well enough to work at the sad task of building caskets.” George and most of the workmen in the St. ![]() Paul camp, were sick.īy the 27th, 10 at St. George camp, located at an old mine camp across the bay from the St. On Christmas Eve of that year, three men at the St. Paul camp.Ī camp survivor’s logbook from 1943 chronicled a deadly flu epidemic that some of the Aleutians wouldn’t survive. Part of the reason for the the 75th-anniversary trip was to install a new “healing cross” at the grave site near the St. “When they got home, my parents, the military had destroyed all the homes and shot all the icons in their houses,” Merculief Sr. George, he said he had a happy childhood, even though the community was still rebuilding. Navy, who ordered the evacuation.īorn four years after his parents returned to St. said he doesn’t hold any grudges against the military or the U.S. “A lot of bad memories.”ĭrafted into the Army in 1966, Merculief Sr. She ended up taking care of the rest of her brothers and sisters at the age of 10,” Merculief Sr. “My mom was 10 years old when her mom passed away down here. He would see Funter Bay for only a few hours, but as a heavy rain poured on the beach, he imagined the hardship his family had to endure so far away from home. experienced the same sights and sounds his mother and grandmother did. Sitting on the beach at Funter Bay, Carl Merculief Sr. There was little food, and without medical or sanitation facilities, many succumbed to disease. The refugees were given only substandard bunk housing at a shuttered cannery on the North side of the bay. Left to fend for themselves thousands of miles from home, the Aleuts and Pribilof Islanders didn’t have access to clean water, sanitation facilities or proper heating. but for many interred there, Funter Bay was their undoing. A trip like this answers a lot of questions.”įunter Bay had helped create Krukoff Jr. … You don’t appreciate what you learn until you get out there. “All those years you listen to Funter Bay stories, so it’s a mystery story to me. You come from a strawberry patch in Funter Bay.’ I said, ‘strawberry patch, what’s a strawberry patch?’ Pribilof Islands, we don’t have any strawberry patches,” Krukoff Jr. “My grandpa always told me … ‘You come from Funter Bay. But while he was glad to learn more about his parents’ past, he felt frustrated about the decision-making processes that led to the internment. Paul elders talk of the internment over coffee, and was glad to finally be able to picture the setting of their stories. mixed feelings.Īs a child, he had heard St. Paul, the trip to Funter Bay brought Krukoff Jr. He was baby in his mother Haretina Krukoff’s womb during her internment.īorn a month after Haretina returned to St. He had been to Funter Bay before, but he wouldn’t remember it.
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