Our prop jet from Anchorage squeezes between two emerald hulks looming from the fog to settle onto the truncated runway at Dutch Harbor, Alaska. It’s a tricky place to land and more than one flight has met a dismal end here.
We walk from the airport to our hotel passing WWII pillboxes swallowed by grasses, dwarf willow and unruly wildflowers growing wild at the road’s edge – a reminder that we actually fought the great war here on our own ground.
The town has only two hotels. The $100 a night affair guarantees bloody fights and general rowdiness. For $180 we have a quiet room akin to an aged Super 8 overlooking crab pots and “The Norwegian Rat” saloon across the highway which runs along a narrow strip of flattened fill adjacent to the bay, daring it to reclaim its own.
In volume, Dutch Harbor is the nation’s largest fishing port but the town itself is compact with just 42 miles of road and 5 bridges. Its cluster of plain, straightforward buildings, tend toward vibrant colors which is often the case in gloomy country. With 60” of rain and 90” of snow a year and temperatures ranging from a balmy 41 to 52 F in the summer and 31 to -40 (with a good dose of windchill) in winter, it is difficult to characterize the place as other than gloomy. But not everyone agrees.
Imelda, her roots in Ensenada, Mexico, has lived and worked at the hotel for three years. “I used to work at a plasma center in San Diego. My friend kept saying to go to Alaska”, she tells us. “I finally did. It’s nice. I like the weather. It’s too hot where I lived before”.
A city worker from Redding, California relayed much the same message.
“My thermostat broke in college”, he said. “So here I am while my family home is about to be incinerated by fire”.
Our gracious young waitress from Georgia likes Dutch Harbor for a different reason – she has running water for the first time in 3 years.. She arrived in Fairbanks in a January, no less, eventually migrating to Homer and then here.
“I got together with my neighbor in Homer and made a baby”, she laughs. “I’m trying to get a job at the Norwegian Rat. I often don’t make enough money at the hotel to pay the babysitter.”
She dreams of training as a midwife. “Catching babies is my passion.”, she says.
The world’s churn descends on this remote flyspeck which lies at the heart of the West Coast and Pacific rim shipping routes close to the Bering Sea. The rich waters yield Pollock, Halibut and other species that feed the processing plants and fill giant container ships destined for China, Korea and Japan. A couple of Danish merchant marines we meet as we are all exploring the countryside, confirm they are bound for the orient the following day with a cargo of fish meal.
The human turbulence comes to man the ships that catch the fish, ship it, process it or provide the support without which none of the above would happen. Dutch Harbor manifests in miniature the nexus between America’s economy and the immigrants that make it work.
The Unangan people came first and settled for more than 8,000 years before fur-trading Russians showed up in the mid-1700’s. The unfortunate and predictable occurred after contact with Europe; genocide and introduced diseases took their toll on the native population which is currently less than 3% of the total.
Seems like every nation with a navy popped by once the Russians arrived, shaking up the character of the place. Yet, the Russian influence runs deep. The onion domes of Russian Orthodox churches, simple, whitewashed and weathered, hold state above towns throughout the Aleutians and along the coastal mainland. Many Russian crosses in local graveyards, even in mostly native communities, are inscribed with Russian surnames.
People are still coming. Immigrants from around the world find their way here whether to dig in for what passes for the long term or to work for just a single season.
Filipinos, people from an archipelago far different from this one, run the local Safeway, the only grocery in town. The store serves residents and the sailors that buy in bulk for long days at sea. Some people have worked for 15 or 20 years in the Costco-like facility. They complain of being tired from long hours with few days off except for the two months when they head to the lower 48 or to the Philippines.
They return again and again until they retire and leave for good. Like the vegetation clinging to the rocky, volcanic soil, the inhabitants of Dutch Harbor are persistent but shallow-rooted.
A private vehicle is a baffling luxury on Dutch Island since there is almost nowhere to drive. So taxis run everywhere. Predictably, the taxi drivers come from every corner of the globe.
We meet an Israeli who wants to go home but says there are too many problems. He wants to blame someone but trails off in his monologue before settling on a culprit.
On the other hand, our Vietnamese driver who keeps a small shrine to a golden buddha on the dashboard of her cab, has lived here for 15 years and has no intention of going anywhere. “I brought my mother to live with me. She’s in her 50’s and can’t speak any English”, she says.
The American-Filipino driver, relates his story as he drives us toward Pyramid Peak on an eroding dirt road constructed during the war. “My kids are in high school in the Bay area. The good thing is there is work here but I work 15 hours a day. Just work and sleep”.
Our guy from Redding confirms the taxi drivers report. We crossed paths with him as he was on his way to inspect the site of the annual Tundra Golf Tournament and Festival scheduled for the following weekend near Captains Bay.
“You can’t just get into your car and drive somewhere so we entertain ourselves. We work, sleep, workout and party”.
We had determined early on that there isn’t a movie theater or bowling ally in town but there are plenty of bars.
The port teems with fishermen in transit, mending nets or loading supplies onto boats, greedily eyed by scavenging bald eagles, perched by the dozens atop light posts and roof tops – the ratty, bedraggled juveniles a lamentable spectacle in the drizzle.
The trail to the top of Ballyhoo Peak consists of little more than footsteps gouged into its steep flank, slick with black mud. We kick our way up, marveling at rare, stunning vistas of boat-studded bays and precipitous cliffs which we get only when the mist swirls away momentarily.
The Schwartka WWII ruins at the top look out towards the sea. The concrete fortress was constructed in 1940 but it didn’t deter the Japanese from bombing Dutch Harbor in 1942. The town’s small but informative museum tells the story from the perspective of both sides of the conflict.
Apparently, a rapport was established quickly between the Japanese invaders and the native people. The soldiers were astonished when they first saw the local children running towards them in curiosity. “They looked just like us”, one soldier reported.
We were not surprised to learn that the natives were generally better treated by the invaders than by their fellow countrymen. For the duration of the war, the native population of the Aleutians was evacuated by the American military to filthy internments in Ketchikan where many died or became gravely sick.
