Rachel Mason shares her extensive research about the Attuans’ wartime ordeal, which led to her recent trip to Otaru, Japan to visit the places where they were held prisoner. (Her presentation that accompanies the audio recording is also posted in iTunes) On June 7, 1942, exactly six months after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese invaded the remote Alaska island of Attu. The soldiers occupied the village for two months, eventually boarding the 41 Attu residents onto a freighter bound for Japan, bringing all the fish they had put up for winter. They were taken to Otaru, a port city on Japan’s northernmost island, where they were held captive until the end of the war. Only 25 Attuans survived, and none of them ever returned to live on Attu. The survivors who were not hospitalized or sent to boarding school were resettled in Atka. Rachel Mason, Ph.D., is the Senior Cultural Anthropologist at the National Park Service, Alaska Region. Her past events at the UAA Campus Bookstore include Return to Lost Villages of the Aleutians (2010); Attu, a Lost Village of the Aleutians (2011); Attu Reunion, Seventy Years Later (2012); Ray Hudson and Rachel Mason present Lost Villages of the Eastern Aleutians (2014)