A Coast Guard Cutter pulled rank and Westerdam had stand offshore and tender passengers into Dutch Harbor, the port for Unalaska. 

We disembarked at the Carl E. Moses small boat harbor. “Small” is a relative term in Alaska.  The harbor was full of Bering Sea Crabbers, many up from Seattle. While folks with disabilities were disappointed at the need to tender in, fans of “The Deadliest Catch” seemed thrilled to see their favorite Crabbers tied up in port.  I see many of these boats in Sitka during the March Herring run and it was fun to see familiar profiles.  I also enjoyed sailing into Carl Moses’ Harbor.  

Alaska is a young state, and I personally knew many of the people memorialized in Alaska place names.  Carl was a legislator elected as a Republican, who stitched parties to become a Democrat, switched again to represent the Alaska Independence Party and finally returned to the Democratic fold.  Party allegiances are fluid in Alaska.  We have a tradition of multi partisan coalitions in the legislature.  Currently the Alaska State Senate is run by such a coalition.  Moses was the longest serving member in the history of the Alaska House and I had the privilege of working with him on Public Broadcasting issues.

Lauren, who manages KUCB (Unalaska Community Broadcasting) met us at the harbor and took us in tow for the day.  Of course, we spent time at the station, which is in an old military chapel left over from World War II.  Lauren is setting up a temporary exhibit at the Museum of the Aleutians that will mount in October on the history of radio in Unalaska. Suzi has written a for the Alaska Historical Society on Alaska radio in World War II and I have interviewed many of the Alaska radio pioneers.   We reviewed some of her copy.  It will be a great exhibit.

We also visited the museum itself. We were particularly interested the museum’s take on the Russian American Company, Alexander Baranof and the history of that period, which is closely tied to Sitka’s history.  

We visited the Cathedral of the Holy Ascension.  In an earlier iteration it was the church of Ivan Evseyevich Popov who took the name of Ivan Veniaminov (John Benjamin) when he became a priest.  After Unalaska, he became bishop of Sitka and the Russian Far East, building St Michael’s Cathedral and the Russian Bishop’s House in Sitka.  He was a linguist and translated much of the bible into the Aleut and Tlingit languages. He moved back to Russia and became Metropolitan of Moscow.  He is now known in the Orthodox Church as St. Innocent of Alaska.

The cathedral has many icons.  During World War II the native population was forcibly relocated to Southeast Alaska “for their own protection.” And American troops either burned homes to keep them from falling into Japanese hands (The Japanese bombed Dutch Harbor and occupied two of the Aleutian Islands) or took them over for their own housing, stealing many of the native artifacts for their “souvenirs.”  The evacuation was hasty and many of the icons were either buried to protect them or taken with them.  Some were either oiled or shellacked to protect them.  Both processes darkened them and there is now a restoration project underway.

It was a full day, but the highlight was going out into the Tundra, dotted with old bunkers left over from World War II.  I enjoyed taking pictures of the local plants.  There are many bald eagles in Unalaska and I wondered, without big trees, where they nested.  They nest in dugout areas of hillsides. 

But the point of our outing was to pick blueberries.  You can do it here without fear of running into that bears that you compete with in Southeast Alaska.

 

Lauren says the berries are best just after the first big frost, but these were pretty darned good, bigger and sweeter than the blueberries in Sitka.