Visit To The Aleutians

New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 185, 8 January 1943, Page 10

Visit To The Aleutians

(By

JOHN

FISHER

Tedrecenta

"The New Zealand Listener’ in Stoencu)

HE official organ of the Russian Army, Red Star, in a recent review of the Pacific war position, referred to the action of the Japanese last May in capturing Attu and Kiska. I saw that part of the world fairly recently, as a representative of the ABC, and I was one of the first journalists of any nationality to visit the Aleutian Islands since hostilities began. Most of the Aleutians are prehistoric volcanoes, which have sunk half beneath the waves in the course of the last million years or so. The islands I saw in the war zone were picturesque, but lonely and forbidding. They were huge scraggy piles of rocks rising up to thousands of feet from the sea like a hundred Gibraltars, cloudcapped mountains, lightened only when the sun shines for a few hours, when it does shine, on the target-like tracery of black scarred peaks, and the shining of perpetual snow. There are no trees on these Aleutian Islands, and apart from the area of sea and air warfare, there are few signs of life, except the swarms of seagulls taking a toboggan ride on the water whenever ‘it happens to be calm, and the sea animals, including some whales, disporting themselves. The brightest part of my time in the Aleutian Islands area was the day at Dutch Harbour when I managed to tune into a concert broadcast by the ABC from an Australian town hall, which came through very clearly. Beneath us on one side was the Pacific Ocean, where Abel Tasman, just three centuries ago, was helping to open up the unknown lands of Australia and New Zealand. On the other side was the Bering Sea, which exactly two centuries ago was explored by the Russian navigator of that name. This is just another reminder that our Russian Ally is also a great Pacific Power.