Etta Schureman was born in Connecticut in 1881. After high school, she went to college, taught elementary school for five years, then took nurse’s training. In 1922, her sister Marie, a teacher in Montana, was looking for a new “escapade.” She had heard Alaska was looking for teachers and decided to go. The Schureman sisters were unusual for their times — both career women who had chosen work over family, both adventurous and looking for new experiences, both were “free spirits.” Marie talked Etta into accompanying her, because “social standards as well as family concerns dictated that (Marie) shouldn’t make a four thousand-mile trip … without a companion.”
Etta was 42 years old, working as an industrial social worker in Pittsburgh. She wasn’t sure she wanted to leave civilization and its associated culture — education, arts, museums, libraries and people. She didn’t think Alaska would have much to offer, but eventually, she decided a year’s vacation was just the thing, so she agreed.
Marie landed a job teaching in Tanana; she and Etta started their new adventure. Etta was a prolific letter writer. She sent letters home whenever she was able; between the sporadic barge or plane runs, she wrote what was almost a diary of her life in the little Athabascan village she now called home. On that first day, Etta wrote, “To me, that first night in our new home was enchantment itself. I hung out the bedroom window, listening to the silence, which was so great it beat incessantly on the ears. It was a living stillness.”
Not long after they arrived, Marie and Etta were invited to dine with their neighbor, a former Episcopalian missionary. There, she met her destiny, in the person of Charles Foster Jones. Jones was a miner from Ohio, the son of a doctor, but left Ohio before he finished high school, tired of the small town and stern father. He arrived in Washington at the same time news of the Alaska gold strike; he went to Alaska to find his fortune,
It didn’t take long for Marie to fall out of love with Alaska and adventure, and she headed back to the States after a year. Etta, however, fell in love with both Alaska and Jones; they were married April 1, 1923.
Etta took over Marie’s teaching duties, beginning a second career that would last 19 years. Foster, as he was called, continued his prospecting and was active in the community. He also holds a special place in Alaskan history — Foster was one of the mushers who carried the diphtheria serum into Nome during the January 1925 epidemic, 35 miles in 60-below weather.
In 1941, the Alaska Indian Service decided to open a school in Attu, an island far down the Aleutian Chain. Etta was tagged to teach; Foster was hired as a radio operator for the Weather Service. Although it was a remote place, very different from any place either had ever been. Both were delighted to embark on the adventure.
They arrived in Attu in August; Pearl Harbor was still a few months away, but worries about the Japanese were already starting. Their ambition was well known; Attu’s remoteness and proximity to the Asian continent made it a potential target. Etta and Foster waved off everyone’s concerns. Neither felt the island had any strategic or other value for anyone but the Aleuts who had made it their home for generations.
Etta and Foster loved their life in Attu, but their idyllic life ended on June 7, 1942. Plans had been made to evacuate the island due to the Japanese threat, but inclement weather resulted in numerous delays. One day, it was too late. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto landed on Attu with an invasion force of almost 2,000 soldiers, expecting to meet an American fighting force as resistance. What they found was 45 Natives, two white school teachers, and one rusty shotgun. It was no contest.
Everyone was rounded up and kept in the school while the Japanese “searched” the homes, trashing everything they touched. The Japanese believed Foster had sent a warning transmission to the Americans as the Japanese invaded, and accused him of being an American spy. They beat him, and eventually, not satisfied with his answers, shot him in the head. Etta was shipped to Japan with the Natives, and about half died over the course of the war.
The rest of the book, about half, concerns Etta’s years as a prisoner of war in Japan. She was interned with a group of Australian Army and Methodist nurses who had been captured in Rangoon. Etta was captured first and spent a month alone, surrounded by strangers who spoke no English and made no attempt to hide their contempt and hate. Etta was glad to see white women who spoke English.
For three years, these women suffered starvation, beatings, humiliation, chilblains, illness and other privations as their captors completely ignored the Geneva Convention. They were always afraid they would be killed. They knew nothing of the war, or how it was going. When the Allies began the concerted bombing of Japan, they lived in fear that they would die in an attack along with their enemies.
Rescue came on Aug. 31, 1945, after the Japanese surrendered. General Douglas MacArthur’s convoy came through Totsuka, the last place the women had been moved, and when told there were English women in the countryside, sent his aide to check it out. Finally, the prisoners were given food, clothing, baths, medical care and, more importantly, hope. Etta’s family, and Foster’s, has spent the years of her captivity trying desperately to find out what had happened to them. Wild rumors swirled — the island had resisted, Foster and Etta had committed suicide rather than be captured, they were both in Japan. No one knew, until the media broke the story that Etta had been rescued. Even then, it wasn’t until she returned home and told her story that the truth emerged.
Etta retired from teaching, living with her family and spending the remainder of her life trying to put the past behind her. She didn’t talk about her experiences much. She died on Dec. 12, 1965, in Florida.
Because Etta chose not to talk about her experiences in Japan, preferring to focus on her life before the war, not many people have been introduced to her tale of heroism and survival. Etta’s great-niece Mary has told her aunt’s story very well, using letters Etta wrote to her family, an unpublished manuscript written by Etta, as well as unpublished memoirs from Foster’s mining partner Frank Lund, to flesh out the details of a little-known tale from World War II. Although most Alaskans know this is the only state invaded during that war, few know the details. Few knew of the two white school teachers who embraced a harsh life of service to Natives, who stood side-by-side during an invasion.
Etta Jones was truly an ordinary woman who did some extraordinary things. And that, in this adventurer’s book, is what makes a hero.
Libbie Martin is a freelance writer who lives in Fairbanks. She can be reached at martinlibbie@yahoo.com.
Last Letters from Attu
by Mary Breu
Alaska Northwest Books
2009 $16.95
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