Gregory Golodoff, the last surviving person in Attu, Alaska reportedly passed earlier this month at the age of 84.
Death of Gregory Golodoff (Photo: Stars and Stripes)
Memories of Gregory Golodoff, The Last Surviving Person in Alaska
According to VOA News, Gregory Golodoff, the last surviving person in Alaska during World War II had finally passed. He spent most of his life on a quiet island in Alaska, living an ordinary life – fishing crab, and serving as the council president of their village.
The death of Golodoff reopened the memories of a long-forgotten Japanese invasion that prompted the World War II battle. Gregory Golodoff was only a young child in 1942 when the Japanese Imperial Army invaded his village in the Western Aleutians.
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Gregory Golodoff Survival During Japanese Invasion on North American Soil
KTOO reports that Gregory Golodoff was one of the 41 survivors of the residents who were imprisoned in Japan after Japanese troops captured the remote Attu Island. He was only 3 when the island was taken and recently died in Anchorage. His sister, Elizabeth “Liz” Golodoff Kudrinn, the second-to-last surviving in Alaska, died in February at 82. While three of the Golodoff siblings had died in captivity.
The effort during World War II on North American soil was reclaimed in 1943 amid frigid rain and became known as World War II’s “forgotten battle.” Many Japanese soldiers had perished during the war and roughly 550 U.S. soldiers died.
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