By Anjuli Grantham
“That’s what I was doing. I was taking a banya.” Sally
Carlough related her story of surviving the 1964 earthquake and tsunami in the
village of Kaguyak to a class of middle school and high school students last
month. The students were enrolled in a two-week history and film intensive,
during which they researched, shot, and edited their own mini-films about the
history of the Good Friday Earthquake and Tsunami in the Kodiak Archipelago.
Alutiiq elder Sally Carlough shares her memories of
surviving the
destruction of Kaguyak. She is now a proud grandmother and great
grandmother. Image courtesy Kodiak Historical Society.
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Sally turned seventy the day she came to speak to the class.
It was nearly fifty years ago that she was in that banya with her one year old
daughter, Diane. When the world started shaking, she quickly dressed and ran
from the sweat bath. She remembered looking up behind her and seeing a wave
towering overhead. As she dashed up the snowy hill behind Kaguyak on the south
end of Kodiak Island, she saw as the tide rose higher and higher behind her.
Her cousin, Joe Melovedoff, had a radio transmitter and quickly issued a
warning to the village of Old Harbor, thirty miles away. This warning certainly
saved lives in Old Harbor.
Several tidal waves struck Kaguyak that evening, measuring
between thirty and fifty feet high. In between waves, village men attempted to
salvage supplies from houses and move skiffs and boats to safety. In the
process Nick Zeedar and the village chief, Simmie Alexandroff, drowned. A young
couple from Outside happened to be hiking in the vicinity, and the husband
(ironically a geologist) also died at Kaguyak that day.
Sally’s father, Walter Melovedoff, was a reader in Kaguyak’s
Russian Orthodox church. Candles were salvaged from the church, and the icons
that had been hastily grabbed from houses were held up. In the snow, the thirty-or-so
villagers held a service, praying for the waves to stop.
One of the very few photos that exist of Kaguyak, depicting
a family
waiting for a flight to Kodiak in the 1950s. Image courtesy Kodiak
Historical Society, P 734-14.
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In the morning, Kaguyak villagers saw that only three houses
in the village were left standing. The newly constructed church was completely
swept away. Aside from some blankets and clothing, most everyone lost all of
their possessions. The village wells were filled with salt water due to the
subsidence caused from the earthquake. The Bureau of Indian Affairs transported
the villagers from Kodiak to Anchorage. There, it was decided that moving back
to Kaguyak would not be possible. Instead, some villagers elected to move to
the nearby village of Akhiok.
Today, very few pictures remain of the historic village of
Kaguyak. “We lost everything,” Sally emphasized, and this is likely why Kodiak
museums only have two photos of the village in their collections, combined. Once
an important trading center for the fur trade, now it is a geographic feature
on maps of Kodiak and the home village for a handful of Alutiiq elders. Yet,
Sally sharing her story with Kodiak youth helps to keep the memory of the
abandoned village alive. “You must learn to survive,” Sally told the students,
after describing her experience. “Know what plants to eat. Know how to survive
in an emergency.”
Assirtuq
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