In August of 1942 I graduated from Moody Bible Institute. I had decided that the place for me in the Lord’s work would be in Alaska. I knew that the Slavic Gospel Association had a number of missionaries working in Alaska and the Russian Church of Chicago had one of its members in Alaska under the auspices of the Slavic Gospel Association. He had spoken to the student body at Moody and told of the need for Christian workers.
I applied to the Slavic Gospel Association, Chicago Ill., and was accepted as a candidate for mission work on Kodiak Island. I went to various churches with Rev. Peter Deyneka, the director of SGA and spoke of the mission work in Alaska. Baptistown Baptist Church agreed to support me, by paying the forty dollars a month that the mission gave to its workers[1].
Prior to leaving for Alaska Rev. Deyneka suggested that I attend the Russian Bible Institute held in the People’s Church in Toronto, Canada. I spent the winter of 1942 there. I was to find out that the Russian language was not used in Alaska, only in the Russian Orthodox Churches who only used the language in the Catachism.
Upon returning home, Baptistown Baptist Church, in conjunction with the Slavic Gospel Assn, held a service prior to my leaving for Alaska. Besides the membership of our church, the Russian-Ukrainian people from the Manville Baptist Church, NJ were also in attendance. The church was filled and the Hunterdon County Democrat reporter at the service estimated that there were four-hundred people in attendance. I think that the figure was too high for the church could only seat about two-hundred people. There were a number that sat in chairs brought in from the Chapel and a number who stood around the sides and back. This probably swelled the audience by another hundred.
By the time I was to leave for Alaska I had to send my application to travel to Alaska to the Naval Control Board and when it arrived I was ready to depart.
In the summer of 1943 I left New Jersey by train and arrived in Seattle Washington where I embarked on the S.S. Alaska for the trip north through the inside passage of southeast Alaska[2]. While riding the inside passage I hardly slept because of the natural beauty. The villages, mountains, falls and glaciers where all gorgeous. At the time the population of the whole of Alaska was only 67,000.
We traveled the inside passage thorough Southeast of Alaska, to Seward and Valdez and then turned south to Kodiak, landing at the Kodiak Naval Base. My trunk did not land with me. I was informed that a room in Kodiak was unavailable so I was invited to stay as a guest at the base until passage was available for Afognak Island where I was scheduled to meet my co-worker to be, Richard Crozier[3]. Richard was there with his sister Barbara and her co-worker Nina Zernov who where at the Mission Station in the village of Afognak.
Richard and I were to go westward to the northwest of Kodiak to the village of Karluk. Upon landing in Kodiak I quickly learned my first lesson about Alaska, which was that we had to WAIT!; for the arrival of a boat, for the change of tides, for suitable weather, and numerous other reasons.
After days of waiting I was informed that the Navy had a tug going to their sawmill on Afognak and would drop me off at the village. We had to wait for the change of the tide because the area had dangerous rip tides and so we waited for slack tide. Before leaving the officer in charge of the base informed me that he would send me a message when my lost trunk would arrive at the base.
When we arrived at Afognak, I learned that we had to wait for the mailboat to take us to Karluk. This boat made but two trips a month around the island, and passengers could board. The fare at that time was ten dollars.
The trip to Karluk from Afognak took us almost two days. We anchored off shore and the men launched the skiff, that lay above the high water mark to pick up the mail and passengers. This village was composed of two hundred fifty Aleuts and four whites. With our arrival the white population increased to six. The occupation of the people was fishing for salmon each summer, and trapping for fox, ermine and otter in the winter. They fished for their own use in the winter through the ice in the river for flounder, and in the straits for cod, rock bass, halibut, trout and herring. In salmon season five species were caught for sale to the canneries. When I arrived the canneries paid one and a half cents for a pink salmon that weighed one and a half to four pounds, they paid three cents for a red salmon that weighed four to seven pounds, three cents for a dog salmon that weighed four to eight pounds. Three cents for a silver salmon which usually weighed five to twelve pounds, King Salmon weighed anywhere from ten to eighty pounds and for this fish they got less than a dollar. Some Kings got to weigh more than 100 pounds but Kings this size where seldom caught in Karluk. These large fish are mainly caught off shore in Southeastern Alaska and with hook and line baited with herring. They also used boats to fish these salmon. Today all fish sold to canneries are sold by the pound, no less than twenty-five cents a pound.
When we arrived ashore the whole village awaited the mail and any passenger on the beach. As soon as the mail is brought to the post office, it is passed out the recipients. The post master calls out the names of those to whom it is addressed.
We learned from the captain of the boat that Gus Antoneson, a carpenter for the Alaska Packers Assn. had an empty cabin that he was sure was available for rent. After the mail was passed out my co-worker and I sought out Gus and he was willing to let us have the cabin for the price of ten dollars a month. The next order of business as to meet with the teachers of the Alaska Native Service to make arrangements for the use of the school house in order to hold Sunday School for children and services for the adults. The first Sunday we met with the adults we told them our purpose of coming to live among them in this village. We also told them that if any need arose in which they need help we were available any time day or night.
Fishing had begun the first part of June, which meant that there were no young men in the village upon our arrival. They were out on their purse seiners and the old men were fishing off the village beaches with their beach seines.
SS Alaska
[1] After he began to earn his own living fishing, Steve informed Baptistown that financial support was no longer necessary. His income became an issue with the SGA, at which point he became an independent missionary, sort of a fisherman who taught Sunday School and preached a sermon on Sunday.
[2] The SS Alaska sunk in a storm in the Gulf of Alaska on its very next trip.
[3] Richard was a retired gentlemen in his 70’s, and stayed in Alaska for just one year.
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