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Japanese bombs fell on the Aleutian Islands during World War II, a historical fact most people know. One of the little known events was the balloon bomb attacks on other parts of Alaska and the Pacific Coast.

ANGOON

The salmon industry rushed to meet the needs for canned salmon when World War I began to escalate. This became a staple food for the soldiers in the trenches. Because of this, two short-lived canneries were built in 1918 at Washington Bay, which indents Admiralty Island on its northwest shore off Chatham Strait.

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Can you believe that Billy the Kid, a name prominent in the history of the West, has a connection with Alaska in Wrangell? It was one of those "six degrees of separation" moments for our late museum director, Dennis Chapman, while he was reading "Billy the Kid: The Endless Ride" by Michael Wallis.

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She knows who you are - you went into labor on the deck, tossed into the drunk tank, smuggled a dog onto the solarium, travel to Kake every other week, eat more ketchup than fries. She knows about you, Lavina Sargent does. She knows because she worked as a purser for the Alaska Marine Highway System for close to three decades.

Many of my friends have stories of encounters with an octopus, that tentacle-legged mollusk of the seas.

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As robins arrive in the spring so, too, do Wrangellites flock to the Nolan Center for Wrangell's annual Health Fair. This year's event saw record numbers of blood screenings performed, including a new test, which measures vitamin D level. The Wrangell Medical Center lab, working with volunteers from the Fire Department and community, drew blood for 13,310 separate tests this year. The lab processed 510 Health Profiles, up from 461 last year, and 330 people had the new vitamin D test. Wrangell Medical Center has offered the $25 reduced-rate screenings at the Health Fair for over 15 years, screenings that cost anywhere from $125.66 (HA1C) to $546.39 (Health Profile) when normally ordered by a doctor.

Wednesday, April 24

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ANGOON

Writing about Native villages is a perilous task for me. The Elders who started Hydaburg are no longer with us. And the memories of the descendents often do not include many of the things that I want to know. Why did the people decide to start what was said to be one of the most progressive Native villages at that time and not stay in their traditional villages? I had to rely on what the "white man" wrote at the time.

Five Alaska Territorial Guard heroes were honored in Ketchikan March 5 and were given their official U.S. Army honorable discharge certificates, nearly 70 years after their admirable service in defending Alaska during World War II.

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ANGOON

The U.S. Forest Service announced recently it would partner with Oregon State University and Sealaska to plant experimental plots in Southeast Alaska. Red and yellow cedar seedlings will be planted between Connell and Harriett Hunt Lake near Ketchikan. Some seedlings will also go to Prince of Wales Island. These four-inch to two-feet tall seedlings will be planted in areas recently harvested. The experiments are to determine how to prevent deer browsing from killing young trees.

Wednesday, March 27

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The Cutting Packing Company, a San Francisco-based corporation, built one of the first two canneries in Alaska in 1878. Although two canneries were built and operated that season, the facility at Klawock is often called the first cannery in Alaska. It appears that the one at Klawock holds the honor of being the "first" because it put salmon in the cans before Cutting Packing did later in the season.

ANGOON

ANGOON

It is difficult, when standing on the Ketchikan Creek bridge overlooking Thomas Basin, to see the actual "mouth" of this creek. In the mid-1880s, when vast numbers of pink salmon returned there, they swarmed up a stream that rushed across an extensive tide flat extending over what is today Thomas Basin. Over the years the basin was dredged and much of the Federal building site and the building west of the basin are built on fill that now covers the tide flats.

This was a photograph of the Clark and Martin saltery! Huddled over a desk in the National Archives building outside of Washington D.C., I was pouring over a dusty, original manuscript written by Jefferson Moser. This Naval captain, commanding the U.S. Fish Commission's steamer ALBATROSS, had undoubtedly proof-read these very pages about his voyage to Alaska in 1897.

Roller Derby is taking off in Southeast Alaska - so don't be surprised if there's a run on booty shorts, crazy socks and stockings, and wild make up in your town.

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Elizabeth Peratrovich is the face behind the civil rights movement in Alaska. Strong. Beautiful. Visionary.

My fellow Wrangellites who like to garden usually grow potatoes. Despite the cold and wet weather last summer, we grew red, white and Yukon gold potatoes. However, potatoes are nothing new in Southeast Alaska. It is said that Tlingit and Haida people had gardens more than 200 years ago, and potatoes were one of their most important crops.

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Speculating as I search the forest for artifacts at an abandoned place is a special treat for me. What was this piece of equipment used for? Why are those fragments of pottery at this spot? Was it a home or a bunkhouse? Instead, did a workman drop a cup or a plate under the boardwalk? What was built on these pilings?

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ANGOON

The steam freighter "Edith" in 1915 headed to Southeast Alaska to begin the salvage on the steamer "Ramona" at the Spanish Islands, the "Olympia" in Prince William Sound, and possibly help with the salvage of the freighter "Delhi" on Straits Island. Before she was rigged to do such work, she started life as a yacht built in San Francisco in 1882. After that she changed hands so often that no one attempted to recall the owners. She was rebuilt so often she no longer resembled the palatial yacht.

Wednesday, February 6

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The opportunity for schools to switch from five to four days each week may soon become available in Alaska. If passed, House Bill 21, a three-year Pilot Program sponsored by Rep. Peggy Wilson, R-Wrangell and Rep. Tammie Willson, R-Fairbanks/North Pole, will take effect July 1, 2013. Alaskan school districts that apply for the change to a four-day school week must show satisfactory proof of community support and a formula for equivalent educational hours to a five-day week with an agreement to deliver quarterly reports on the resulting effects of the change.

The 7.5 earthquake on Jan. 5 of this year caused quite a commotion, with people waking in moving beds and sounds of things falling, rooms seeming to sway. Although Craig was the nearest to the quake off-shore, in Southeast it was Wrangell that took the brunt of the damage. People who subscribe to GCI's services lost their internet, telephone and television. The fiber optic cables, that made those services possible, had broken. Rumors flew around town. GCI funded free videos at City Market. What about all those football fans and the playoff games? Bars opened to provide coverage. Friends joined friends with alternate TV providers for the collegiate playoffs.

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Editor's note: Second in a two-part series on Kasaan's Whale House restoration.

Wednesday, January 23