In May 1942, the Japanese Navy, with the help of the Army, planned an attack on Attu and 1,134 soldiers led by Leutenant-Commander Hozumi landed on the island on June 8th. At that time, the island was inhabited by 42 Aleuts and two Americans -- radio engineer Foster Jones and his wife Etta, a primary school teacher. The couple attempted suicide, fearing capture by the Japanese military. The husband died but the wife recovered after receiving treatment from Japanese military doctors.

During the occupation, the Japanese military was air bombed but suffered no serious damage. A military photographer, Kichiyoshi Sugiyama, took pictures of the friendly association between Japanese soldiers and local children. After two months of occupation, the Hozumi regiment was ordered to move from Attu to Kiska Island. As they feared possible information leaks from the Aleuts in Attu after their departure, they decided to relocate all of them to Japan.

The 42 Aleuts (one of them died on the ship) were lodged in small rooms of roughly 14 square meters in a dormitory for single employees of the National Railroad in Wakatake-Cho, Otaru City in Hokkaido. A local policeman lived with them as custodian. Although not mandatory, they worked for a soap factory one kilometer from the dormitory from 9:30 in the morning to 4:00 in the afternoon and were paid one yen a day.

However, they found Japanese food poor in comparison with the abundant salmon, seal and whale of Attu. After their return, an American newspaper cited them as complaining that they were fed smelly fish and rotten vegetables, but these were in fact dried fish and pickled vegetables. Although some bread and meat was rationed, on the whole they could not adapt to the local diet and often became sick. Since their first contact with Russians in the 18th century, the Aleut population had sharply decreased from originally 20,000 to 2,000 by the 1940s due to the spread of small pox, syphilis and tuberculosis.

Upon their landing on Otaru, about half of them --twenty -- were already suffering from advanced tuberculosis. Their symptoms had been diminished by the hi-protein and hi-calorie diet of Attu, but quickly resurfaced due to poor hygienic conditions on the ship and inadequate nutrition in the Japanese diet. The same was seen in America: all 881 Aleuts living in the Aleutian Islands excepting Attu were forcibly relocated to southwestern Alaska. (Americans were allowed to stay on the Aleutian Islands) and 40% of them, about the same percentage as in Japan, died in the camp of tuberculosis. In Otaru, doctors in Wakatake-cho visited the Aleut dormitory everyday to provide health care, and those in serious conditions were hospitalized. Nevertheless, many Aleuts died from tuberculosis, a terminal illness of that period.

Later they were moved from Wakatake-cho to a former school building in Shimizu-cho, but their life was for most part spent in the sanitorium in Otaru.

Source: http://home.att.ne.jp/sun/RUR55/E/epage15.htm#157