Eva Tcheripanoff Interview

George Gordaoff, Tatiana Nevzoroff, and Eva Kudrin on horse in Kashega, AK. Verso of photograph reads: “George l. A. Gordaiff [Gordaoff] 12 yrs Bad Boy, Miss Tatitona E. D. Nezoroff [Tatiana Nevzoroff], Miss Eva S. A. Kudrin. Kashega, Alaska.”

Photograph courtesy Roberta Gordaoff.

As part of the "Beginning of Memory Project," Ray Hudson conducted interviews with Unangax̂/Aleuts who were forced to evacuate from their homes during World War II. Many of the evacuees from the Aleutians faced years away from their childhood homes, sometimes in deplorable camps. Many communities - the "Lost Villages" - were never resettled.

Eva Tcheripanoff (nee Kudrin) was born in Kashega in 1928 and continued to live there until evacuation during WWII. After the war she married John Tcheripanoff of Akutan and soon afterwards settled in Unalaska.

Download a full transcript of Eva's interview.

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Excerpts from Lost Villages of the Eastern Aleutians: Biorka, Kashega, Makushin

Eva Tcheripanoff’s memories of Kashega are filled with the good times that children often remember. She played and got into mischief. She carried around a doll made from a light-weight rock. Her uncle, Sophie’s brother Vasilii, eventually tired of watching his niece dress and undress a rock and so he carved a wooden doll for her. He attached arms with rubber bands so they moved and Eva’s mother [Sophie] glued yarn on for hair. Sophie also sewed clothes for the doll. …

Once Eva went down to the lake where kayaks (baidarkas) were stored upside down on the grass. She turned one over, pushed it into the water, and crawled inside. Before she knew it she was away from the shore. “And I was just hollering, hollering, you know,” she said. “Finally somebody must have heard me. Must have been the Kudrin family heard me.” Someone launched another kayak and brought her back to land. …

Eva Tcheripanoff’s memories also blur the bombing of Unalaska with the evacuation of Kashega Village. She, too, recalled being outside as Japanese planes flew overhead just as a vessel arrived to remove the villagers. Several vivid memories merged—airplanes passing overhead, the fear of invasion, and the eventual evacuation. …

Left photo: Left to right: Eva Kudrin, Alice Moller, and Tatiana [Nevzoroff] Kudrin.
Right photo: Sophie Kudrin [Pletnikoff] and her daughter Eva Kudrin [Tcheripanoff] at Ward Lake.

Photos courtesy of Mary Diakanoff