Charles Foster Jones

Charles Foster Jones (1 May 1879 – 8 June 1945) was an American ham radio operator and weather observer who along with his wife Etta were the only white couple on the Aleutian Island of Attu. During the Japanese occupation of Attu he was executed by Japanese soldiers, he was the only civilian to be executed by the Japanese on American soil.

Early life

Charles Foster Jones was born on 1 May 1879 in St. Paris, Ohio. He was the second child of Dr. Caleb Jones (2 June 1851 – 26 July 1924) and Sarah E. Jones ( Morris; 10 June 1851 – 29 September 1879). his family nicknamed him Chawky. When Jones was less than a year old his paternal mother Sarah died from Typhoid fever, which she contracted five weeks earlier. A year later in 1880 Caleb later married Julia Anna Jones ( Goodin; October 1862 – 1 December 1954), the two would have a total of six children together.

In around 1897 Jones would attend the University of Puget Sound, however in 1898 during the Klondike Gold Rush he dropped out, and took several mining jobs for over 20 years in Alaska. In the early 1920s in Tanana, Jones met his future wife Etta Eugenie "Tetts" Schureman (30 September 1879 – 12 December 1965) who was a working at a post office, Schureman was a trained school teacher and nurse. The two would marry on 1 April 1923.

Later life

The couple would then travel across Alaska for several years, during this time, Charles made his own radio and got a license to operate it. At some point the couple became an employees for the Bureau of Indian Affairs and in September 1941 they relocated to Attu Island which at the time had a population of around 45 Aleuts, making the couple the only white inhabitants of the island. The two would live in a small village at Chichagof Harbor. The couple were tasked with sending daily weather reports, keeping the school in repair and directing the music band and entertainment.

Death

On 4 June 1942 while out on a boat trip Etta noticed the military build up at Dutch Harbor, during the Battle of Dutch Harbor. On 7 June, while the Attuans were returning home from church, 1,170 Japanese soldiers attacked them and rounded them up. Charles who had just finished his daily weather report, told the men stationed at Dutch Harbor that "The Japs are here," which was the last time anyone heard from Attu's inhabitants until the end of the war. Charles then destroyed the radio shortly before being captured by the Japanese.

The next day Japanese soldiers are believed to have tortured Jones, before demanding him to fix the broken radio, when he refused they shot him in the head and beheaded him. When the soldiers informed Etta that Charles had died, they told her he had slit his wrists, they would then showed her his body which they would behead in front of her. The soldiers then forced two Aleut men, Mike Lokanin and Alfred Prokopioff to bury his body, they would bury his body by the church and would mark it with a bottle.

Aftermath

On 21 June Etta arrived at a detention camp in Yokohama, while the 44 other Attuans were taken to another camp, where 16 would die from malnutrition and illness. Etta eventually befriended a group of 18 Australian nurses who had been captured in what is now Papua New Guinea, when they arrived Etta was reportedly bewildered and was found weeping behind a potted plant when the group arrived. Due to the women being much younger than Etta, she thus became a "surrogate mother" for group. Etta along with the 18 nurses were later moved to a detention camp in Totsuka. Etta was reportedly actually treated with kindly and was respected while in detention, the Japanese called her "Oba San" which meant the aged one, and was seen as a title of respect.

In May 1943 the US army liberated Attu, but found no trace of Foster or any of the island's inhabitants.

Etta ultimately survived the war and was freed on 17 August 1945 but was sent home on 1 September 1945, she was given a check of $7,371.00 in compensation by the BIA.

After the war was over the two men who buried Foster and had also survived their detainment, Mike Lokanin and Alfred Prokopioff later led searchers to where they buried Jones’ body. After the discovery of his body he was reburied at the Fort Richardson National Cemetery.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Jones, Charles Foster
1879 births
1942 deaths
June 1942 in North America
World War II civilian prisoners held by Japan
American torture victims
American murder victims
American civilians killed in World War II
Extrajudicial killings in World War II
Aleutian Islands campaign
Attu Island
1942 murders in the United States