The bloodiest battle in the Aleutians...

was fought on Attu Island in 1943. A U.S. Coast Guard station is located there today, and we explored the area of intense fighting sticking to existing roads framed with coastal paintbrush and wild iris:

Here's an image of Terrible Mountain that sits above Massacre Valley, where you can see the locations of former Japanese gun emplacements:

Here's a shot inside an old Japanese bunker, and that peculiar object seen through the doorway is a memorial to the fallen:

This is why we stuck to the roads, mindful of the cautionary poster seen on Adak about unexploded ordinance: