Ivan Sanderson, More "Things," 1969, Pyramid Books
Chapter 6 (pp. 79-88), "Giant Skulls"....
*snip*
The facts came from one of her sons (she was a great-grandmother) who had been an engineer in the U.S. Army during World War II. This man relates the following:
Having volunteered in 1940 for active duty, he was sent to join an engineering unit that built the Alcan Highway to Alaska. When this was completed, he was sent, with this unit, the 1081st Company, Maintenance Engineers, to the island of Kodiak for a rest period, and was then shipped with his unit to a tiny island named Shemya that lies half a mile east of Atu (and which is separated from it only by a half-mile shallow channel) that is the last of the Aleutians going towards Asia. The Japanese were still on Atu and the purpose of landing on Shemya was to turn the island into an airstrip, it being flat and low, except for a small rise at the eastern end. Enemy resistance had been expected here but, on landing, only one dead Japanese soldier was found. However, there were neat signs all around the island stating that it, and anything found on it, was the property of (of all things) the Smithsonian Institution! When these signs were erected was not known to this engineering outfit--whether they were pre-war and left by the Japanese, erected by the enemy, or by some military unit that had got there before them. This business is odd to say the least; but wait.
According to my correspondent, her son stated that when the bulldozers arrived, they started leveling the whole island of small bumps and finally tackled the slight elevation at the east end. Curiously, this was said to have been composed of many layers of "muck", silt, and soil, with underlying sedimentary rock, while the lower land and the beaches were composed of a mixture of sedimentary and non-sedimentary rocks and boulders. As this eastern bump was scooped off, bones of all kinds began to come to light, first, those of whales, seals, walrus and such, but later and lower, those of extinct animals like mammoths. Finally, at a depth of about six feet, what appeared to be a graveyard of human remains was uncovered. These were wholly of crania (not whole skulls) and the long bones of the legs. Associated with them were numerous doll-like artifacts carved out of mammoth and walrus ivory, but "fossilized"--after they had been carved. There were also chipped flint instruments (no flint on the island) and other bone and stone implements of both very small and a rather large size.
The crania of the human skulls, which are categorically stated to be of modem human conformation with full foreheads (not sloping, ape-like ones with big brow-ridges) measured from 22" to 24" from base to crown. What is more, every one of them is said to have been neatly trepanned!
*Snip*
To go back, though, I find that I should report some much less pleasant implications. First, there is this curious business of the island being clearly marked "off-limits" as being the perquisite of the Smithsonian. I do not quite understand this. But then comes a much less pleasant conundrum. it is alleged by my primary informants that the men aboard the island made a sort of hobby of collecting the artifacts found with the bones, but that they were told to turn them all in, under penalty. However, one man who had been a museum preparator, knowing something of their value and possible significance, made a small collection that he hoped to take back to the mainland. This was discovered, and the man was immediately arrested and held incommunicado. Later, when a civilian crew of engineers came to relieve the enlisted outfit, this man was allegedly shipped back to the States "in irons", as the saying goes, and was dispatched to (the military) Leavenworth.
Then come a number of flat statements from various sources; to wit, that a number of these skulls, or bits of them, plus other bones, some of the "dolls", and other artifacts, were collected, crated, and dispatched to the Smithsonian. I have no evidence that this was (or is) so, apart from these written statements. However, now thoroughly irked by all this, I made formal application to the Smithsonian for some clarification of all this--either a written denial of it, or some information as to just what happened to any material of this nature that was shipped to them from the Island of Shemya, circa 1945-46. I have never received a reply.
Either this whole story (and I would emphasize that it is just that, rather than a "report!", as of now) is pure hog-wash, or it is true. If the former, how come such very sensible-sounding persons have written as they have; and how is it that there is confirmation, up to a point, from ex-military personnel who were at the spot when this happened? If it is true, then where the hell are the finds? Why have they not been examined, published upon, and otherwise made public? As my original informant said in one of her letters: "Perhaps you are right in saying that these people just cannot face rewriting all their textbooks."
