Airport Beach Road (North)

Turn right out of the Visitor Center parking lot onto Airport Beach Road. (To visit the Sitka Spruce Plantation National Historic Landmark, take the first left off Airport Beach Road onto Biorka Drive. Sitka Spruce Park is approximately one block uphill on the left.) Sixty years after the war, only a few structures from Fort Mears remain along Airport Beach Road. In 1942, hundreds of buildings?mess halls, barracks, hospital wards, warehouses, and mechanic shops?surrounded Margaret Bay and extended to the shore of Unalaska Bay. Mile 0.7 - Bombing of Fort Mears (1942) Early on the morning of June 3, 1942, where the Grand Aleutian Hotel now stands and across the street on the shore of Unalaska Bay, Japanese aircraft dropped 16 bombs on Fort Mears. The commanding officer had known for several days that an enemy attack was expected, and had ordered his troops to evacuate the garrison and take cover in trenches and foxholes on the surrounding hills. Tragically, 50 soldiers who had arrived in Dutch Harbor late on the night of June 2 were not informed of the evacuation, and the following morning the bombing killed 25 of these men and injured the others.