Unalaska Town Site

Turn right out of the Visitor Center parking lot onto Airport Beach Road; drive south on Airport Beach Road and cross over the bridge to Unalaska Island. Continue downhill past City Hall and cross the Iliuliuk River Bridge. On the north side of the bridge, Airport Beach Road becomes 5th Street. At the first stop sign, turn left onto Broadway Avenue. Mile 2.8 - Burma Road Chapel (1942) The former Burma Road Chapel, now the Unalaska Convention and Visitors Bureau, is the only remaining military church on Unalaska Island and Amaknak Island from the World War II era. Despite new doors, windows, and paint, the building is still recognizable as a 1940s-era structure. The Sitka spruce on each side of the chapel were likely planted soon after the chapel was built, as part of the military tree-planting program. Mile 3.1 - Bomb Site (1942): Bureau of Indian Affairs Hospital Just past the intersection of Broadway Avenue and Cathedral Way is the site where the Bureau of Indian Affairs Hospital once stood. In early June 1942, hospital personnel received word from base intelligence that an enemy air strike was expected at Dutch Harbor. The hospital staff immediately moved patients to nearby dugout shelters. On June 4, a Japanese bomb hit next to the hospital, severely damaging the building. Only two people were in the hospital at the time, the head nurse and the janitor, but neither was injured. In an interview, ward attendant Martha Tutiakoff recalled that the explosion “tore out the whole end of the building and destroyed the nurses’ quarters and all their belongings. It twisted and shattered the rest of the building...[but] there was no fire” (The Williwaw War). The hospital was rebuilt, but burned in the 1950s.