by Mary Breu
There are some stories which must be told.
The true story of Etta Jones is one of those stories. In
1922, at the age of 42, Etta Schureman left a busy life in Pittsburgh
to vacation just one year in Alaska .
She met and married her soulmate, Charles Foster Jones. Together, for the next
20 years, they became one with the Alaskan people. Etta was a teacher and
Foster was always there lending his practical skills and first-hand knowledge
of Alaska .
In August, 1941, Etta and Foster accepted positions to Attu , the last island in the Aleutian chain. All 45
people-half of them children-lived in this isolated, wind-swept island
continuing the life lived by their ancestors for centuries. Tensions between America and Russia
were of little concern to the Attu people or
to Etta and Foster.
On June 6, 1942, Attu was
invaded by 2,000 Japanese soldiers and Etta became a Japanese prisoner of war.
She experienced physical deprivation, mental abuse, and emotional trauma in
different Japanese camps where she was supervised by those relentless in their
degradation of prisoners of war.
Etta Jones was a letter-writer. For this, we are grateful
because Mary Breu, the grand-niece of Etta Jones, took these letters combined
them with government documents and archival pictures to make right the story of
Etta Jones as a Japanese prisoner-of-war.
Hattie’s Book Club was privileged to have Mary Breu as their
guest speaker for the March meeting. Writing about a family member who
experienced the horrors of war was not easy, but it needed to be done.
