Lillian Alling by Susan Smith-Josephy

told me the following incident.
    As a young boy—somewhere around fourteen or fifteen—he had lived in a very small community in the Soviet far east named Provideniya [on the southern tip of the Chukotka peninsula], which is about 170 or 180 miles from the present town of Wales, Alaska, across the Bering Strait. He stated that one afternoon while on an errand for his mother he saw a crowd gathered on the waterfront and several official-looking men were present, questioning a woman and three Eskimo men. He said he recognized that the Eskimos were from the Diomede Islands in the Strait by their dress, but the woman was differently dressed, like a European or an American.
    He remembered the woman telling the officials she had come from America where she said she had been unable to make a living or make friends (of necessity I’m condensing much of what I was told to save space). She said she had had to walk “a terrible long way because no one would lift as much as a finger to help me in any way because they didn’t want to—or couldn’t understand—my feelings. I tried to make friends at first, but everyone wanted no part of me—as a foreigner—and that so deeply hurt me I couldn’t bear it and so I began to walk. I knew it was far and it would be hard but I had to do it even if no one understood. And I did it!”
    He told me he saw the girl and the Eskimos led away—he never saw them again—but the memory was to linger with him always. He also stated this took place in the fall of 1930—he was very positive of the date because he stated his parents and his family were moved two years later farther westward to a place named Ust Yansk where his father fished commercially.
    For several years all of this sort of haunted me—all mysteries do, in one way or another—but I never could figure out any answer. Then this past week I happened to pick up your magazine and saw the article.
    Now I’m really curious! Is it possible that the girl with the three Eskimos could have been Lillian Alling? The Eskimos were definitely dressed as the Eskimos of the Little and Big Diomede Islands do. The only thing is—no black and white dog was visible or I’m very certain my friend would have said so. Anyway, knowing the people and the country as well as I do—I’ve spent nearly two-thirds of my life in Alaska—I’m very, very sure Lillian made it! Though, of course, I have no proof. 8
    According to the US Veterans Gravesites listings, a man by the name of Arthur F. Elmore (June 17, 1924–November 14, 1985) did indeed serve in the US Army in World War II, beginning February 12, 1943. And as stated in his letter, Elmore may have been in Manchuria at the end of the Second World War serving with the 1.5 million Soviet men stationed in the region at that time. Could Elmore be right about Lillian’s fate?
    If Lillian reached Siberia, she would still have had to face the political upheaval of the Soviet Union, not to mention the barren terrain. But if any traveller could weather these conditions, it was Lillian.
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Notes
(1) Hrdlicka, Ales,
Alaska Diary 1926–1931
. Lancaster, Pennsylvania: The Jaques Cattel Press, 1944.
(2) Albee, Ruth and Bill. “Don’t Pity the Poor Eskimo,” Part I,
Popular Mechanics
, November 1938, pages 137A and 139A.
(3) Madsen, Charles, with John Scott Douglas.
Arctic Trader
. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1957, pages 142–143.
(4) Email correspondence. Blitz Information Russia, April 23, 2009, used finding-aids in the newspaper department of the Russian National Library. Other newspapers started their publications a few years later:
Sovetskaia Chukotka
[Soviet Chukotka], published in Anadyr since 1933;
Maiak Severa
[Lighthouse of North], published in Providenya since 1936;
Poliarnaia zvezda
[North Star], since 1938;
Magadanskaia Pravda
[Magadan Pravda], since 1935; and others, published in Pevek,