Alaska Territorial Guard Service

Between 1942 and 1947 roughly 6,600 people served in the Alaska Territorial Guard, a territorial militia raised to defend a territory the Japanese had invaded at Attu and Kiska. Most were Alaska Native, they served across more than a hundred communities, many were unpaid, and a number were younger or older than any regular service would have taken. They were not treated as veterans for most of their lives. In 2000 Congress directed the Secretary of Defense to issue discharges recognising Territorial Guard service as active federal service, and the law was signed that August. Members and survivors have been receiving honorable discharges since, and the Territorial Guard task force within the Alaska Department of Military and Veterans Affairs still works to locate members and families and to document service, because the records are incomplete and many members died before the recognition arrived. That history is why Alaska statutes keep naming a unit disbanded in 1947, and no federal benefit list will explain it. This entry exists so a reader who encounters the phrase in four other entries knows what it is. Where it appears: The veteran's land discount in AS 38.05.940 accepts ninety days or more of Alaska Territorial Guard service as an alternative to ninety days of active duty, on the same twenty-five percent terms. The state employment preference in AS 39.25.159 counts Territorial Guard service of 181 days or more as qualifying service in its own right, outside the list of qualifying war periods. The same section's definition of disabled veteran reaches a person disabled in the line of duty while serving in the Territorial Guard. The death gratuity in AS 26.10.080 lists Territorial Guard service as one of the routes that makes a veteran qualified, alongside the Alaska Army and Air National Guard and the Alaska Naval Militia. The private employer preference in AS 23.88.010 names the Territorial Guard among the services whose members an employer may prefer. The World War II high school diploma program under AS 14.03.077 covers Territorial Guard members explicitly. And the Alaska Veterans and Pioneers Home accepts a discharge from the Territorial Guard on the same footing as one from the armed forces. Alaska designates October 18 each year to honour Territorial Guard service, and the governor issues a proclamation. For a family, the practical point is that a relative's Territorial Guard service is worth documenting even now. An honorable discharge can still be issued posthumously, and it is the document that opens the state programs above and, where the member served long enough, federal retirement or survivor benefits.