White House: No pensions for World War II veterans

Swearing-in ceremony for Alaska Territorial Guardsmen (undated photo: University of Alaska, Fairbanks by way of Alaska digital archives)

The Obama administration has advised Congress to cut off pensions for 26 elderly members of the World War II–era Alaska Territorial Guard who served the nation without pay during the Japanese attack.

The administration sent a "strongly worded" message to Congress concerning its priorities for a military spending bill, and the service members didn't make the cut.

The Army changed its minimum retirement policy in January to no longer include service in the Guard toward the 20-year service requirement. A Senate military spending bill up for a vote in the Senate lets the 26 former Guard members count their service as active military duty so they may receive retirement pay.

Alaska state lawmakers passed a bill to compensate the veterans until Congress came up with a permanent solution.

The White House said Sept. 25 that it's not "appropriate to establish a precedent of treating service performed by a state employee as active duty for purposes of the computation of retired pay."

However, Alaska did not become a state until Jan. 3, 1959, and was an organized territory at that time.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, called the Obama administration's statements "deeply disappointing, bordering on insensitive."

"The administration's justification, which is that the legislation will set the precedent of treating service as a state employee as federal service, defies logic and history," she said. "Sixty-two years after the Territorial Guard was disbanded, the Obama administration minimizes the contribution of this gallant unit to America's success in World War II by calling its service 'state service.'"

More than 6,600 Alaskans volunteered to serve in the Alaska Territorial Guard, a component of the U.S. Army organized in response to Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor Dec. 7, 1941. According to the Tundra Drums, the male and female volunteers ranged in age from 11 to 80 years old, and they guarded their assigned territory with no pay and little equipment until the Alaska Territorial Guard was disbanded in 1947.

Because Alaska was still a territory and not an official U.S. state, the volunteers' enlistments were not counted as federal military service until 2004.

In January, Alaska's then-Gov. Sarah Palin learned the retirement payments to Alaska's Territorial Guard would be cut off, so she wrote a letter to President Obama.

"This unfortunate decision was made without any notice to those affected and will cost a group of elderly Alaska veterans a significant portion of their retirement income at a time when the cost of living, particularly in rural Alaska, is substantially higher than in the rest of the United States," she wrote.

"Prior to World War II, Alaska's territorial Governor was authorized by Congress to organize a two-branch military response organization – the organized National Guard, and the ATG, which would mobilize to help defend Alaskans in the event of an invasion. An estimated 6,600 men and women, mostly Alaska Indians, Eskimos, and Aleuts, responded to that call. Instead of hunting, trapping and fishing, they patrolled rural Alaska and served as the eyes and ears of the Army for more than five years without pay and benefits."

Palin said it took nearly 60 years before those men and women would be honored for their service to the country – and most died waiting for that recognition. She said the service of those soldiers is to Alaska what the service of the militia at Lexington and Concord was to New England.

"Now they are being told, again, that their ATG service is not worthy of federal recognition, and that is not right," she wrote. "These people are our heroes."