Little Kiska Island, at the far western end of the Aleutian Islands in Alaska, is a remote speck of land that was heavily contested during World War II.
In an attack possibly timed to draw away U.S. forces before the planned invasion of Midway Island, about 1,100 miles northwest of Pearl Harbor, the Japanese military
captured
Kiska Island, along with Little Kiska, in June 1942.
While the Japanese occupation lasted a little more than a year, it left a far longer imprint on the map of the three-square-mile Little Kiska. A one-mile creek that flows southeast into the Pacific Ocean was named Nazi Creek — a designation given by Americans, not by the Japanese.
Until last week, when it was officially renamed, the creek was the only geographic feature in the United States with “Nazi” in its name, according to a United States Geological Survey database of place names.
The name was “arbitrarily applied to features in this area” by the United States Army Air Forces for tactical purposes during World War II, an entry in the
Dictionary of Alaska Place Names
says. The name appeared on an Army map in 1953.
The name was picked because the U.S. military needed a name beginning with “N” to correspond with the “N” square on an
alphanumeric grid
it had superimposed on the area.
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