In 1979, Fairbanks Army veteran Darrell Frank packed his bags for a deployment to Iran that never came. He was part of the Division Ready Force at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. His unit was preparing to parachute into the Middle East during the Iran hostage crisis, when militants held 52 Americans at the U.S. embassy.
“We had all our gear ready, and we got the call to go to the airport,” he said. “And they took us into this area with barbed wire and armed guards walking around it so nobody would run away.”
The orders got called off. The hostages eventually were released, but the crisis marked a new era of hostility between the U.S. and Iran's then-new theocratic government.
“It would have been a battle,” Frank said. “We signed up for it, and we were like, ‘Yeah, this is what we've been training for.’”
As the war in Iran stretches on, many veterans, like Frank, are reflecting on past wars and weighing the risks ahead. Now retired from the Army, Frank is the president of the Alaska Native Veterans Association. As he sipped coffee at the River City Cafe in downtown Fairbanks, he said today's service members are facing a much more advanced Iranian military.
“All through the years, they've acquired these weapons and whatnot,” Frank said. “They didn't have the missile technology back then — guided missiles, or anything like that.”
Frank said his thoughts lie with the service members deployed to the area. He hopes they come home safely with their heads held high — and without what he calls a “moral injury.”
“You go in there knowing that that's what you signed up for,” Frank said. “No regrets. You're going into a strange land, but it's a hell of a lot better than staying here and fighting it in your homeland — which is eventually going to happen one of these days.”
Alaska has the largest concentration of veterans in the country, and Alaska Natives have the highest rate of service among any demographic. But sometimes, it’s a complicated relationship with the United States government.
Some Alaska Native people joined the military decades ago, after growing up in boarding schools intended to forcibly assimilate them — like Alaska Native Veterans Association member Hugh Walker, who served in the Navy in the 70s.
“We as Alaska Native people are still dealing with that, still recovering from that,” Walker said.
He said getting separated from his family and culture as a kid informs his feelings about the Iran war — and about President Trump.
“I think this is a racist war,” Walker said. “Not only that, but with these immigration policies — anti-mostly brown people — that really affects me, because I’m a product of the boarding home.”
Trump recently said the ceasefire with Iran is “on life support,” and thousands of U.S. troops who deployed to the region remain there. Veteran Scott Justesen said he fears the war in Iran could become another yearslong Middle Eastern entanglement — just like the war he served in.
At a Fairbanks No Kings rally in March, Justesen weaved through the crowd, dressed in his old Army camouflage and a T. rex mask, handing out copies of his zine: The American Regressive.
Justesen served from 2005 to 2012 and deployed to Iraq.
“I joined after we had already invaded Iraq, and I wanted to learn about the human side of the military,” Justesen said. “There's the tendency on one side to dehumanize the members of the military as though they're beasts that want to go out and commit violence.”
Justesen opposes the war in Iran and knows it isn't popular with Americans, but he hopes people don't take it out on the troops.
“Some of my friends are in there because they have family, they have debt,” Justesen said. “You're not going to just quit based on your values if you're entrenched in debt and stuff. And so you try to make the best of it in a day-to-day compromise.”
This story was produced with help from the American Homefront Project, a public media collaboration that reports on American military life and veterans.