Northern Exposures : A Garden Grove man returns to a tiny Arctic island base where he served during World War II. He--and the old snapshots he brings--are welcomed as historic artifacts to a place that’s changed dramatically.

The people gathered to gaze at the photographs spread on the table. “Who is this?” someone asked, pointing to a picture of an adolescent boy.

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“That is Inuapik,” said Leo Corbett of Garden Grove, who took the picture while he was stationed in the Arctic during World War II.

A man stepped forward and said, “I am Inuapik also; he was my uncle.”

“That’s when I really choked up,” Corbett said recalling his emotional trip back to Coral Harbour on Southhampton Island in the Northwest Territory of Canada. “Inuapik was killed while hunting seal. He was on an ice floe, and it was swept out to sea. He was only 14.”

As an 18-year-old sergeant, Corbett was a weatherman with the Army Air Corps stationed in Coral Harbour--where he became friends with the young Inuapik. The remote site was of strategic importance during the war.

The experience of living in the Arctic Circle--with its sunny midnights and freezing temperatures--is one Corbett has never been able to leave behind. He might have never left there if the Army had not transferred him to another location.

“People fall in love with the Arctic,” he said. “They stay and hop from island to island working as fry cooks and whatever else they can get. I’m just one of those people. The draw of the Arctic is very strong with me. Where other people are frightened up there, I can go out and enjoy myself forever. It’s so beautiful and so silent you can hear footsteps crunching the snow a mile away. White foxes walk 10 feet behind you. And if you go out fishing there is nothing between you and eternity but a rickety old boat.”

Corbett was at Coral Harbour in 1944, when the community had a permanent population of about 60 people who lived a traditional life. The island flora consisted of little more than lichen and small flowering plants not more a few inches high. The 9,000-square-foot island offered only animals as food; there were no stores and a ship from Hudson Bay with supplies for sale came only once a year.

On first impression it seemed to Corbett that the Inuit were living in the Stone Age. With the exception of motorized boats and a few guns, most of their existence was dependent on the animals they hunted. Polar bear and caribou provided meat, fur for clothing, and hides for tents during the summer months.

“Then there were only about 60 caribou on the island. [The Inuit] got most of their money for boats and guns from selling furs from white foxes. They sold about 7,000 a year and that was enough for them,” Corbett said.

In contrast, the Army men stationed there had radios and Quonset huts. “But we did not have any transportation. All our food had to be flown in, so I soon realized that we were not as self-sufficient as the Inuit.”

Although the Inuit had guns, crude harpoons were the most prevalent weapon for hunting. “The Inuit are the most resourceful people I have ever met, and I’ve met a lot of different people,” Corbett said. “If you throw out a tin can, the next time you saw it it would be the spear head of a harpoon.”

In addition to the 50 or so Army men who the were stationed there, the only other non-natives in Coral Harbour were a Belgian priest and low-level government official, neither of whom lived on the island full time. “Father Rio was a world traveler and was fluent in the Inuit language. A few of the Inuit spoke some English.

“There was this one man, John L, who spoke very good English. The whalers had taken him down to be educated at Harvard. He was a very intelligent man. When the Hudson Bay ship came in every year it brought him [a year’s worth] of the Wall Street Journal.”

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Corbett said he only picked up a rudimentary understanding of a few Inuit words, but it did not stop him from making friends with the native people, such as his friends Inuapik and Noah.

“We had a Caterpillar tractor to cut blocks of ice from the lakes, which is how we got our fresh water. One day I saw Noah watching us and I asked him, ‘Noah, do you think you could drive that?’ He looked at me and said ‘I could build it if you gave me the metal,’ and I have no doubts that he could.”

Although Corbett had been back to the Arctic with his wife, Bobby, several times since the war ended, he hadn’t gotten back to Southampton Island until this July. “There was a creek near the base where we had our laundry, and while the laundry was drying we’d walk along the creek and pick up fossils,” he said. “There was one that was more than 8 feet long, some kind of animal. I wanted to go back to see if I could find it again.”

In preparing for the trip back, Corbett found a bundle of old black-and-white photographs he had taken during his time in Coral Harbour. He decided to take them with him, thinking they might be of historical significance to the town.

Upon his arrival at the airport he mentioned to someone that he had pictures from World War II. “Within 10 minutes everyone knew I was in town with pictures; their communications are that good now.”

Communications are not the only changes on the island since 1944. Most people travel around the island in Quattros, small Japanese vehicles similar to Jeeps. There are schools and nearly everyone now speaks English as well as their native language. Most people have televisions with 18 channels available, walkie-talkies, camcorders and take vacations in the Tropics. Wooden houses have replaced igloos, and most people now hunt for sport instead of survival.

Because of an explosion in the caribou population, due mainly to the extinction of Arctic wolves on the island, the Inuit were able to strike a deal with the Japanese, selling them 7,000 caribou a year. “That’s how they’re making most of their money now,” Corbett said.

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There is also now a hotel on the island. “Bobby didn’t come with me because I really didn’t know what to expect. I thought I might be sleeping on the bare ground,” Corbett said.

The hotel, Leonie’s Place, has only six rooms and the cost is $186 per person, per day, double occupancy. “The rules are no shoes, no smoking and no alcohol. The price includes all meals and the food has to be flown in; that’s why it’s so expensive.

“But I’ll tell you it’s worth every dime. The food is magnificent--can’t get anything better in Orange County--and the people are wonderful,” Corbett said.

Because of the popular interest in the pictures, it was arranged for Corbett to show them at the community center after an athletic game. “At 11 p.m. people were still coming,” he said.

Some were too old or immobile to make the trek to the center, so Corbett also took the pictures to their homes. John L’s grandson, now 60 and in ill health, was thrilled to see photographs of his grandfather.

The Inuit don’t have photos of their own from that era. “When you lived in an igloo you didn’t have cameras,” Corbett said. “Although I’m sure they do now. Everyone takes camcorders out on the trail. There are some great videos at Leonie’s Place of the locals leading hunting trips. Some are truly comical.”

Nearly all of the Inuit in the pictures were identified by relatives who only had their memories of what the people looked liked. “It was very special for the elders,” said Louie Bruce, mayor of Coral Harbour, in a telephone interview. “They hadn’t seen pictures of their family before, and most of them are dead now.”

Photographs of the old Coral Harbour were also of great interest, Bruce said. Now a modern town with more than 600 residents, there were no photographs of what it looked like when the Inuit still lived in snow houses. “Most of the land is developed now. The pictures brought back a lot of memories, especially of the people.”

Corbett donated the photographs to the town and Bruce said they will soon be on display in the town hall.

The island natives are interested not just in their history, but in the history of outsiders on the island. Corbett’s photographs of his old base were especially appreciated, Bruce said.

“It’s now an archeological site,” the 72-year-old Corbett said. “I’ll tell you I never thought I’d be a relic.”