Heavy trucks on a road could carry enough men and weapons across Canada to Alaska to defend North America from a Japanese assault. But in 1939 no such road existed, and airplanes could at least carry some material. Between 1939 and 1941, desperate Canadians built a string of airfields across British Columbia and Yukon Territory. …
Category Archives: Civilian Contractors
White Civilians Meet Black Soldiers in Alaska
White civilians, contractors, came up behind the black soldiers of the 97th at the end of July. They set up tents at what they called the What Fir Camp, found black soldiers working all around them. The next morning Bubbles Smith ventured out with a group of his fellow white civilians. A black soldier stopped …
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The Scottish Lady
The lady, The Scottish Lady, began her life a graceful clipper ship, ended it a barge in the Gulf of Alaska. With her graceful female figurehead out front, the proud Lady plied the seven seas for decades. Dismasted in a typhoon out of Manilla in 1871, she recovered (with help from shipyards, of course) …
Circus Tent at Gulkana
A circus tent housed Iowa civilians in Gulkana Alaska in July 1942. They came in droves to help build the Alaska Highway through Alaska. Filled the big circus tent to bursting. More on the Iowans at Gulkana The contractors and their managers had never operated in total isolation, and Alaska threw them a curveball. Consequences …
Planes to Alaska
At the end of June, civilian workers began piling into planes for the trip north. Forest fires raged north of Edmonton and the planes flew through heavy smoke. Max Smith wrote, “I am writing this letter from a plane 15,000 feet in the air going 165 to 185 miles per hour somewhere over the northwest …
Chickens by the Truckload
More about Dawson Creek in 1942 Delivering chickens? The number of jobs that had to be done to build the Alaska Highway staggers the imagination and most of them never occur to us. Leo Perra’s dad delivered food to the soldiers on the highway, and several months ago Leo commented to that effect on one …
Soldiers and Civilians
For More on the Effort in Alaska The Army sent both soldiers and civilians to the Alaska Highway Project. The Army can dispatch soldiers, organized into military units with equipment more or less in hand, relatively quickly in an emergency. Soldiers in wartime face danger and endure hardship. Speed trumps quality. In 1942 at the …