STORIES FROM NORTHERN CANADA AND ALASKA.

Thousand-mile Arc

In June 1942 Japan had Dutch Harbor square in its sights.

A thousand-mile arc, Alaska’s Aleutian Islands extend across the North Pacific; beginning in Alaska; ending perilously close to Japan. The thousand-mile chain offered Japan a military route to the North American Continent and concerned American leaders knew they couldn’t defend against that route; couldn’t get enough men, machines and material from the Lower 48 to Alaska without creating a land route through subarctic Northern Canada.

Aleutians

After Pearl Harbor, concern and fear turned to panic and led directly to the Epic project that created the mighty Alaska Highway.

In early 1942, the Japanese had the initiative and all the options. They marauded across the Pacific in an orgy of brutal military success. In May they targeted the US held Island of Midway—and the Aleutians.

The Japanese plan had lots of moving parts. Two battle groups headed north to the Aleutians. Two carriers would assault the American naval base at Dutch Harbor. A second group carried troops who would invade and occupy American territory—the islands of Kiska and Attu.

In early June, even as a decisive naval battle unfolded at Midway, the planes of the Japanese carrier Ryujo came twisting and turning out of the clouds to rain bombs on Dutch Harbor. The next day, June 4, a combined force from both carriers assaulted Dutch Harbor again.

At Midway, events—and the history of WW2—took a massive turn. Luck, as much as skill, led the United States Navy to a decisive victory. The Japanese lost the initiative and would never regain it. And the threat to the Aleutians effectively disappeared. Japan would play defense for the rest of the war.

But no one knew that right away; especially no one in the Aleutians knew that. On June 9 American commanders learned that the Japanese occupied and held American territory at Kiska and Attu. The threat to the Aleutians seemed terribly real.

View of Attu’s Chichagof Harbor from the Air

It would be May of 1943 before the forces of the United States reclaimed Attu—a horrific battle that killed many Americans and virtually all of the Japanese defenders. In August a combined force of American and Canadian soldiers landed on Kiska; found it abandoned.

History.com on the War in the Aleutians

Buffalo Soldiers in Skagway

Buffalo soldiers in Dyea, Alaska preparing dinner

Buffalo Soldiers from the 24^th Infantry Regiment came to Skagway in 1899, forty-four years before the black soldiers of the 93^rd came there to build the Alaska Highway. The Klondike Gold Rush had brought hordes of gold rushers who threatened the community and each other. The Army sent Company L of the 24^th Infantry to Skagway to keep order.

Bad Guys Came to Skagway Too

The Buffalo Soldiers fought on two fronts in Skagway. They fought to protect the community. And they fought to protect themselves from racism in the community.

After the Dyea camp burned, they moved to this camp in Skagway

The Army had formed four regiments of black soldiers—most of them former slaves—right after the Civil War. Through the rest of the century these regiments served in the American West, building towns, fighting Indians, protecting roads and railroads. The Indians called them Buffalo Soldiers. They called themselves Buffalo Soldiers.

In 1898 the soldiers of the 24^th went with the US Expeditionary Force to Cuba to fight in the Spanish-American War. Among other things, they charged up San Juan Hill with Teddy Roosevelt, and they returned home in 1899 as heroes—whether white Americans acknowledged them or not.

Company L of the 24^th came home and wound up at Vancouver Barracks in 1899—for a few days. In May the Army sent them to Dyea Alaska.

The Buffalo soldiers remained in Alaska for three years, securing the US-Canada border and keeping a lawless frontier tame.

December 25, 1942

A lonely Yukon Church on Lake Bennett near Carcross

December 25, 1942 found the black soldiers and the white officers of the 93^rd Engineers deep in Yukon. In our book, We Fought the Road, we shared two memories from that day. For December 25, 2019 my Christmas present to all of you is to share those memories here.

Another Holiday Story from Lt. Timberlake

For an interviewer many years later, Anthony Mouton, a young soldier in Company A remembered beef hash for Christmas dinner—and loneliness. Mouton and another soldier, John Lockott, spent the day in their tent listening to one cracked record, played over and over. Serenade In Blue by Paul Whiteman and Helen Forrest reminded them of home.

The evening before, on December 24, young white Lt. Turner Timberlake penned a letter to “Dearest Mother and Folks.”

Tonight, he wrote, is Christmas Eve. Tonight is the night that years ago I waited eleven months and 23 days for. Tonight is the night that sort of ties a rope around the families of America so we can say that we are bonded together. Best of all, tonight is the night that mother and dad will do their darnndest to make those kids dash down the steps at six in the morning with joy and glee that somehow just bespeaks the nature of our family.

I wish I could be home, folks, but tonight I’ll just sit here and have a Christmas smoke dream, dreaming of those times of joy that each year would, without fail, drown our home in a mist of greeting and good cheer for all. Golly and how Pop used to just lie in bed waiting for those rascals to get up and with joy he would be pulled from his covers and carried downstairs just like he was a kid of old.

But tonight somehow, folks, Christmas is different. All the fellows are gathered around talking of the times they had and the wonderful things they received, but tonight we are all gathered here just waiting for either a chance to make America have more seasons of joy or a chance to say, “Well, we tried.”

But really, Folks, we aren’t down hearted. We are just thinking of you all back home. And what more in this world could a man want than the right to think of home and what his home meant to him. It’s wonderful, Folks.

…I hope and pray with all my heart that this Christmas makes you proud and gives you the right to say, “Well our boys are doing their part.”

Lt. Timberlake in front of his Yukon tent.

Chris and I think that on that long-ago December night, Lt. Timberlake spoke, not only for himself, but for all the young men, white and black, who spent that Christmas in lonely tents in Yukon.

Poet Joyce Kilmer on Wartime Christmas

Seismic Threat

Seismic activity poses one more threat to those who choose to endure cold, mud, mosquitoes and live in the Subarctic. We know Mother nature is a player there, not always a friendly one. She has created a breathtaking part of the world, but she makes those who live there pay to experience it. She fights back with terrain, with climate. And sometimes the earth itself exacts the payment, a seismic payment, an earthquake.

Earthquake in Alaska

A “Ring of Fire” circles the Pacific Ocean from the southern tip of South America, north past Central America, the west coast of the United States, and Canada’s west coast. It turns west under Alaska then follows the Aleutian Chain across to Japan. From there it turns south past the Philippines and Australia and on far south into the Pacific. Nearly all the world’s seismic activity, its earthquakes, occurs along that line.

The ring of fire–note the apex at Northern Canada and Alaska

The northernmost arc of the ring, bordering Northern Canada and Alaska, adds earthquakes and consequent tsunami’s to mother nature’s arsenal in the Subarctic.

Three of the largest earthquakes in Canada’s history occurred along the Queen Charlotte Fault off the coast of British Columbia. May 1929, August 1949, June 1970. People felt the 1949 quake from Yukon Territory all the way south to Oregon. On the island of Haida Gwaii the quake toppled chimneys—and cows. On shore windows shattered and buildings swayed.

And in Alaska, under the Prince William Sound region, the enormous Pacific plate and the equally enormous North American Plate have wrestled since time immemorial. Alaska has 11% of the world’s earthquakes, and three of the six largest earthquakes in world history occurred in Alaska.

I’ll have more on this…

National Geographic on The Ring of Fire

The Climax of the Alaska Highway Project

The Original Peace River Bridge outside Dawson Creek

The climax of the Alaska Highway Project approached as October turned to November in 1942. On the southern portion of the Highway, two regiments had met at Contact Creek in September and opened the road from Dawson Creek to Whitehorse. Work all along that stretch of the Alcan transitioned from building to improving. Up north, though, two regiments labored toward the climax, on into October and November, struggling to close the last gap in the highway.

Ice Posed the Biggest Problem in the Winter

The 18^th struggled northward, grappling with ice, permafrost and deteriorating weather. Early in October, Company B worked toward White River. Behind them Company A built bridges—eighty feet over Lake Creek Ford, fifty feet over first Koidern River, and 145 feet over second Koidern River. The rest of the regiment laid corduroy and built culverts.

As winter settled in, the 18^th loaded supplies on sledges and towed the sledges with D8’s. Fred Rust recalled the scene. The road consisted of a “…mudway twisting and turning up a wooded valley with a dozer convoy dipping and twisting along like a roller coaster in slow motion” through “Christmas trees and brush”.

When two platoons from Company B crossed the White River on October 10^th the mercury hovered near thirty-five below.

Colonel Robinson’s 97^th regiment worked south out of Alaska to meet them, and October 10 found them at the Alaska-Canada border.

Working alongside the 97^th, Duesenberg Construction Company brought additional men, dozers and equipment to the assault, and the White River lay just fifty-two miles to the South. But supplies, for soldiers and civilians alike, had to come all the way from Valdez—and over the fearsome Thompson Pass. Snow piled ever higher in the pass in November, threatening to close it sooner rather than later.

Duesenberg’s Book About the Highway

The climax better hurry.

Free Land

Free land has drawn people from the lower 48 to Alaska throughout the twentieth century. Free land or no, most of those people turned around and headed back home after the first winter. The ones who stayed became Alaskans.

Alaskans

A few months ago, one of those Alaskans, Shirley Balinski, commented on one of my posts about the Alaska Highway; said she had traveled it several times as a kid because her family “lived homesteading in Alaska”.

I asked her to tell me about the experience and here is her response.

Yes, as a kid I lead a very interesting life many experiences!! Some good and some not so good. I guess that is why I always related to Laura Ingalls Wilder’s adventures in her books. Life was similar.

A man, our friend and neighbor, wrote a book about his adventures called “Go North Young Man”. His name was Gordon Stoddard. It is still available on Amazon. In this book, he writes about our community, Anchor Point [near Homer on the Kenai Peninsula].

He talks about our neighbors and there are pictures. We lived in his home when we arrived until we pushed further back onto our homestead. He also gave us our beloved pet dog, Kiska. He does a much better job than I could ever do!

I was born in Alaska before it was a state. My mother, brought me out (to the lower 48), when I was 3 months old, to see grandparents! So, many stories, of old, original Alaska, when it truly was a frontier. If you ever see Mr. Stoddard’s book, do not look at the pictures and think, “it couldn’t have been that rough”, “these people don’t look too bad”. Believe me, it was rough!!

Amazon does, indeed, have Gordon Stoddard’s book, Go North Young Man. I bought it, read it, and highly recommend it.

More recently I met another Alaskan.

High wages on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline drew this young lady’s parents north. Free land kept them there. And one story from this young couple’s adventure tells you all you need to know about Alaskans.

A steamer pulls into Eagle off the Yukon River–not far from the maternity ward

Young mom, pregnant for the first time, came to Eagle on the northernmost boundary of Alaska. The rough cabin she built with her husband became, in January, her maternity ward. Only her equally young husband attended the birth of her daughter. Stuck in that snow bound cabin, the baby girl didn’t contact the rest of humanity for four weeks.

Alaskans!

Mother Earth News take on Homesteading

Alaskans

Alaskans came—and stayed. Most people came and then left.

Legendary Alaskan, Mary Hanson

Furs then gold then oil brought waves of people from the outside. Most left as soon as they could to enjoy memories of Alaska’s remote, breathtaking beauty in the comfort of somewhere else. Only a very few Alaskans stayed to make their lives there.

In remote, empty, difficult Alaska one can be exactly who one wants to be, can live exactly as one wants to live. And Alaskans need that freedom as much as they need air to breathe or food to eat. Alaskans have an utterly unique culture and attitude.

Richard C. Rothenburg wrote in the Fairbanks News-Miner on Aug 15, 1942 about one Alaskan.

In December, 1910, when the thermometer dropped to 58 below, a trapper named Monte froze his feet while running his line… Word of his misfortune reached Fairbanks, and Doc Mathewson drove his dogs to Monte’s cabin and brought him back to the hospital… 150 miles in 18 hours.

Both of Monte’s legs were amputated. To get him to Seattle where he could obtain artificial limbs, $3,800 was raised… He was sent out by sleigh to Valdez and from there by steamboat…

Eight months after the accident Monte was back in Fairbanks. From Valdez, after disembarking from a northbound ship, he had trudged on his new legs the 400 miles to this city.

I, of course, don’t know Mr. Rothenburg. But the Daily News Miner clearly found him credible. And Alaskans are incredibly tough.

Alaska has animals as unique as its people. On May 25, 1942 the Indiana Palladium-Item published an Alaska story from Fairbanks via a news service. In winter Fairbanks gets cold, and nights last much longer than days. Reporter William Worden suspects that the rest of us haven’t put much thought into what that means for dairy farmers and their cows.

Farmer Charlie Craemer, Worden tells us, puts his 60 cows into the barn in October every year, and keeps them there until May. They walk very little through those months, so they forget how to do it. Come spring they must learn how to walk all over again when turned out to graze.

Alaska Winter

Finally, from The Arizona Republic, a story that could only come from Alaska. This notice appeared on a public bulletin board in Valdez.

Man who jacked up my automobile and stripped it of its tires was seen. If the tires are returned within 24 hours no questions will be asked.

The following day this notice appeared beneath it.

The guy who saw me take those tires can have same by calling at my house for them. I won’t ask no questions either.

No name appeared on the second note.

Ice Posed the Biggest Problem in the Winter

Ice and rocks flowed together down the mountains

Subarctic Cold and Vehicles

Ice posed a much bigger problem than snow to the soldiers working on the Alaska Highway into the winter of 1942. When snow came, bulldozers and graders could remove it relatively easily. Ice was a different matter. At more than 250 places between Watson Lake and the Alaska border frequent icing caused delays. In the Subarctic, ice and permafrost lie only a few inches below the surface of the ground even during summer. During winter, they come to the top.

An icy Teslin River threatens a timbr bridge in Yukon

Streams and rivers freeze from the bottom up. Ice doesn’t form in the swift flowing current, instead it forms on the sides and bottom of a stream, narrowing the channel and raising the bottom until the water overflows, broadening the stream and forming new channels. Ice covered and buried approaches to bridges built back in the summer. And, when spring arrived in 1943, floods would wash the bridges away. One bridge on the highway was rebuilt seven times.

They could blow an ice jam free–very carefully

In the frigid Subarctic freezing water creates “mushroom ice” in culverts and ditches, The water freezes, the current bleeds through, and more water freezes. This process repeats itself endlessly and the ice builds in layers. Eventually huge blocks of honeycombed ice grow to block the road. Troops had to bring oil drums and burn the oil to thaw out culverts, and they had to repeat the process every few hours.

Miserable weather be damned, though. In October and November the ordinary men, deep in the subarctic wilderness, soldiered on. And they completed their extraordinary road.

Subarctic Ice is changing

Subarctic Cold and Vehicles

What the cold did to vehicles was extreme

Subarctic cold threatened vehicles then the vehicles threatened the men who drove them. Treacherous winter roads caused wrecks that killed and maimed. Relatively good traction, in severe cold, disappeared when temperatures warmed toward freezing. Griffith in his Trucking the Tote Road to Alaska remembered, “I have seen tools, chains, men and even trucks sliding down [a hill] faster than a man could run.”

Balmy Above Zero to Thirty-six Below

Some drivers got good at negotiating the perils. Griffith wrote of a trucker named Lee McMillan who pulled feats on icy hills that few other truckers could duplicate. They called him lucky, but his ‘luck’ came from skill and experience. Lee’s trucks ran for him, subarctic cold be damned. When they didn’t, he could usually fix the problem with some tape, rope or wire.

Sooner or later, a driver’s truck rolled to the side of the road and quit. Truckers carried motley collections of scrounged tires and spare parts, and they repaired motors, transmissions and rear ends alongside of the road.

In subarctic temperatures, metal broke, fuel lines froze, oil and grease congealed. Drivers knew not to shut engines down. In parked trucks, engines continued to rumble under covering tarps. That kept the engine warm and its fluids fluid. But cold threatened more than just engines.

In the frigid fuel tank, tiny droplets of moisture condensed then travelled through fuel lines, freezing at choke points like the carburetor intake. Other parts of the machines—transmissions, drive lines, rear ends—all worked in lubricating fluids and severe cold thickened lubricating fluids into gluey sludge.

William Griggs of the 97^th remembered that sometimes “you have to get underneath a truck with a blowtorch and heat up the transmission and the rear axle before it would move.” Some of the drivers placed lighted lanterns or even built open fires under idling machines. Others salvaged large empty tomato cans, filled them with sand and saturated it with gasoline. Fired off and placed under a truck, the tomato can heaters kept things warm and fluid.

But lubricating fluids tend to be extremely flammable. Lanterns and open fires and tomato can heaters often proved a less than satisfactory solution. All too often, idle equipment suddenly burst into spectacular flame.

Radiators presented especially difficult problems. In subarctic cold even Prestone freezes. During December and January when the temperature along the White and Donjek Rivers hit seventy below, antifreeze froze hard in its containers.

How truckers prepare for cold today

Pipeline Through Alaska

Why the pipeline

Pipeline construction across eight hundred miles of Alaska required more than just pipe. The line included twelve pumping stations, and a new tanker port at Valdez. The pipeline project employed tens of thousands of people. It required the construction of the Dalton Highway. And it cost $8 billion dollars.

Thirty- two people died on the project.

In 1942 young soldiers and civilians had descended on Alaska to build the Alaska Highway. A generation later high wages on the pipeline drew a flood of young civilians who moved into thirty-one constructions camps distributed along the route. The workers called the collection of camps “skinny city”—a few hundred feet wide and eight hundred miles long.

Welders from Texas cooked steaks over makeshift grills made with acetylene torches. And they didn’t always get along with other contractors. Alaska State Troopers responded to break up brawls that grew into small riots.

A Teamster’s Union local ran warehouses; drove the buses that carried workers up and down the way; and drove the trucks that delivered material. The teamster’s control of tools and equipment led to occasional conflict with other contractors on the project—more brawls that occasionally occupied Alaska State Troopers.

Men called Operators worked heavy equipment on the project—bulldozers, cranes, drilling rigs… Operators joked about the sole qualification for being one of them. “Must be able to sit on a side boom at 40 below and not freeze up.”

In 1974 workers started on the massive marine terminal at Valdez. The next March workers laid the first section of pipeline at the Tonsina River.

In June 1977 engineers pressurized the first section of pipeline out of Prudhoe Bay with nitrogen and introduced oil behind it. Hot crude oil flowing through cold pipe could damage it, so the engineers introduced oil very slowly.

The first oil arrived in Valdez 31 days after it left Prudhoe Bay.

The line today