STORIES FROM NORTHERN CANADA AND ALASKA.

Meeting the Inland Tlingits

This is the Tribal Council of the Inland Tlingits First Nations

We met and got to experience the Inland Tlingits by luck, and by the grace of our friends Bonner and Bess Cooley.

Preparing for a publicity trip to Canada and Alaska to coincide with the release of our book, We Fought the Road, we knew we would get to visit Teslin again and we called Bonner and Bess to coordinate. The Inland Tlingits, Bonner told us will hold their biannual Celebration in Teslin this summer. You ought to be here then.

Bonner and Bess and the Memorial Cairns

The Inland Tlinget are a large and important First Nations tribe in Yukon. Bess Cooley is a Tlingit. And so is Ida Calmagane who appears in We Fought the Road. Bonner assured us that Ida wouldn’t miss the Celebration. We intended to give Bonner and Bess a copy of our book. Maybe we could meet Ida Calmegane and present one to her as well.

We camped in Teslin, met Bonner at the Yukon Motel Restaurant the next morning, and he delivered Chris and me to the celebration. A crowd mills around and among buildings, talking, listening to music. We look for Bess… And, excited, we look for Ida.

Her recollections informed We Fought the Road. The soldiers, in 1942, brought diseases for which the Tlingits had no immunity. Epidemics followed them through Yukon. Chris had found a published interview with Ida about her mother’s work taking care of the victims in Carcross. We’ve never actually met her. Now we have a chance to do so and to present a copy of our book.

Ida sits with her friends Pearl Keenan and and Emma Shorty next to the stage in the main building. At a break in the activities on stage, Bess introduces us. We give Ida her book and she graciously accepts; asks me to read the part about her mother. We pull up chairs at the end of the long table and squeeze in to sit with the three elderly ladies.

Chris can’t sit still. She moves around us with her camera. I read to Ida. We talk about her mother, her husband, her children. Ida utterly charms me, but something else is gradually sinking into my outsider’s brain, making me increasingly uncomfortable. Something about the flow of the crowd around us, the way people approach the three ladies, the fact that their table sits directly in front of the stage… I hear the word “elder” and I gradually realize that these three ladies have a very special place among the Tlingits. We’ve pulled our chairs up at the head table, between the guests of honor and the stage.

I thanked Ida; made an excuse to go away.

“Put something there,” Ida murmured, gesturing to my seat.

I didn’t understand.

She reached for a magazine and placed it on the seat. “Now people will know you’re sitting there.”

I felt as though I’d been knighted. I don’t think she noticed the wet in my eyes.

Ida Being Incredibly Gracious to an Outsider

Ida helps preserve a precious language

Bonner and Bess and the Memorial Cairns

Bonner and Bess Cooley live at the heart of Teslin, Yukon. They may, in fact, be the heart of Teslin, Yukon.

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 of my Facebook blogs. “Leo”, I responded, “that sounds interesting. Do you have information, photos anything you might be willing to share.”

Not so different when you think about it.

Leo responded and he’s a good writer. I’m going to let him tell the story.

He also shared a photo that I think priceless.

Enjoy.

“I have an old picture of my dad with a truckload of chickens. These don’t look very alive as they seemed to have simply been loaded into the truck. From memory I recall a photo of a truck with chickens or rabbits in cages when I was a child. These were destined for the Alaska Highway crews. I’m not sure how far up the Alaska Highway that my dad travelled but I do recalled that it was a 17 day round trip.

We lived in a small community in Spirit River Alberta which was about 60 miles east of Dawson Creek. The Northern Alberta Railroad spur line from Grande Prairie terminated in Spirit River. There was talk of completing a more direct railroad connection to Dawson Creek as it was a shorter route than going around via Grande Prairie. Right of way had been cleared for the railroad but it was never constructed.

I’m attaching a photo from my collection. My father is the one with glasses.

I read in your book about turkey being available for a Xmas dinner and it made me wonder if turkeys may have been trucked up much like the chickens. I think food was sent live as refrigeration etc. was not that common in carriers.

Take care, Leo”

They lose Private Banks Remains

The remains of the Valdez Dock after 1964

How do you lose the remains of an honorably buried soldier? It’s not easy.

Last night I posted about Private Major Banks who, along with thousands of other soldiers, received a contaminated yellow fever vaccine in March 1942. In June Private Banks contracted serum hepatitis and at the end of June he passed away in the Valdez Hospital. To get the town to allow him to bury the soldier, Captain Parsons of the regiment convinced them to create a ‘negro’ section in their cemetery. Parsons laid the young soldier to rest with full military honors.

The fate of Private Major Banks.

A few days later, Parsons moved inland to take command of Company F and, with the rest of the regiment, worked far away from Valdez. In 1945, troubled by having a soldier’s remains in the civilian cemetery, an army official had him dug up and reburied in the post cemetery at Fort Richardson.

Private Banks’ mother got in touch and asked that her sons remains be shipped to her in Virginia so she could bury him near home. And in 1948 the Army honored her wish. Finally, truly “laid to rest”, Private Banks remains, as far as we know, have been undisturbed.

Fast forward to the 1990’s. Captain Parsons who finished the Highway Project with the 97^th then moved on to the Canol Pipeline project and then moved on to other postings and duties had settled as Colonel Parsons, the ROTC Tactical Officer at his alma mater, Texas A&M. From that job he had retired.

An honorable man to his very core, Parsons remembers that young black man back in 1942. Did his grave ever get an appropriate marker? As far as he knows the remains remain where he left them. He pens a letter to the town council of Valdez to inquire and to offer to arrange for a headstone from the VA if necessary.

Parsons not only didn’t know the Army had moved the private twice, but also he didn’t know that a monumental tidal wave had literally wiped the town of Valdez from the face of the planet in 1964. The citizens had left the ruins behind and rebuilt their town on more stable ground a few miles away.

If Valdezians in the early 1940’s had to create a special ‘negro’ section on a bit of ground across a creek from the main cemetery to bury a black man, attitudes had changed a lot by the 1990’s. The Valdezians who received Parsons’ letter had no idea the cemetery at the old town site even had a ‘negro’ section. The letter set in motion years of fruitless attempts to identify the section and to locate the remains so they could properly memorialize the deceased soldier.

In 2017 Christine and I visited Valdez. Our book, We Fought the Road, had been released early in Canada and Alaska and through the summer we travelled through the north country on a publicity tour. Folks attending our appearance at the Valdez museum told us about the tidal wave and one gentleman offered to show us how to find the old Valdez the next morning.

We walked through the cemetery and he told us the story of the letter and the soldier and the town’s attempts to find the grave. He took us across the little creek to where they thought the ‘negro’ section might have been.

He knew nothing of the story, of course, except what they had read in Parsons’ letter—knew nothing of contaminated vaccine or serum hepatitis. Christine, the intrepid researcher on our writing team, promised to dig into the archives and find out what she could. Back in the lower 48 that fall, she did so and her research yielded the rest of the story.

Private Banks rests in peace. Honorable man, Walter Parsons, does the same. And Valdez is off the hook.

The fate of Private Major Banks.

Yellow Fever Vaccination, Everybody Got One

Private Major Banks, a young black soldier in the 97^th Engineering regiment reported for sick call on May 20, 1942. The medics sent him to the little hospital in Valdez, Alaska.

Port of Valdez in 1942

Banks grew up in New Canton, Virginia. He didn’t enter the Army until January 1942, so he came late to the 97th, part of its hurried March expansion from Battalion to Regiment at Eglin Field. The Army routinely vaccinated soldiers against Yellow Fever, had vaccinated the men of the 97th Battalion long since. They vaccinated Banks and the newer soldiers at Eglin Field in late February and early March.

Problem. The Army didn’t know it, but during March 1942, vaccinating soldiers and shipping them overseas at a frantic pace, they vaccinated several thousand of them with contaminated serum. Two months later, in May, soldiers all around the world came down with serum hepatitis.

In May the Army sent Private Banks back to the hospital in Valdez—doctors diagnosed Banks with jaundice, progressive, acute atrophy of liver. In truth, Banks had serum hepatitis.

On June 30 Captain Walter Parsons wrote to his wife Abbie, “One of the colored boys died early this morning and things are in quite a stir about this little camp.” Private Banks had lingered for several weeks, getting progressively weaker, until the last day of June.

Parsons determined that Pvt. Banks deserved the honor of a military funeral and set out to get him one. The citizens of Valdez objected; didn’t want a black man buried in their cemetery. Parsons would have none of that. In the end they designated a piece of ground just across the creek from the cemetery as a ‘negro’ section.

Parsons arranged for “a truck load of boys [to come] down to bury the chap… We fixed him all up in a casket we got off of a boat… Had a firing squad, bugler, military escort and everything plus about ten officers and twenty-five or thirty white soldiers from a nearby camp.”

Soldiers and Civilians

Duesenbergs Crews Surrounded this old lodge in tents and temporary structures.

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 point of the spear, soldiers plowed into the Far North wilderness, endured, survived and carved out a rudimentary road.

But the Army also turned to the Public Roads Administration (PRA) to surround the battling soldiers with civilian contractors. Civilians would take more time to get organized, recruit workers and get to the job. But, once in place, civilians would work more methodically, would concern themselves with quality as well as speed.

The Corps had dispatched soldiers to Alaska in April, the soldiers of the 97th. In May the PRA dispatched Iowa contractor Lytle and Green. Immediately after Lytle and Green signed their contract with the PRA, they went back to Iowa and signed contracts with fourteen subcontractors.

Lytle and Green had three primary missions. They would “widen, improve or relocate” the road from Gulkana to Slana. They would follow the “engineer troops” from Slana through Mentasta Pass and on to the Tanana River, upgrading their “pioneer truck road”. And they would build a road from Big Delta southeast to the Tanana River crossing.

The fourteen Iowa contractors in the words of Milton Duesenberg, “…from Cumberland to Independence, from Cedar Rapids to Hawarden and a dozen other Iowa communities,” immediately began recruiting men to do the work and loading equipment—bulldozers, scoop shovels, graders and trucks–onto rail cars.

Through late May, June and into July a flood of civilian workers made their way north. Some sailed north from Seattle or Prince Rupert. Most went to Edmonton, Alberta by rail and then flew north to airstrips near Big Delta and Gulkana on Army transport or commercial airlines.

Moving up behind the 97th Duesenberg men surrounded this old lodge too.

New Plan and new route

Men of the 340th take their turn with corduroy

General Hoge’s new plan and new route would absolutely get the Alaska Highway completed on time or he and his soldiers would die trying.

For more on Hoge’s Reassessment https://www.chrisdennis111.com/struggle-in-july/

On July 15, the point where the men of the 340^th Engineers needed to meet the oncoming men of the 35^th lay a very long, disheartening way east. Hoge’s progress report for July credits the 340^th with just fifteen miles of finished road. Determined to get them back on schedule, General Hoge changed the plan for his assault on Yukon—and changed the route of the Alaska Highway.

Hoge’s regiments built to what they called “Pioneer Road” standards; but, on July 15, the general ordered the commander of the 340^th, to abandon those standards and push a rude,one-way trail east as fast as he could; demanded four miles a day. Hoge ordered the 130-miles from Teslin Post through the mountains over the Continental Divide built, standards be damned, by late August.

And the men of the 340th take their turn with a culvert

At the same time, he ordered the commander of the 93^rd Engineers to change the mission of his three lead companies, 600 black soldiers and their equipment. They would ferry across Nisutlin Bay and follow the 340^th east, bringing their two-track up to standard.

Bridging the Smith River behind the 340th

In June the 93^rd had built a supply road out from Carcross that intersected the planned route of the Highway at Jake’s Corner. The regiment’s commander had designated his three lead companies to build the stretch of the Alaska Highway from that intersection north along the McClintock river to Whitehorse.

In July, when Hoge filched the men of those companies to support the 340^th, he simply promoted the Carcross supply road to Alaska Highway. The Alcan would not turn north at Jake’s Corner, instead it would follow the supply road all the way back to Carcross and turn north there on a hurriedly upgraded wagon road to Whitehorse.

In mid-July the 340^th received nine additional D8 dozers, doubling their production and commenced a mad dash to the Continental Divide.

Note for those of you who know the Highway…

A year later, in 1943, the Public Roads Administration built the stretch of the Alaska Highway north from Jake’s Corner along the McClintock River to Whitehorse. The road to Carcross and on north to Whitehorse still exists, but it’s no longer part of the Alcan.

Struggle in July

The 340th Struggled. This Soldier Didn’t.

With 1800 miles of Alaska Highway to build and the summer half over, General Hoge took stock. Up in Alaska the 97^th Engineers had struggled to get in place. They got going and then ran into Mentasta Pass. In Yukon it had taken the 340^th Engineers the first half of the summer just to get to their starting place. Between them, those two regiments had built very little road.

Fixing the 97^th was simple. He fired their commander.

For more on the 340th in Yukon https://www.chrisdennis111.com/traffic-jam-in-the-woods/on

He didn’t blame the commander of the 340^th, though. His regiment had just come very late to the Project.

The 340th had set up a supply dump, motor pool and headquarters at Morley Bay, a few miles east from Teslin and Nisutlin Bay, their official starting point. That meant that as the regiment started to build road east, a few men from Company A would have to build a few miles west back to Nisutlin Bay. A few more men from Company A built a supply road out from Morely Bay to the Highway route.

The rest of the regiment organized, received heavy equipment still arriving at Morley on the Yukon River and Teslin Lake route and deployed eastward. They officially started work on the Highway on June 25.

Working out toward Strawberry Creek, the soldiers of Company C reached Hays Creek on July 4. On July 10 they moved again to a bivouac one mile east of Strawberry Creek.

At Strawberry Creek they piled into a swamp and a clay hill with a twenty percent grade; managed to permanently gift Yukon with a dozer buried deep in the mud.

Back west the soldiers of Company A struggled too. Their road back west to Nisutlin Bay and Teslin wound across the mountains to a steep drop down through an abrupt right turn to end at the icy water of the Bay.

Malevolent Mentasta

A vaguely malevolent sounding name, “Mentasta”. It describes a precisely malevolent stretch of road through the mountains of the Alaska Range.

Through late June and early July, the black soldiers of the 97^th Engineers had finally begun to build road. The men of Company B forged out front clearing a rough right of way. The men of two more companies came behind them, widening, grading, installing culverts and bridges. Then, suddenly, July 9 found all three companies in one place—on the shore of Mentasta Lake. Company B soldiers, no longer out in front, had stopped making progress. Companies A and C had caught up.

For More on the Young Black Soldiers of the 97thhttps://www.chrisdennis111.com/young-black-soldiers-of-the-97th/

The old pack trail they followed had turned east from the shore of Mentasta Lake and advanced directly into malevolent Mentasta Pass, the only way through the mountains. In the pass, crumbling glacial debris spilled across and down the face of towering cliffs. The men who left the old pack trail had used hand tools to carve a narrow, precarious ledge out of the shale, a trail that served men moving cautiously and leading nervous pack horses.

Now the soldiers of the 97^th proposed to move D8 bulldozers out onto the shale and carve a trail that could pass heavy trucks. The toughest terrain anywhere along the Alaska Highway, Mentasta Pass immediately slowed the regiment’s progress nearly to a halt.

Heath Twichell describes the problem eloquently in his Northwest Epic. “While working on the precipitous terminal moraine…the lead bulldozers repeatedly slipped off the narrow trail and ‘threw a track.’” Reinstalling a tread back onto its drive sprocket, relatively routine on flat ground, became something very different in Mentasta Pass. “…doing it on a 23-ton machine that was teetering on the edge of a crumbling slope of glacial debris called for great skill and calm nerves. Eventually the 97^th’s inexperienced operators became masters at such on-the-spot repairs…”

Lee Young came to the 97^th from Engelhard, North Carolina. Trained by trainers from Caterpillar at Eglin Field to operate a bulldozer, Lee trained others. “I was very proud when I was promoted to train the guys. I was one of the oldest operators there and I was only twenty-two.

Lee remembered the mountains. “We did more work in the mountains than any regiment. We followed the mountains around. The son of a gun got to know how to drop that blade to keep from tumbling down the mountain. The Army don’t tell you how to do it. They just tell you you’ve got to do it.” Sgt Clifton Monk also operated a bulldozer through Mentasta. Remembering his fellow operators, “They learned real fast. If anybody tells you a colored soldier ain’t a smart man and can’t learn anything, you just tell them they are a dog gone liar. Those men took that machinery and built those roads.

Troopship

The troopship USS David Branch met the young black soldiers of the 97^th at the Port of Seattle. They got off their trains at Ft. Lewis and one company moved directly to the port to deliver their few small trucks for loading on the ship.