STORIES FROM NORTHERN CANADA AND ALASKA.

Racism and the Road

The United States Army didn’t create racism in the ‘40’s. The United States had struggled with race for 170 years and, in 1942, thoroughgoing racism and vicious discrimination permeated American society and government. The Army and the Corps merely reflected that sad fact. But its racism stained the story of the Epic Alaska Highway Project

A few days ago, I posted about the impact of racism on the experience of the 95^th Engineering Regiment in British Columbia in 1942. A sorry bit of history and a difficult post to read—and write. At command levels the racism never went away or even moderated. In the wilderness, though, on the ground experience changed some men for the better.

In the beginning white officers believed—the army trained them to believe—in the myth of black incompetence. They couldn’t trust black men to learn or to think or to solve problems. Nor could they trust them to operate or care for sophisticated equipment.

Samuel Hargroves of the 93rd

For their part, most of the black soldiers who worked on the Alcan grew up in the rural south. They had grown up with Jim Crow; and, if the army disappointed and infuriated them, it didn’t surprise them. John Bollin of Company F listened to his tent mates talk at night “about how bad it was back home, how their bosses used to treat them, and they’d tease each other. ‘Your boss treated you worse than my boss.’ This was an accepted way of life.”

Most of the young white officers initially saw the young black men they commanded in terms of stereotype. They expected certain attitudes and behaviors and abilities. If they encountered an attitude or behavior that didn’t fit that was merely the exception that proved the rule.

Then the black soldiers came to the road, and the issue of competence and ability got addressed right off the bat. Able black soldiers became competent ones very quickly.

Harold Richardson noticed. Many of the engineers only had “a few minutes” of instruction. “Yet some of the best operator’s, both colored and white, were boys that had never been on construction equipment until they arrived on the project.”

And James Lewis noticed. Few “negro soldiers” brought experience operating heavy equipment with them to the army. “But the Alcan Project gave them experience. They became good equipment operators. And they liked it. A bulldozer was an expensive machine that manipulated and transformed wilderness into road. When a black engineer climbed aboard a D8 tractor, it gave him a sense of personal achievement and importance that ordinary physical labor lacked.”

In Northern Canada and Alaska, the Army put black soldiers and white officers in the same woods. They suffered the cold together. They fought muskeg and mountains together. Mosquitoes turned out to be equal opportunity tormenters.

Men, fighting and enduring together, found it hard to maintain the stereotypes. Some of the young white officers remained racist to the core. But a lot of them didn’t. They came to rely on black soldiers’ skills and the respect the men who owned them.

Another Source on Army Segregation

Racism and the 95th Engineers

Racism complicated the management of the Epic Alaska Highway Project. Skin color repeatedly trumped every other consideration.

In June 1942 thousands of United States Army soldiers and thousands of civilian contractors from the United States and Canada sprawled across Northern Canada and Alaska; struggled to get organized and make progress on the desperately needed land route to Alaska. Japanese assaults in the Aleutians—at Dutch Harbor and Kiska and Attu—lifted the pressure on their commanders to a whole new level. More on the Japanese Assault

In the Southern Sector the 35^th Engineers had come first to the project in March. In June they struggled through endless rain and mud north from Fort Nelson around and over Steamboat mountain More on Steamboat Mountain. The 341^st Engineers had followed them through Dawson Creek and north to Ft St John, desperate to upgrade the winter-only trail north to Fort Nelson before the men of the 35^th starved. The inexperienced soldiers of the 341^st had endured a disastrous May, climaxing with hideous tragedy at Charlie Lake. More on Charlie Lake

In June Colonel “Patsy” O’Conner, Southern Sector commander, struggled to reorganize and recover. And the Corps sent him a tremendous asset—the 95^th Engineering Regiment.

The soldiers of the 95^th came to Dawson Creek with significant training and experience under their belts. Unlike so many of the regiments on the project, the 95^th had jelled into a working team. They knew their job and how to do it. Moreover, their equipment followed close behind them—including heavy equipment.

But the soldiers of the 95^th were black, and O’Conner couldn’t get by their color…

Equipment Coming to Dawson Creek–Who Would Use It?

When the long string of flatcars bearing the 95^th’s heavy equipment rolled into Dawson Creek, O’Conner had it unloaded and delivered directly to the white soldiers of the 341^st.

The soldiers of the 95^th came to the highway with two bulldozers, one grader, a carryall, less than twenty small dump trucks—and hand tools. O’Conner ordered them to fall in behind the 341^st to clean up the roadway. The soldiers of the 95^th swung picks and wielded shovels, hauled dirt with wheelbarrows and felled trees with axes and saws. And work for the 95^th eventually ran out.

With little to do they found themselves occasionally serving as stevedores for the white rookies of the 341^st. More often they simply remained in camp, surrounded by mud, huddled under rain-soaked canvas.

Froelich Rainey, visiting the highway in 1942 to report for National Geographic, hitched a ride out of Charlie Lake in a convoy of supply trucks piloted by members of the 95th. His young black driver wanted desperately to be home in Virginia in the “bright hot days of his homeland. This awful country, nothing but cold rain, mud and trees.” It took them six hours to travel 15 miles.

Another Site with an Alaska Highway Map and Timeline

Into the Muskwa Range

The Muskwa Range loomed in the Southern Sector.

On the Alaska Highway project progress happened in June 1942 in Yukon. In Alaska and British Columbia, not so much.

Down in Yukon

In Alaska the 97^th had struggled to get over Thompson Pass, still waited for their heavy equipment to make its way to Seattle and on up the Inside Passage to Valdez.

In British Columbia the 35^th Engineers, trailed by two more regiments, struggled through endless rain and mud to make their climb into and over the Muskwa Mountain Range, part of the immense Canadian Rockies.

Another Cut. On Steamboat they were Endless

Forty miles out from Fort Nelson, quite suddenly the terrain climbed out of the muskeg and swept into the sky. Steamboat Mountain towered three thousand feet above the surrounding valleys.

The road had to get by Steamboat and the only way was around and up—and up.

Even a few months later, with the road around steamboat in place, a trucker named Cyril Griffith remembered Steamboat Mountain.

Completed the road around Steamboat worked like this.

Mud covered the steep, crooked road and a trucker preparing to use it knew to be going as fast as possible when he started the climb. Even so, he would be in first gear within a few hundred yards, and he would crawl along in first for miles. Worse than going up, going down created the pile of wrecks that littered the bottom mile and a half.

The 35^th celebrated July 4, 1942 at Summit Lake, Steamboat officially in the “rear view”.

And Chester Russel killed a sheep, the first fresh meat in a very long time.

Crossing Paths with Sam McGee

Crossing Paths with Sam McGee

The US Army Corps of Engineers crossed paths with Sam McGee in June 1942. Hell bent to build a land route from the lower 48 to Alaska, the Corps descended on Northern Canada and Alaska early in the year. By the end of June three regiments had themselves relatively organized and working on the center portion of the Highway in Yukon.

The 340th Gets Started

The 340th Engineers heavy equipment convulsed the Skagway docks again at mid-June 1942. Vessels bearing heavy equipment jammed in one behind the other. Colonel Lyons and his regiment had reached their starting point at Morley Bay in the nick of time.

Climax at the Teslin River

The Climax came at the Teslin River.

At mid-June 1942 the black soldiers of the 93^rd raced, a long train, through the Yukon woods building a road for the white soldiers of the 340^th to the Teslin River. Way behind schedule and burning with impatience the soldiers of the 340^th had moved in behind them and now moved around and through them.

The men of the 340^th formed their own long train, marching men, small vehicles carrying supplies… On June 7^th and 8^th the head of their train bivouacked at Tagish; crossed Tagish River on the 9^th. Thirteen miles further east, they passed the 93^rd’s motor pool and supply dump at Jakes Corner, then they passed through and around the black soldiers of companies B and C.

On June 11^th they sort of caught up with the lead company of the 93^rd—Company A—at Squanga Lake. Actually, they caught up with Company A’s encampment—where the black soldiers would normally eat and sleep. But the frantically working black men of Company A had left eating and sleeping behind. When they set up their encampment at Squanga Lake, twenty miles of swamp and woods remained between them and the river. They could all but feel the presence of the soldiers of the 340^th coming behind them and the climax coming up.

Leonard Larkins of Company A

They needed speed. The climax of their effort lay just ahead.

Quality control went out the window along with personal comfort, food, rest and a lot of other things normally considered essential. Incredibly, they built that last twenty miles of road in just seven days.

When, northeast of Squanga Lake, they hit the Johns River, Holtzapple didn’t even slow down. He turned the problem over to the 73^rd Pontoon Engineers and kept going. The 73^rd brought in two pontoon boats, floated them between two trestles, and made a temporary thirty-six-foot bridge that could support a 23 ton D8.

Ultimately the 73^rd, the 340^th and the 93^rd would gang up on the Johns River with a stringer bridge—three open spans supported by two rock filled cribs. But there was no time for that now.

The soldiers of Company A reached the Teslin River on June 16. The men of the 340^th began boarding boats there that same day.

The 340th Boarding River Transport at Johnson’s Crossing

Between June 9^th and June 16^th, Company A of the 93^rd completed the twenty miles from their bivouac to the Teslin River—and accomplished Colonel Johnson’s primary mission—all by themselves. With their bivouac twenty miles behind, the exhausted men of Company A were hungry and filthy. But they had got the white regiment to the river. And the Teslin River crossing remains, to this day, “Johnson’s Crossing”.

For More on the Race to the River

Traffic Jam in the Woods

In June 1942 a traffic jam followed the black soldiers of the 93^rd Engineering Regiment as they raced through woods and mud toward the Teslin River, building a road to get the white soldiers of the 340^th Engineers into the interior.

East of Tagish

East of Tagish work speeded up.

Recall that in April 1942 General Hoge had dispatched the black soldiers of the 93^rd to Carcross to build a road to the Teslin River for the 340^th. He had done so to get the black men out of Skagway and he didn’t propose to leave them long in Carcross either. Getting the supply road built, yesterday if possible, fell to Colonel Johnson, commander of the 93^rd.

At mid-May the Line Companies of the regiment mingled in confusion in the ten miles between Carcross and Crag Lake; and Commander Johnson, his staff and his company commanders worked furiously to get organized and move out toward their first goal, Tagish and the Tagish River.

With two borrowed bulldozers, the soldiers of Company A, finally powered into and through Yukon. gouging a rough road out of the wilderness. The soldiers of Companies B and C came right behind.

Commander Johnson called it a train. Company A knocked down and cleared trees. Company B came right behind, grading the path into a semblance of road. Company C came next, laying corduroy and building culverts.

Just beyond Tagish a peaceful bit of woods would become the junction between the supply road out from Carcross and the Alaska Highway—Jakes Corner. The soldiers in the lead companies powered through Jakes Corner and the motor pool and heavy equipment came hard on their heels.

Tagish Today

Seventy Miles of Road

And with heavy equipment, the lead companies’ drive to the Teslin was well and truly on. On June 6, filthy, hungry, exhausted soldiers of Company A set up camp a few miles east of Jake’s Corner–and then kept going. On the 7^th they added four more miles. Sgt. Albert France remembered, “They had difficulty cutting down trees. Often we would dig down through green grass and then hit cakes of solid ice beneath the dirt.”

Taking advantage of the ‘midnight’ sun, Captain Boyd of Company C worked his platoons in seven-hour shifts, stopping work only during the hours of darkness between 11:00 pm and 2:00 am. During those hours they did basic maintenance on their equipment.

On June 9th, Company A moved to a bivouac near Summit Lake, smack in the middle of Big Devil Swamp, eight miles east of Jake’s Corner, just twenty miles from the Teslin River.

Getting Supplies into the Woods

Getting supplies into the woods–the next big problem. In Yukon in June 1942 heavy equipment had made it into the interior and galvanized the progress of the 93^rd. But General Hoge’s battle with the folks in Seattle, at the other end of his supply line, raged through June. Hoge had, several weeks earlier, urgently requested three quartermaster truck companies from the War Department, one to haul gravel and two to haul supplies. The first truck company landed in Skagway during the first week of June—without their trucks or any basic supplies; directed to draw their supplies from non-existent stockpiles in Skagway. Hoge’s headquarters found them a place to sleep in the hanger at the airfield, and Hoge urgently messaged Seattle not to send the other two companies without equipment and supplies. They came anyway. By the end of June, Hoge had 300 drivers and mechanics jammed into the hanger, and it took until mid-summer to get the last of them out on the road and working.

Down in Yukon

Down in Yukon the action in June 1942 centered on the black soldiers of the 93^rd Engineers. Their equipment arrived. Out on the road just one company, Company C, rapidly acquired nine new dozers, three carryalls, a towed rooter plow, a galleon road grader, a gas operated crane shovel… With each dozer came light and heavy towed graders, a ten-ton motorized roller and one transport trailer. And, once equipment started coming, it didn’t stop. Captain Boyd acquired a jeep and company headquarters acquired a command car, a ½ ton pickup and three 2 ½ ton cargo trucks. Behind that came three ½ ton weapon carriers, nine ½ ton dump trucks, a motorized air compressor and a four-ton cargo truck for heavy hauling.