Racism, not simply wrong but also incredibly inefficient, visited the commander of the Alaska Highway Project, General William Hoge on a regular basis, but never as dramatically as when he put together his plan to get two of his regiments out of Skagway and onto the Highway.
Link to another story about Hoge
After much effort, Hoge finally had heavy equipment on the way. Now he turned to address problem two. He had the 18th Engineers building north toward Alaska. Now he needed to get the 340th Engineers building south and east from the southern end of Teslin lake toward the Continental Divide and the oncoming 35th.
Problem.
Teslin Lake lay deep in Yukon interior. The 340th could use the Yukon River system; go roundabout from Whitehorse to Teslin lake. But ice would choke the rivers until near the end of the month. Worse, the Corps had commandeered every river boat and barge in sight and still had far too little capacity to move an entire regiment.
In the end the 340th distributed enough troops along the river route to move heavy equipment, when it arrived, from ship to train to barge. The bulk of the regiment, though, waited to ride the WP&YR to Carcross and then march and convoy overland to the Teslin River, from there barges would float them down to Teslin.
Problem solved?
You know better if you remember that the North Country fights back hard.
By the most direct route, the Teslin River lay 70 long miles from Carcross and the terrain featured the usual suspects, rivers, canyons, muskeg, etc.
General Hoge had two regiments in Skagway—the white 340th and the black 93rd. The white 340th would, of course, take the lead south and east from Teslin. White regiments always took the lead.
The 340th could have come up to Carcross and set out building a supply road to the Teslin River and the Highway. The 93rd could have followed them, cleaning up widening and bringing the road up to standard. That’s how white and black regiments worked in the Southern Sector. That’s how the 340th and the 93rd worked later in the summer. But in May the lead regiment would get out of Skagway right away. The lag regiment would have to cool its wheels there for a while.
An experienced commander and Army Engineer, Hoge was also a thorough racist. And he lived, worked, and made plans in a world permeated by racism. No matter how he played it, a lot of Hoge’s troops would be in Skagway for a while, and Hoge needed those to be white troops.
So he ordered the 93rd up to Carcross and out to build the supply road. The 340th would remain in Skagway, doing odd jobs, helping the local ladies with their spring flower beds.
Turns out racism isn’t only just plain wrong. It’s also incredibly inefficient.