SS Chirikof carried the soldiers of the 93rd Engineering Regiment from the Alaska Highway Project to their second front in WWII, islands in the remote Aleutians. “The 93rd would do the necessary but unglamorous work of building and maintaining runways, hangers, barracks and other facilities for Alaska Defense Forces in the Aleutians until the middle of 1944.” (from our book We Fought the Road)
In early 1942 General Simon Bolivar Buckner, commander of American forces in Alaska, had contemptuously dismissed the idea of black soldiers, let alone black engineers. But the black soldiers of the 93rd had performed, and Buckner’s command dispatched them directly from the Highway project to the critical engineering job in the Aleutians.
Buckner’s command and SS Chirikoff did the soldiers no favor. The Aleutians “made Yukon Territory look like the Riviera. In addition to wild temperature variations, the Aleutians offered freakish winds—sixty or even 120 miles an hour—constant thick fog and endless rain and snow.” (We Fought the Road)
In June 1942, the Japanese had horrified Americans by bombing the United States Naval base at Dutch Harbor and occupying Kiska and Attu at the far end of the Aleutian chain—American territory.
Few Americans Worried about the Aleutians
From hurriedly constructed airfields on the island of Adak, Army Air Corps bombers pounded the Japanese garrisons. The Corps of Engineers, continuously improving and adding runways, allowed the bombers and their fighter escorts to escalate their blitz.
In 1943 American and Canadian forces invaded and expelled the Japanese from the Aleutians forever. The Corps, and the soldiers of the 93rd, continued to maintain the facilities on Adak through 1944.
SS Chirikof had delivered the real deal.
