Crossing the Tanana remained vivid in Lt. Walter Mason’s memory of his time on the Alaska Highway in 1942. Mason’s regiment had built road through the Alaskan wilderness since spring. But they hadn’t been building the Alaska Highway, they had been building a road to get themselves to the Alaska Highway. Once across the Tanana, …
Tag Archives: WWII
Appendicitis
Appendicitis doesn’t normally amount to a major threat—unless you get it on the North Bank of the White River in Northern Yukon in November 1942. The you need bush pilot Les Cook and his Norseman Monoplane. Comrades place the young soldier on a litter and carry him two miles to the river. The bridge …
Spare Parts
Spare parts became precious. The Alaska Highway that spooled out behind the soldiers with their dozers and carryalls and hand tools in 1942 swarmed with smaller vehicles, especially deuce and a half trucks. The equipment plowing through the woods required more than mountains of 55-gallon drums of fuel. Mud pulled hoses loose, tracks and rollers …
Daylight Lasted Forever
Daylight lasted forever in July, and the North Country continuing to fight back, revealed a new arsenal. The wet heat of summer replaced the wet cold of spring. Morley Bay averaged highs of 90 degrees, Whitehorse 82. And it stayed wet. According to WP&YT railroad records total rainfall in the week of July 5 broke …
Challenge in Series
Challenge one for the epic Alaska Highway Project in 1942 had been to mobilize thousands of men, acquire their equipment and move everybody and everything over vast distances to the Far North. More on Challenge 1 Meeting that challenge had immediately created challenge two. Thousands of men and massive stocks of equipment and supplies jammed …
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 97th had struggled to get over Thompson Pass, still waited for their heavy equipment to make its way to Seattle and …
The Devil’s Brigade
In 1943 the Americans took back Attu, drove the Japanese to suicide. They targeted Kiska next, totally unaware that in response to the Attu assault, the Japanese had abandoned the second island. According to Stan Cohen’s book, The Forgotten War Vol. 2, Americans had intercepted the evacuation order, but Admiral Kincaid didn’t believe it. On …
Japanese Occupation
At the end of June 1942, the Japanese occupied American Territory at Kiska and Attu. Unacceptable. The Japanese had assaulted the American Naval base at Dutch Harbor then occupied the two American Islands in the Aleutians. At the same time, they laid a trap for the United States Navy at Midway and the trap backfired. …
Americans Reacted
Millions of frightened and angry Americans had known nothing of the Aleutians or a possible threat to America’s interests there—until an actual threat materialized, seemingly out of nowhere. The land route to Alaska vaulted onto front pages and into newsreels, and the spotlight of public attention suddenly came to focus on the Alcan Highway Project—except …
Inhospitable to Human Beings
As inhospitable to human beings as any place on earth, Alaska’s Aleutian Islands offer roaring winds, bitter cold, active volcanoes… But the people known as “Aleuts”, perfectly adapted to their environment, have lived there continuously for 8,000 years. The Aleuts knew little of the rest of the world and the rest of the world …