The war machine, the Japanese advance across the Pacific inspired the Alaska Highway Project. But the soldiers and civilians who went north to build the Highway, left the rolling catastrophe behind, struggled to keep up with news of the war. If few understood the complex geography of the Pacific, in early 1942 everybody understood that the Japanese, marauding through that geography, attacked wherever and whenever they pleased.
The Japanese Bomb Dutch Harbor
In May 1942 Japan dispatched two fleets to the Aleutians, a carrier fleet to bomb and destroy the Dutch Harbor complex, and a troop transport fleet to invade and occupy Kiska and Attu. The Japanese war machine, in other words, did exactly what the Canadian and American Governments had feared it might do.
In Alaska, indeed along the whole length of the Highway, soldiers heard the news; wondered if the Japanese would come their way next. Milton Duesenberg, a civilian contractor, left Iowa on June 4. Travelling north through Prince Rupert, British Columbia, he encountered black outs, air alarms, patrol boats all along the coast. June 9, “Prince Rupert had an air alarm today. I was ordered off the streets by MP’s. The planes were identified as friendly.” Milton took ship north on June 10. On June 12, between Ketchikan and Skagway, they passed a “…US patrol boat and they trained the cannon on us but didn’t shoot thank heavens.”
Milton’s brother, Warren, in Fairbanks on July 8, noted in his diary, “War conditions much worse than people think. Army has complete control of all shipping. Eight bombers landed in here today. Planes are bringing back wounded from Dutch Harbor.”
Sears construction, assigned to build a second dock at Valdez, worked under the watchful eye of Army “lookouts in jeeps on the mountains behind Valdez. The jeeps were equipped with red lights which could be flashed on and off to warn the civilians to douse their lights and turn off the machinery.”
More on the Battle for the Aleutians