SIGNPOSTS & PROMISES JULIE HARRIS & FRANK B. EDWARDS CANADA AND THE ALASKA HIGHWAY HARRIS & EDWARDS

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1 HARRIS & EDWARDS O ver seventy-five years have passed since the pioneer route of the Alaska Highway was completed. Since then, the allure of the road has never faded. Each year, nearly 300,000 visitors drive the highway through BC and Yukon into Alaska. Just like residents, they want to learn more about how the combined forces of nature and human history have created such a unique, captivating place. With an abundance of contemporary and historic images, Signposts and Promises offers readers an authentic view of the Alaska Highway and the human dimension of a remarkable landscape. A new guide to the history and heritage of the route, it s the perfect companion to add richness and context to life and travels along the Alaska Highway. Offers a fresh perspective on how the regions covered by the highway have been imagined, explored, occupied and transformed over thousands of years. With almost 200 historic and contemporary photos celebrating the history and the magnificence of the landscape, this beautifully designed book is perfect for culture and history buffs, lovers of art and photography books, and those who are intrigued by the north. CONTENTWORKS $29.95 CDN $24.95 USD SIGNPOSTS & PROMISES CANADA AND THE ALASKA HIGHWAY Cover design by [tk] Cover photos courtesy [tk] CONTENTWORKS Produced by Page Two JULIE HARRIS & FRANK B. EDWARDS SIGNPOSTS & PROMISES CA N A DA A N D T H E A L A S KA H I G H WAY

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3 ROAD previous page Teslin Bridge, c Canada. Department of National Defence, Library and Archives Canada, item number ZK-1447, ecopy. facing Inside a quonset hut on the Alaska Highway at the Fort St. John Sector headquarters. F or t S t. John North Peace Museum ( ). Rudy Schubert Collection. Alaska Highway in War-Time 1 The attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941, demonstrated the vulnerability of the Pacific Coast of the United States and Canada to enemy attack and invasion. Alaska, the isolated territory on its northwestern flank, was particularly exposed. In January 1942, American politicians and military leaders agreed Alaska needed a reliable overland supply route to move troops and military supplies to this new northern war front. President Roosevelt quickly approved construction of a long gravel highway to Alaska, through Canada, and the upgrading of the existing string of airports and air strips along its path. While there were skeptics who challenged the value of the road, the subsequent Japanese occupation of two Aleutian Islands (Kiska and Attu) in June 1942 helped place the decision firmly in the camp of far-sighted. The decision to build the road was not an easy one. It diverted precious war resources towards an isolated area thousands of miles away from the heart of America and from direct engagement with enemies in the Pacific and overseas. 4 SIGNPOSTS AND PROMISES 5

4 Rudy Schubert (left) and Joseph Cundari (right) of 341st Engineer Regiment working on the routing of the Alaska Highway north from Fort St. John. M/Sgt. Cundari supervised road construction for the regiment and went on to work on railway bridges in France and Germany during the last years of the war. Fort St. John North Peace Museum ( ). Rudy Schubert Collection. President Roosevelt and his advisors recognized a road to Alaska would be needed eventually and assumed correctly that Canada would set aside sovereignty concerns and support the road s construction as part of a program of joint continental defence. They also saw the road in the context of a larger set of jobs collectively known as the Northwest Defence Projects. They included the Alaska Highway, the scandal-ridden Canol pipeline sections, the re-location of a Texas oil refinery to Whitehorse, the Northwest Staging Route of airports and airfields, and other investments needed to ferry aircraft to the Soviet Union and protect Alaska. The cost of the Alaska Highway alone, without taking into account pay for soldiers and their equipment, was $138 million (about $1.8 billion in today s dollars). On March 5, 1942, the first contingent of American soldiers, including African American units, arrived by train in Dawson Creek, BC with equipment and supplies. Other military personnel, including other African American units, docked in Skagway, Alaska and made their way to Whitehorse, Yukon via Carcross. Engineers and planners also began arriving in Canada as the advance party for the friendly invasion. They included staff of the US Public Roads Administration (PRA), a civilian agency seconded for war-time efforts that advised on the route from the beginning. By early April, nearly 11,000 American soldiers, 16,000 American and Canadian civilians, and thousands of tons of road building equipment and supplies began arriving. Nearly a third of the US troops building the road were segregated African American units. By project s end, nearly 34,000 people, almost all male, came north to work on the highway. Those brought in to work on the connecting roads, airports, pipelines and an oil refinery likely doubled this number. In only eight months, brush-clearing bulldozers following hard on the heels of survey teams and trail-building crews managed to complete a 2,450-km pack road that included the Haines bypass. It was officially opened as a military supply route in October. There was a formal celebration of the connection at Soldier s Summit (today a historic site in Kluane National Park and Reserve) on November 21, Initially known as the Alcan Highway by the US Army, the 1942 route was more of a track than a highway. Some sections, such as the road from Dawson Creek to Fort St. John, were rough pre-war roads that were upgraded by re-routing and new bridges. Other sections followed existing pack trails or were brand new. The next construction challenge lay right around the corner. In the spring of 1943 the PRA with Canadian and American contractors and military support was tasked with turning the army s pack road into a reliable all-weather highway by upgrading bridges, resurfacing, removing steep grades, strengthening culverts and installing new road realignments. Completed in 1943 as a two-lane gravel road, the Alaska Highway remained less of a continental byway than an engineering challenge solved with money and brute force. The construction of this permanent road demanded a good dose of experimentation by engineers and contractors, most new to the north and unaware of the demands of sub-arctic winter conditions on machines and people. The project began with a standard for a road width on 36 feet with 20 feet of crushed rock. In early 1943 the standard width was reduced to 26 feet and by the end of the project some sections were only 20 feet wide. The changes reflected not only the engineering challenges but also the diminished threat from Japan. The Alaska Highway and other Northwest Defence Projects resulted in a steep, but short-lived rise in the population in the northwest. In 1942, Dawson Creek, BC, (pop. 850) was swamped with 4,000 road builders overnight. The even smaller town of Whitehorse went from a pre-war population of 350 to more than 10,000 within a few months. Hospitals were expanded and constructed at Whitehorse and Fort Nelson by the US military and service businesses were kept busy. Officials on their way to the opening ceremony for the Alaska Highway that was held 20 November 1942 at Soldier s Summit in Yukon. The ceremony had to postponed due to a sudden thaw that damaged bridges and the road. Guest were treated to a feast that included moose and mountain sheep. Canada. Department of National Defence, Library and Archives Canada, item number ZK The decision to build the road was not an easy one. It diverted precious war resources towards an isolated area thousands of miles away from the heart of America... 6 SIGNPOSTS AND PROMISES ROAD 7

5 This Offer Has Been Accepted Almost a year before the attack on Pearl Harbour, Japan s interest in the resources of Siberia figured prominently in a conversation recorded by Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King in his diary on September 7, He was asked by the Japanese Ambassador about whether his government supported plans for a highway through Canada to Alaska. King responded that it was a big expense and doubted any immediate steps. Less than two years later, however, immediate steps were in place under the cloud of war. Parliament had no say in the decision. On March 6, 1942, Prime Minister King told his fellow politicians that the agreement with the United States was a fait-accompli. The advisability from a military standpoint of constructing a highway to Alaska has been under review by the defence services of Canada and the United States. After final consideration by the permanent joint board on defence on February 25 and 26, a unanimous recommendation favouring the construction of such a road was addressed to the two governments. This recommendation has now been examined and approved by both Canada and the United States. The recommendation of the Defence Board, which has been endorsed by the military authorities in each country and approved by the respective governments, is based on purely military considerations. The dimensions of the road, the type of construction and the route chosen have all been selected on this basis and this basis only. The road as approved will start at Fort St. John in northern British Columbia and follow the general line of the airports which Canada has constructed at Fort Nelson, Watson Lake and Whitehorse; and thence via Boundary and Big Delta to Fairbanks. The highway will thus connect with the existing road systems of Canada and Alaska. The United States government, appreciating the burden of war expenditure already incurred by Canada since her entry into the war, and in particular on the construction of the air route to Alaska, has offered to undertake the building and war-time maintenance of the highway. At the conclusion of the war that part of the highway which is in Canada will, of course, become in all respects an integral part of the Canadian highway system. This offer has been accepted, and its terms will be set forth in an exchange of notes which will be signed and made public in the very near future. Canada will, of course, provide all necessary facilities, including the right of way for the road. Meanwhile, United States engineers who have been selected to make the survey and to lay out a pioneer road have been authorized to commence work without further delay. Canadian Prime Minister W.L. Mackenzie King and the US Ambassador to Canada Jay Pierrefont Moffat exchanging notes on the construction terms for the Alaska Highway, 18 March National Film Board of Canada, Phototheque, Library and Archives Canada, accession number NPC, C SIGNPOSTS AND PROMISES ROAD 9

6 African American 95th Engineers at Sikanni Chief bridge, July Office of History, Headquarters, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Many of the African American troops had never seen snow, much less the cold, ice and temperature extremes of the Alaska Highway corridor. Soldiers Nearly 2.5 million African Americans enlisted during World War Two; about 1 million served at home and abroad, mostly in segregated units. Nearly one third (about 3,700) of the US troops sent north to build the Alaska Highway and the Canol Road were also segregated African American troops trained in Alabama, Florida and Georgia. Their memories have been recorded in numerous ways, including through the remarkable photography of William E. Griggs, who was part of the 97 th Regiment. Many of the African American troops had never seen snow, much less the cold, ice and temperature extremes of the Alaska Highway corridor. Men from northern states that had grown up in communities like Detroit, Chicago and New York were shocked by the way they were treated by southern white officers chosen specifically because they were expected to have experience managing African Americans. Black troops were often treated poorly and given harder tasks without the necessary tools, in some cases because officers believed they could not learn how to operate machinery. The prejudice went right up the ranks to General Buckner and Hoge and there is little evidence that the Canadian government felt any differently. African Americans fully recognized the hypocrisy and unfairness of fighting racism abroad through participation in a racially segregated military. They hoped to win a Double V Campaign one against Nazis and the other against racism. In spite of discrimination and the grueling environment, African Americans made distinguished contributions to the construction work on the Alaska Highway as surveyors, mechanics, cooks and every other job category required to get the road built. They helped each other deal with the immense physical and psychological challenges involved in the demanding and seemingly thankless work of building the road. One of the many stories that emerged about the contribution of the regiments concerns that 95 th unit which had been poorly led for several months. A new commanding officer wanted to make big changes and prove the value of his soldiers. He challenged them to build a wooden bridge in five days. Not just any bridge, but the one over the snow-fed, swiftly flowing Sikanni Chief River at milepost 119 between Fort St. John and Fort Nelson. They agreed. Some even made a bet against their pay cheques with white troops coming up the highway that they could do. The work was difficult and dangerous, both in the cutting and sawing of timber and in working in cold, racing water. The bridge was finished in 72 hours, which led to several promotions and put the 95 th Regiment on course for equally challenging work on new bridges. Alaska sets aside October 25 th each year to honour the contributions of the Alaska Highway s African-American regiments and to recognize their role in the decision made to stop the desegregation of all American troops in SIGNPOSTS AND PROMISES ROAD 11

7 D8 Cats The massive 23-ton D8 Caterpillar bulldozer was the workhorse of highway clearing operations. Its job was to follow close behind survey crews to extend the crude pioneer road by three to five kms (average of about 2.5 mi) a day. The D8s cut a 30-m (100-ft) swath by pushing down trees and scraping loose rock and dirt aside, leaving the smaller machines that trailed behind to finesse the brutal job they had begun. By mid-1942, each of the four US Army regiments and the team of civilian contractors had 20 D8 Cats. Bulldozer operators were called catskinners, an appropriation of the term muleskinner (workers of an earlier era who wrangled pack mules). Constant progress was the key to completing the road in a single season so when a D8 met an obstacle whether a bog or a massive boulder that could not be moved, the operator steered around it. This strategy resulted in a road full of twists and turns, well below the standard of southern highways. Refinements by later generations of contractors gradually straightened out those kinks, reducing the highway s length by more than 50 km (31 mi). Typically the clearing crews were led by a single D8 Cat that followed the surveyors path as closely as possible while three others widened the initial cut. Three smaller D4 Cats were used to clear away downed trees and debris. Behind them were grading crews equipped with more bulldozers, as well as excavators, front-end loaders, graders and trucks. 12 SIGNPOSTS AND PROMISES US troops learning to use and care for a Caterpillar tractor. Office of History, Headquarters, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. US Army regiments and the team of civilian contractors had 20 D8 Cats. Bulldozer operators were called catskinners, an appropriation of the term muleskinner Finally, ditches were dug, bridges and culverts were built, and corduroy roads fashioned from tree trunks were laid down atop the spongy ground of bogs before being covered with gravel. There were two systems of road-building behind the D8 Cats. The leap frog method divided the road into sections up to 25 km (16 mi) long and assigned a company of engineers (made up of three platoons) the task of finishing it completely. The section s company stayed on their length of road as a unit until it was done at which time the men pulled up stakes and moved to a new section ahead of the work crews in front of them. The train method followed the lead D8 Cats over longer distances using specialty crews to complete each stage of refinement in sequence as they moved forward. The train, led by the D8 Cats, moved forward continually at least until one crew ran into a problem that would inevitably stall the progress of everyone following it. The 18th Engineers Regimental Band giving a concert on the shores of Kluane Lake, 1942 Yukon Archives. R.A. Cartter Fonds, 82/281R #1649 Military Units Eight regiments with almost 11,000 enlisted men worked on the Alaska Highway: 18th Engineer Combat Regiment Whitehorse northward 35th Engineer Combat Fort Nelson northward 93rd General Service Regiment Carcross to Teslin southward (African American) 95th General Service Regiment Dawson Creek northward (African American) 97th Engineer General Service Regiment Big Delta, Alaska southward to Whitehorse, and Slana to Big Delta (African American) 340th Engineer General Service Regiment Whitehorse southward 341st Engineers General Service Regiment Fort St. John to Fort Nelson ROAD 13