In late spring 1942, 10,670 American troops arrived in Alaska ready to begin a project one of their officers later described as â??the biggest and hardest job since the Panama Canal.â? Their assignment: Carve more than 1,500 miles of highway out of an unmapped wilderness through Canada connecting to the Lower 48. Formerly shoe clerks, insurance salesmen, farm boys and other workers, they were put behind the wheels of bulldozers and dump trucks with little or no training and told to clear their way through a frozen wasteland. The environment in which they worked was unrelentingly hostile, but their biggest obstacle was time, because Americaâ??in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harborâ??was suddenly and dangerously vulnerable.
America had sporadically explored the building of a road through Canada to Alaska since 1865. Western Union was the first to consider it as part of its short-lived plan to connect the United States to Siberia with a telegraph line. As automobiles became popular in the 1920s, business associations and auto clubs in the American Northwest promoted the development of an Alaskan highway. Yet their attempts were derailed by disagreements over proposed routes and Canadian fears that the highway would lead to American dominance in the Northwest. In 1929, the Great Depression ended any discussions of the proposed highway. Ten years later, Adolf Hitlerâ??s invasion of Poland resurrected the idea, as military strategists considered how to best defend North American interests in case of war. Even as late as the summer of 1941, American military planners considered an Alaskan highway to be â??desirable as a long-range defense measureâ? but rated it less important than building the chain of military airfields across western Canada and Alaska known as the Northwest Staging Route.
That position changed on Dec. 7, 1941. In the days following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, as the Japanese took Guam and then Wake Island, Americans feared the enemy would continue across the Pacific and attack the West Coast. The Alaskan Territory, in particular, seemed vulnerable; its Aleutian Islands were only 750 miles from a Japanese base. The territoryâ??s military resources were stretched thin: 12 medium bombers, 20 pursuit planes, and 21,945 troops were stationed in 11 garrisons across an area four times the size of Texas. Col. Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr., the officer in charge of the Alaska
Defense Command, made the point sharply in a telegram to Washington: â??If the Japanese come here, I canâ??t defend Alaska. I donâ??t have the resources.â?
Suddenly the ability to transport men and supplies to the airfields of the Northwest Staging Route and to U.S. military bases in Alaska was a strategic imperative. After the losses at Pearl Harbor, many feared the U.S. Navy would not be able to defend sea-lanes to the Gulf of Alaska. Of the first 38 American warplanes to fly the Northwest Staging Route, 27 crashed before arrival. The need for a more secure military supply line to Alaska turned thoughts once more to the long-proposed highway.
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