World War II Comes to South-central Alaska
World War II was a pivotal event that transformed and reshaped Alaska by bringing dramatic, long-lasting changes to the territory. Alaska became increasingly involved in the nation’s massive defense mobilization effort. Beginning in 1940, there was a major military construction buildup to keep Alaska’s lifelines open to the lower 48 states. Alaska lacked a land-based transportation system and a network of airports, harbor facilities, railroads, and highways was quickly built to facilitate military movement. The war propelled Alaska, and particularly Anchorage, from a remote, isolated place into the twentieth century.
As relations between Japan and the United States deteriorated in the late 1930s, American strategists were forced to recognize Alaska’s strategic importance in the North Pacific. Owing to advances in aviation, Alaska was located on the Great Circle route, the shortest distance between Japan and the west coast states. A defense concept was developed for Alaska that considered the great potential of military air power, with emphasis on building forward bases and using air power to defend Alaska and the North Pacific area. The American military buildup in anticipation of war led to efforts to greatly improve Alaska’s defenses by building a network of air bases at forward locations and stationing Army garrisons to protect them. This work included new fields and the Navy’s bases at Sitka, Kodiak, and Dutch Harbor. During the period 1939-1942, the Civil Aeronautics Authority and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built numerous staging fields throughout Alaska. Alaska’s military population dramatically increased from about 1,000 in 1939 to 35,000 in September 1941. In 1940, the Army started construction on major Alaska defensive bases associated with Lend-Lease at Anchorage, Fairbanks, Annette Island, and Yakutat. The Lend-Lease program made possible the transfer of aircraft to the Soviet Union and hastened Germany’s defeat on the eastern front.
Although World War II began in September 1939, the United States did not enter it until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941. Alaska (particularly the Anchorage area) was totally blacked out and in air-raid alarm condition. The war came to Alaska itself in the first week of June, 1942, when Japanese bombers attacked Dutch Harbor on June 3-4, 1942. The raid was a cover for the Japanese attack and occupation of Kiska and Attu Islands in the far western Aleutian Islands. The raid also dramatically demonstrated that the Japanese had the ability to attack other harbors within the Gulf of Alaska. The U.S. responded by having the Navy construct harbor defenses at Dutch Harbor, Kodiak, Sitka, and that the Army Corps of Engineers construct the defenses at Seward. It was not until 1943 that a combined Canadian-American army and navy force recaptured Attu and Kiska, ending the Aleutian Campaign.
Major changes were taking place in Anchorage and south-central Alaska with the construction of Fort Richardson and Elmendorf Army Air Force Base near Anchorage, improvements in the operations of the Alaska Railroad, enlargement of the Seward harbor and the creation of harbor defenses at Fort Raymond, and construction of the Whittier Tunnel and Port of Whittier.
In 1940, the military arrived in Anchorage to build an army base and air field north of town, popularly referred to as Elmendorf Field. On November 12, 1940, the War Department formerly designated it as Fort Richardson, with the air facilities on the post named as Elmendorf Field (redesignated as Elmendorf Army Air Base in 1942). Fort Richardson served as the U.S. Army’s ground and air headquarters in Alaska. The Eleventh Air Force was formed at Elmendorf Army Air Base in 1942. The air base played a vital role as the main air logistics center and support base for other military installations in Alaska and, later, for offensive air operations against the Japanese-held Kurile Islands off northern Japan. After the war, these two installations became the main air base, supply depot, and ground garrison for the defense of southern Alaska.
Other projects receiving high priority involved improving the operations of the Alaska Railroad. The Alaska Railroad served as the main transportation route through south-central Alaska from tidewater at Seward and north to Anchorage and Fairbanks. In the early 1940s, there were no inland roads from the sea, except the Richardson Highway, from Valdez on Prince William Sound to Fairbanks. War construction activities included a general program of rehabilitation work that concentrated on strengthening track structures, laying heavier rails, renewing crossties, improving drainage, restoring eroded embankments, and repairing and strengthening bridges. In 1942, the railroad moved into a new $257,500 three-story office and station building located along the main line at Ship Creek and adjacent to Anchorage’s business section. At Eska, 60 miles outside of Anchorage, the railroad’s bituminous coal mine was modernized and put into operation to supply the railroad’s wartime supply needs. The railroad also leased to the War Department the “Ocean Dock,” a short berth, located on Knik Arm, Cook Inlet. The U.S. Army rebuilt the dock for the unloading of petroleum and other military cargo during the seven to eight months when ice conditions permitted.
To improve the handling capacity of the Alaska Railroad, the harbor facilities at Seward were expanded and a second port was built at Whittier on Prince William Sound. As the southern terminus of the Alaska Railroad, Seward served as a critical supply line for the war effort and for Alaskans. Food, materials, and equipment were unloaded directly from ocean-going vessels to railroad cars and then transported along the Alaska Railroad to Fort Richardson in Anchorage and Ladd Field at Fairbanks.
Between 1942 and 1944, extensive defensive works (Fort Raymond) were constructed at Seward, making it the most heavily fortified city on the Alaskan coast. The fort consisted of the Seward garrison, fuel oil storage area, an 830-foot long dock with a 22-ton derrick, and housing for 171 officers and over 3,000 enlisted men. The harbor defenses were set up along the shore and perimeter of the city, at points around Resurrection Bay, and on several islands in the mouth of the bay. Included were five searchlight shelters, anti-aircraft weapons (37mm and .50 caliber and 75mm field artillery guns), and an anti-motor-torpedo-boat (AMTB) battery at Lowell Point south of the city. Three coast artillery and observation sub-posts were built on South Beach at Caines Head (10 miles south of Seward), Rocky Point (Fort McGilvray), and Rugged Island (Fort Bulkley). The defense system also extended to Barwell Island and to other beaches, points, and coves.
The U.S. Army used the port of Whittier as a second seaport railroad terminal to move troops and to handle increased tonnages of war materials and equipment that were shipped to Alaska and to provide an alternate port to Seward. In 1941, work was started on two railroad tunnels, the laying of a 14-mile railroad track from Portage to Whittier, and constructing a dock and terminal facility at Whittier. The shorter tunnel (Moraine Tunnel), 4,910 feet long, was on the west side of the project close to the moraine of nearby Portage Glacier. The second tunnel (Whittier Tunnel), 13,090 feet long, had an outlet near the Whittier Glacier. The two tunnels, separated by Bear Valley, provided a railroad linkage between the Army’s port at Whittier to the Alaska Railroad’s line at Portage, south of Anchorage. The rail line cut-off to Whittier shortened the distance from tidewater to Anchorage and Fairbanks by 51.5 miles and avoided the 50-mile mountainous section between Seward and Portage. With the Whittier port in operation, the railroad handled 75 percent more freight traffic than would have been possible through the port of Seward. The $11 million port project, with docks, power plant, rail yards, warehouses, and housing, was completed in 1943. With the rail cutoff in operation, the port of Whittier handled the military traffic; Seward handled the commercial traffic. In addition, about 1,200 miles of new roads were built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers throughout Alaska to connect these and other projects with harbors, railroads, or existing roads.
World War II had a profound and lasting impact on Alaska’s political, economic, and social structure that continued after the war and transformed it in several ways. The war’s most lasting impact was economic, as the defensive infrastructure built during the four brief war years (1941-1945) later served as Alaska’s postwar transportation system. The federal government spent $3 billion on military bases, airfields, ports, roads and highways, and other capital improvements during the war which became the basis for considerable post-war economic growth. The military buildup and the war itself brought tens of thousands of military personnel and construction workers to Alaska. Almost 300,000 military personnel served in Alaska during the war, with about 150,000 at peak strength at the height of the war in August 1943. Alaska’s civilian population increased substantially from about 73,000 in 1940 to 139,000 in 1945. These large population increases continued after the war and provided momentum to the Alaska statehood movement. Claus-M. Naske and Herman E. Slotnick, in Alaska: A History of the 49th State, commented that the war “irrevocably altered the pace and tenor of Alaskan life.” The war also led to a massive, permanent military presence that continued into the Cold War as Alaska became America’s foremost northern defensive outpost. The war led to a greatly increased reliance on federal spending which continued after the war. For Anchorage, the war was of immense significance as it became the largest and most dominant city in Alaska and an economic power, a condition that would not have been possible without the presence of the military. Stephen Haycox in Alaska: An American Colony, stated that “After the war, Alaskans found themselves bound more tightly to the country and the West, especially Seattle.”
Sources: James D. Bush, Narrative Report of Alaska Construction, 1941-1944 (Anchorage: Construction Division Office, Alaskan Department, 1944); Fern Chandonnet, ed., Alaska at War, 1941-1945: The Forgotten War Remembered (Fairbanks, University of Alaska Press, 2008); D. Colt Denfeld, The Cold War in Alaska: A Management Plan for Cultural Resources, 1994-1999 (Anchorage: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Alaska District, 1994); Stephen Haycox, Alaska: An American Colony (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002); Lisa Mighetto and Carla Homstad, Engineering in the Far North: A History of the U.S. Army Engineer District in Alaska, 1867-1992 (Ft. Belvoir, VA?: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1997); Claus M-Naske and Herman E. Slotnick, Alaska: A History of the 49th State (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987); Penney Rennick, ed., Alaska Geographic, World War II in Alaska, v. 22, no. 1 (1995); William F. Willingham, Northwest Passages: History of the Seattle District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Volume II: 1920-1970 (Seattle, WA: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Seattle District, 2006); Lyman L. Woodman, Duty Station Northwest: The U.S. Army in Alaska and Western Canada, 1867-1987, Volume Two: 1918-1945 (Anchorage: Alaska Historical Society, 1996); Bob Atwood Papers, 1907-1997, and U.S., Department of the Interior, The Alaska Railroad War Record, 1945, Archives and Special Collections, Consortium Library, University of Alaska Anchorage.
Photograph Credits: JBER - 673rd Air Base Wing History Office, Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, AK; NARA, AK - National Archives at Anchorage.
Author: Bruce Parham/2012
As relations between Japan and the United States deteriorated in the late 1930s, American strategists were forced to recognize Alaska’s strategic importance in the North Pacific. Owing to advances in aviation, Alaska was located on the Great Circle route, the shortest distance between Japan and the west coast states. A defense concept was developed for Alaska that considered the great potential of military air power, with emphasis on building forward bases and using air power to defend Alaska and the North Pacific area. The American military buildup in anticipation of war led to efforts to greatly improve Alaska’s defenses by building a network of air bases at forward locations and stationing Army garrisons to protect them. This work included new fields and the Navy’s bases at Sitka, Kodiak, and Dutch Harbor. During the period 1939-1942, the Civil Aeronautics Authority and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built numerous staging fields throughout Alaska. Alaska’s military population dramatically increased from about 1,000 in 1939 to 35,000 in September 1941. In 1940, the Army started construction on major Alaska defensive bases associated with Lend-Lease at Anchorage, Fairbanks, Annette Island, and Yakutat. The Lend-Lease program made possible the transfer of aircraft to the Soviet Union and hastened Germany’s defeat on the eastern front.
Although World War II began in September 1939, the United States did not enter it until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941. Alaska (particularly the Anchorage area) was totally blacked out and in air-raid alarm condition. The war came to Alaska itself in the first week of June, 1942, when Japanese bombers attacked Dutch Harbor on June 3-4, 1942. The raid was a cover for the Japanese attack and occupation of Kiska and Attu Islands in the far western Aleutian Islands. The raid also dramatically demonstrated that the Japanese had the ability to attack other harbors within the Gulf of Alaska. The U.S. responded by having the Navy construct harbor defenses at Dutch Harbor, Kodiak, Sitka, and that the Army Corps of Engineers construct the defenses at Seward. It was not until 1943 that a combined Canadian-American army and navy force recaptured Attu and Kiska, ending the Aleutian Campaign.
Major changes were taking place in Anchorage and south-central Alaska with the construction of Fort Richardson and Elmendorf Army Air Force Base near Anchorage, improvements in the operations of the Alaska Railroad, enlargement of the Seward harbor and the creation of harbor defenses at Fort Raymond, and construction of the Whittier Tunnel and Port of Whittier.
In 1940, the military arrived in Anchorage to build an army base and air field north of town, popularly referred to as Elmendorf Field. On November 12, 1940, the War Department formerly designated it as Fort Richardson, with the air facilities on the post named as Elmendorf Field (redesignated as Elmendorf Army Air Base in 1942). Fort Richardson served as the U.S. Army’s ground and air headquarters in Alaska. The Eleventh Air Force was formed at Elmendorf Army Air Base in 1942. The air base played a vital role as the main air logistics center and support base for other military installations in Alaska and, later, for offensive air operations against the Japanese-held Kurile Islands off northern Japan. After the war, these two installations became the main air base, supply depot, and ground garrison for the defense of southern Alaska.
Other projects receiving high priority involved improving the operations of the Alaska Railroad. The Alaska Railroad served as the main transportation route through south-central Alaska from tidewater at Seward and north to Anchorage and Fairbanks. In the early 1940s, there were no inland roads from the sea, except the Richardson Highway, from Valdez on Prince William Sound to Fairbanks. War construction activities included a general program of rehabilitation work that concentrated on strengthening track structures, laying heavier rails, renewing crossties, improving drainage, restoring eroded embankments, and repairing and strengthening bridges. In 1942, the railroad moved into a new $257,500 three-story office and station building located along the main line at Ship Creek and adjacent to Anchorage’s business section. At Eska, 60 miles outside of Anchorage, the railroad’s bituminous coal mine was modernized and put into operation to supply the railroad’s wartime supply needs. The railroad also leased to the War Department the “Ocean Dock,” a short berth, located on Knik Arm, Cook Inlet. The U.S. Army rebuilt the dock for the unloading of petroleum and other military cargo during the seven to eight months when ice conditions permitted.
To improve the handling capacity of the Alaska Railroad, the harbor facilities at Seward were expanded and a second port was built at Whittier on Prince William Sound. As the southern terminus of the Alaska Railroad, Seward served as a critical supply line for the war effort and for Alaskans. Food, materials, and equipment were unloaded directly from ocean-going vessels to railroad cars and then transported along the Alaska Railroad to Fort Richardson in Anchorage and Ladd Field at Fairbanks.
Between 1942 and 1944, extensive defensive works (Fort Raymond) were constructed at Seward, making it the most heavily fortified city on the Alaskan coast. The fort consisted of the Seward garrison, fuel oil storage area, an 830-foot long dock with a 22-ton derrick, and housing for 171 officers and over 3,000 enlisted men. The harbor defenses were set up along the shore and perimeter of the city, at points around Resurrection Bay, and on several islands in the mouth of the bay. Included were five searchlight shelters, anti-aircraft weapons (37mm and .50 caliber and 75mm field artillery guns), and an anti-motor-torpedo-boat (AMTB) battery at Lowell Point south of the city. Three coast artillery and observation sub-posts were built on South Beach at Caines Head (10 miles south of Seward), Rocky Point (Fort McGilvray), and Rugged Island (Fort Bulkley). The defense system also extended to Barwell Island and to other beaches, points, and coves.
The U.S. Army used the port of Whittier as a second seaport railroad terminal to move troops and to handle increased tonnages of war materials and equipment that were shipped to Alaska and to provide an alternate port to Seward. In 1941, work was started on two railroad tunnels, the laying of a 14-mile railroad track from Portage to Whittier, and constructing a dock and terminal facility at Whittier. The shorter tunnel (Moraine Tunnel), 4,910 feet long, was on the west side of the project close to the moraine of nearby Portage Glacier. The second tunnel (Whittier Tunnel), 13,090 feet long, had an outlet near the Whittier Glacier. The two tunnels, separated by Bear Valley, provided a railroad linkage between the Army’s port at Whittier to the Alaska Railroad’s line at Portage, south of Anchorage. The rail line cut-off to Whittier shortened the distance from tidewater to Anchorage and Fairbanks by 51.5 miles and avoided the 50-mile mountainous section between Seward and Portage. With the Whittier port in operation, the railroad handled 75 percent more freight traffic than would have been possible through the port of Seward. The $11 million port project, with docks, power plant, rail yards, warehouses, and housing, was completed in 1943. With the rail cutoff in operation, the port of Whittier handled the military traffic; Seward handled the commercial traffic. In addition, about 1,200 miles of new roads were built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers throughout Alaska to connect these and other projects with harbors, railroads, or existing roads.
World War II had a profound and lasting impact on Alaska’s political, economic, and social structure that continued after the war and transformed it in several ways. The war’s most lasting impact was economic, as the defensive infrastructure built during the four brief war years (1941-1945) later served as Alaska’s postwar transportation system. The federal government spent $3 billion on military bases, airfields, ports, roads and highways, and other capital improvements during the war which became the basis for considerable post-war economic growth. The military buildup and the war itself brought tens of thousands of military personnel and construction workers to Alaska. Almost 300,000 military personnel served in Alaska during the war, with about 150,000 at peak strength at the height of the war in August 1943. Alaska’s civilian population increased substantially from about 73,000 in 1940 to 139,000 in 1945. These large population increases continued after the war and provided momentum to the Alaska statehood movement. Claus-M. Naske and Herman E. Slotnick, in Alaska: A History of the 49th State, commented that the war “irrevocably altered the pace and tenor of Alaskan life.” The war also led to a massive, permanent military presence that continued into the Cold War as Alaska became America’s foremost northern defensive outpost. The war led to a greatly increased reliance on federal spending which continued after the war. For Anchorage, the war was of immense significance as it became the largest and most dominant city in Alaska and an economic power, a condition that would not have been possible without the presence of the military. Stephen Haycox in Alaska: An American Colony, stated that “After the war, Alaskans found themselves bound more tightly to the country and the West, especially Seattle.”
Sources: James D. Bush, Narrative Report of Alaska Construction, 1941-1944 (Anchorage: Construction Division Office, Alaskan Department, 1944); Fern Chandonnet, ed., Alaska at War, 1941-1945: The Forgotten War Remembered (Fairbanks, University of Alaska Press, 2008); D. Colt Denfeld, The Cold War in Alaska: A Management Plan for Cultural Resources, 1994-1999 (Anchorage: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Alaska District, 1994); Stephen Haycox, Alaska: An American Colony (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002); Lisa Mighetto and Carla Homstad, Engineering in the Far North: A History of the U.S. Army Engineer District in Alaska, 1867-1992 (Ft. Belvoir, VA?: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1997); Claus M-Naske and Herman E. Slotnick, Alaska: A History of the 49th State (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987); Penney Rennick, ed., Alaska Geographic, World War II in Alaska, v. 22, no. 1 (1995); William F. Willingham, Northwest Passages: History of the Seattle District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Volume II: 1920-1970 (Seattle, WA: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Seattle District, 2006); Lyman L. Woodman, Duty Station Northwest: The U.S. Army in Alaska and Western Canada, 1867-1987, Volume Two: 1918-1945 (Anchorage: Alaska Historical Society, 1996); Bob Atwood Papers, 1907-1997, and U.S., Department of the Interior, The Alaska Railroad War Record, 1945, Archives and Special Collections, Consortium Library, University of Alaska Anchorage.
Photograph Credits: JBER - 673rd Air Base Wing History Office, Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, AK; NARA, AK - National Archives at Anchorage.
Author: Bruce Parham/2012
