The World War Ii Black Regiment That Built The Alaska Military Highway

A photographic record of a black regiment's contribution to safeguarding Alaska from Japanese invasion

This is the first detailed account of the 5,000 black troops who were reluctantly sent north by the United States Army during World War II to help build the Alaska Highway and install the companion Canol pipeline. Theirs were the first black regiments deployed outside the lower 48 states during the war. The enlisted men, most of them from the South, faced racial discrimination from white officers, were barred from entering any towns for fear they would procreate a "mongrel" race with local women, and endured winter conditions they had never experienced before. Despite this, they won praise for their dedication and their work. Congress in 2005 said that the wartime service of the four regiments covered here contributed to the eventual desegregation of the Armed Forces.

The 95th Colored Engineer Regiment is a fictional account of a little-known historical fact; a third of the 10,000 plus US Army troops who built the Alaska-Canada Highway, also known as the Alcan, during WW II were African-Americans from the South. The bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, set in motion a project to connect the territory of Alaska to the lower 48 states. The project had been on the drawing board for many years but had been on hold over budget concerns and the route. All of those issues became mute on December 7, 1941. The War Department ordered the Army to begin a road construction project from Dawson Creek, BC Canada to Fairbanks, Alaska. The project began in early 1942 when over 10,000 troops arrived in various locations to commence the 1500 mile road project. A little-known fact is that over a third of the workforce were African-Americans from the rural South. These former tenant farmers would demonstrate to the War Department they could use construction equipment, supervise the workforce and on one important project, the Sikanna Chief River Bridge, outperform the white units. The three Colored Regiments despite having been issued all the hand-me-downs from the white regiments, the worst sections of roads to be built and the least amount of support from the Alaskan Command, performed beyond expectations. The Colored Engineer Regiments were commanded by white officers, and NCOs and exposed to the same racial discrimination they had to endure in the South. But through hard work and dedication, these young men impressed the military leaders. Some historians believe the work of the Colored Engineer Regiments, the Tuskegee Airmen and the 761st Tank Regiment (Black Panthers) were the beginning of the drive to desegregate the Armed Forces by President Harry Truman in 1948.

The United States needed a road to Alaska so they could defend the Aleutians from Japan. They sent soldiers to build the Alaska Highway. The segregated Black 97th Engineers built the road in Alaska, and when their disorganized white officers struggled to make progress, the army replaced their commander. The new one got the job done but ignored military protocol and discipline, so the army, worried about undisciplined black soldiers, replaced him too. And to put the fear of God into the soldiers, the army trumped up a mutiny charge against ten of them and sentenced them to long prison terms at hard labor.

This is the first detailed account of the 5,000 black troops who were reluctantly sent north by the United States Army during World War II to help build the Alaska Highway and install the companion Canol pipeline. Theirs were the first black regiments deployed outside the lower 48 states during the war. The enlisted men, most of them from the South, faced racial discrimination from white officers, were barred from entering any towns for fear they would procreate a "mongrel" race with local women, and endured winter conditions they had never experienced before. Despite this, they won praise for their dedication and their work. Congress in 2005 said that the wartime service of the four regiments covered here contributed to the eventual desegregation of the Armed Forces.

Although the decades following World War II stand out as an era of rapid growth and construction in the United States, those years were equally significant for large-scale destruction. In order to clear space for new suburban tract housing, an ambitious system of interstate highways, and extensive urban renewal development, wrecking companies demolished buildings while earthmoving contractors leveled land at an unprecedented pace and scale. In this pioneering history, Francesca Russello Ammon explores how postwar America came to equate this destruction with progress. The bulldozer functioned as both the means and the metaphor for this work. As the machine transformed from a wartime weapon into an instrument of postwar planning, it helped realize a landscape-altering “culture of clearance.” In the hands of the military, planners, politicians, engineers, construction workers, and even children’s book authors, the bulldozer became an American icon. Yet social and environmental injustices emerged as clearance projects continued unabated. This awareness spurred environmental, preservationist, and citizen participation efforts that have helped to slow, though not entirely stop, the momentum of the postwar bulldozer.

The definitive history of World War II from the African American perspective, by award-winning historian and civil rights expert Winner of the 2023 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Nonfiction A New York Times Notable Book of 2022 A 2022 Book of the Year from TIME, Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and more More than one million Black soldiers served in World War II. Black troops were at Normandy, Iwo Jima, and the Battle of the Bulge, serving in segregated units while waging a dual battle against inequality in the very country for which they were laying down their lives. The stories of these Black veterans have long been ignored, cast aside in favor of the myth of the “Good War” fought by the “Greatest Generation.” And yet without their sacrifices, the United States could not have won the war. Half American is World War II history as you’ve likely never read it before. In these pages are stories of Black military heroes and civil rights icons such as Benjamin O. Davis Jr., the leader of the legendary Tuskegee Airmen, who fought to open the Air Force to Black pilots; Thurgood Marshall, the chief lawyer for the NAACP, who investigated and publicized violence against Black troops and veterans; poet Langston Hughes, who worked as a war correspondent for the Black press; Ella Baker, the civil rights leader who advocated on the home front for Black soldiers, veterans, and their families; and James G. Thompson, the twenty-six-year-old whose letter to a newspaper laying bare the hypocrisy of fighting against fascism abroad when racism still reigned at home set in motion the Double Victory campaign. Their bravery and patriotism in the face of unfathomable racism is both inspiring and galvanizing. An essential and meticulously researched retelling of the war, Half American honors the men and women who dared to fight not just for democracy abroad but for their dreams of a freer and more equal America.

28 October 1942, a date that will live forever in Black military history, is the date the Alaska Highway was finished. This book is a fictional account of a little-known historical fact; a third of the 10,000 plus US Army troops who built the Alaska-Canada Highway during WW II were African-Americans from the South. The bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, set in motion the Alcan construction. The War Department ordered the Army to begin a road construction project from Dawson Creek, BC Canada to Fairbanks, Alaska. Despite all the trials and tribulation encountered by the Colored troops in Alaska, they proved to the "Brass" that they were capable of any task. Some same this was the beginning of the modern civil rights struggle.