The economic boom set off by wartime demand hurt Alaska as many people moved out of state seeking higher-paying employment. While war-related prosperity failed to reach Alaska, the Territory’s economy was hampered by increased costs and lowered availability of labor, supplies and equipment due to surging demand elsewhere. While certain large operations, notably copper and coal mining and fish canning, experienced major growth, the effect was highly localized and many small firms were forced out of business. Despite the economic benefits from gains in natural resource exploitation and the stimulation offered by the construction of the railroad and the development of some 535 miles of vehicular roads, world market price slumps in the years after the Great War led even more people to leave the Territory in search of jobs.
This exodus was reflected in the military presence as well. The Army closed Fort Davis in 1921 and abandoned Fort Egbert, Fort St Michael, Fort Gibbon, and Fort Liscum in 1925, leaving Fort Seward as the only active military facility in the Territory until 1940. In 1927, there were a total of only 255 Army personnel in Alaska. In 1929, Congress appropriated funds to remove military cemeteries from Alaska, indicating a lack of interest in any long-term presence there. The Navy began to retrench as well; it had expanded its communications presence during World War I by building the Cordova radio stations at Hanscom and Eyak and the one at Seward as well as confiscating the stations of the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America at Juneau and Ketchikan. The Juneau and Ketchikan stations were transferred to the Army in 1924, followed by the Seward station in 1927. The Cordova area stations were closed in 1930 and 1933, and the Kodiak and Sitka stations in 1931.
The Navy took possession of the Seward station again in 1932, but it burned in 1935 and was not reestablished until World War II. The St Paul station was turned over to the Bureau of Fisheries in 1937. The only new construction by the Navy consisted of the Cape Hinchinbrook and Soapstone Point direction finding/radio compass navigation stations in the Gulf of Alaska, operated from 1921 through 1937 and 1938, respectively.
In 1940, the Navy radio station at Dutch Harbor was the only active Navy presence in Alaska. One area which was to have a major impact in Alaska was the development of air travel. The first flight in the Territory was in 1913, and the Signal Corps had an air wing authorized beginning in 1914, but development was slow. To promote military aviation after World War I, the Army sponsored a number of flights to Alaska. In 1920, the Black Wolf Squadron of four DeHavilard DH-4 biplanes flew from New York to Nome and back. In 1924, four two-winged Douglas World Cruisers flew from Seattle along the Alaskan coast and across the Aleutians to the Kuriles then across southern Asia in an around-the-world flight; one ran into a mountainside at Port Moller, becoming the first military aircraft to crash in Alaska. In 1929, Capt Ross G. Hoyt flew a solo mission in a modified Curtiss P-1C Hawk biplane fighter, duplicating the round trip route of the Black Wolf Squadron. The flight ended with a non-fatal crash in Canada on the return leg. Another demonstration of note was the 1934 flight of a squadron of ten Martin B-10 bombers led by Lt Col Henry “Hap” Arnold, who would lead the Army Air Corps in World War II, from Washington DC to Fairbanks and back. All of these flights were staged using civilian and/or ad hoc facilities, as there were no military airfields in the Territory. Civilian aviation caught on more rapidly, with the first commercial aviation venture dating to 1922. Airmail contract runs were being flown by 1924, but civil aviation was also hampered by the lack of facilities. Despite these problems, Alaskans took to aviation to such an extent that by 1938, Alaskan planes carried more cargo than all planes in the rest of the USA.
While Alaska struggled along during the 1920s, the 1930s and the Depression paradoxically led to a minor boom in the North. Alaska benefitted from immigration as unemployment rose in the US, and the increase in the price of gold and the impetus this gave to mining generally provided jobs as did federal relief projects. The Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) sponsored the Matanuska Colonization Project, which for the first time established a permanent, stable agricultural community in Alaska. The Public Works Administration (PWA) constructed harbor facilities, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) improved infrastructure in national forests, the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) built other structures and the Works Progress Administration (WPA) ran various cultural projects. The negative aspects of the New Deal in Alaska involved an actual cutting back of road building and maintenance programs, while aviation-related projects never got off the ground even though authorized by the Air Commerce Act of 1926.
Against the backdrop of the Depression, non-voting Territorial Delegate, Anthony J. Dimond, supported legislation in 1934 to construct airfields in Alaska. This attempt coincided with the report of the Drum Board (under Deputy Chief of Staff Maj Gen Hugh A. Drum), which recommended air bases for Alaska and the report of the Baker Board (headed by former Secretary of War Newton D. Baker) which specifically called for cold weather testing, both in 1934. In 1935, the Wilcox National Air Defense Act was passed; it called for the construction of air bases but lacked a provision for funding. Given scarce resources, the Depression, competing for military needs, and the fact that Alaska could muster very little political clout, no funding was found for Alaskan projects. It was not until 1937 that a site for a facility was selected at Fairbanks and funding and construction was delayed even longer.
Renewed isolationism following World War I led to a slashing of military budgets and a decline in facilities, equipment, and manpower. The closings of bases in Alaska were symptomatic of the deeper problems nationwide in a military establishment where promotion was slow and the atmosphere clubby and stagnant. In 1941, the four top field commanders of the Army, including Gen John L. DeWitt who was responsible for Alaska, were veterans of the Spanish-American War. Prerogatives were jealously guarded, and intra-service and inter-service rivalries were often the most serious concerns of the leadership.
The Navy, under the influence of nineteenth century theoretician Adm Alfred Thayer Mahan, was dedicated to large battleships, to the exclusion of other weapons. Neither service took air power seriously from the 1910s into the 1930s, although proselytizing by Billy Mitchell of the Army and RAdm William A. Moffett of the Navy finally resulted in reluctant support of military aviation. Traditional military thinking within the Army stated that the Navy existed to protect the Army while en route to engage the enemy in continental land wars, while that within the Navy held that the Army existed to defend Navy shore installations with capital ships providing the first line of defense and the real projection of power.
The Joint Army/Navy Planning Board, charged with developing a plan for a possible war in the Pacific, was established in 1903. The Joint Board’s first rudimentary plan was completed in 1907. Further planning led to the first War Plan Orange (plans were devised for a single nation-state enemy and color-coded) in 1924. This plan for war with Japan called for the Army to hold the Philippines while the Navy steamed from the West Coast of the US to engage the Japanese fleet in a decisive battle. Numerous revisions of War Plan Orange followed with the concept of a defensive triangle with Hawaii at the center and Alaska and Panama at the extremes forming a defensive perimeter being introduced in 1935.
Alaska’s strategic flank position developed during the period leading up to World War II. However, the Washington Naval Armaments Limitation Treaty (or Five-Power Treaty) of 1922, in addition to limiting the naval tonnage of the US, Britain, and Japan, prohibited the US from fortifying bases in the Aleutians. Between the provisions of the treaty and budgetary constraints, Alaska was not fortified. By 1938, the military had invested around $225 million in facilities in Hawaii but only $1.5 million for work in Alaska, most of that for civilian relief projects. As Conn drily put it, Army planners found it hard to shake their long-held conviction that Alaska was not a critical area.
Japan had developed a war plan for a conflict with the US as early as 1907 when tensions over US treatment of Japanese immigrants and the feeling that US mediation had deprived Japan of victories won on the battlefield in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) led to consideration of the US as a potential enemy. The Japanese plan was remarkably like that of the 1907 War Plan Orange. It involved luring the US fleet out to do battle in the area of the Philippines, relying on superior Japanese maneuver, ability, strategy, and psychological toughness to carry the day. However, the US was a minor consideration of the Japanese, who saw China and Russia as the main threats. In fact, the Japanese military establishment was primarily focused on cold weather warfare, ill-prepared for a tropical war and woefully ignorant of the potential US enemy, though Japanese forces rapidly developed expertise in tropical warfare.
Suffering the dislocations of rapid modernization and population growth, Japan was hard hit by the worldwide economic collapse in the early 1930s. Following what was seen as a surrender of national sovereignty at the London Naval Conference in 1930, which led to more limitations on naval construction, hardliners gained greater ascendency in the factionalized government and maneuvered Japan into an invasion of Manchuria as a means of expanding out of the Depression. In 1934, Japan unilaterally withdrew from the 1922 Five-Power Treaty two years before it was scheduled to expire. By 1936, the military had acquired veto power over civilian ministry-level policy decisions and issued a paper entitled Fundamental Principles of National Policy, calling for expansion into Asia and the Pacific, which would bring Japan into conflict with the USSR, China, Britain and ultimately the US.
In 1937, Japan invaded China. Britain’s Far Eastern colonial interests led her to protest, and the US supported the British position. The feeling is often expressed that the US in general, and the Navy in particular, ignored the Japanese threat even after the abrogation of the Five-Power Treaty. This is mainly due to the fact that the once-proposed base at Kiska was not revived. Given the political situation and budgetary realities, it is difficult to see how it could have been at the time. Actually, the Navy had an awareness of the potential problem posed by the need to defend the Northern Pacific.
Beginning in 1922, it had begun studies on basing, with recon in the Gulf of Alaska area being undertaken from 1933 to 1937 and Kodiak established as the site for a base in 1938.
Between 1933 and 1935, the Navy conducted aerial reconnaissance of the Aleutians to survey potential base sites, Unalaska and Adak being considered the best locations. A weather station was also established at Kiska in 1934-1935. The 1935 Fleet Problem XVI was held in Aleutian waters. It was shadowed by a Japanese trawler escort, and residents of various islands reported the presence of an unusual number of Japanese fishing boats and scientific and cartographic expeditions. The State Department was informed, but it was decided that no protest should be filed to avoid creating an incident with Japan.
Increasing tensions with Japan during the 1930s and the development of new military technology, especially aircraft, brought Alaska to the attention of planners. There was concern that long-range bombers could reach Alaska and, from bases in Alaska, the West Coast. The consensus was that the key to Alaska’s defense lay in denying to the enemy actual or potential bases from which air or naval operations could be conducted. Still using War Plan Orange as the basis for decisions, the Navy convened the Hepburn Board (headed by Adm Arthur J. Hepburn) to study Naval aviation and readiness. In 1938, the Hepburn Report recommended that the Navy expand the seaplane base designated at Sitka in 1937, and build air facilities at Kodiak and Dutch Harbor as well. These recommendations made it through Congress, and appropriations were voted for FY 1940.
The Navy received priority since its mobility and ability to operate in Alaska was considered superior to that of the Army, though the fact that Franklin Roosevelt as a former Assistant Secretary of the Navy had a certain bias towards the Navy may have influenced the acceptance of the Navy’s viewpoint. The Hepburn Report’s conclusions were also supported by Gen Henry Arnold, Chief of the Army Air Corps and leader of the Alaska Flight of 1934, who insisted that Army bases were necessary to protect the naval facilities, though Arnold’s espousal may have represented a ploy to both assure a role for the Army and to gain recognition for his Air Corps.
Traditional military planning had been confined to calculations of how to meet an attack on American territory by individual nations, but by 1938 the need for a new hemisphere-wide defense was clear. The Joint Army/Navy Board undertook to reassess defense plans under the most unfavorable foreseeable developments in World Affairs. The result was a series of Rainbow Plans, of which the final iteration was R5. The 1939 plan mandated the development of Alaskan defenses. In any Pacific engagement, the Navy would be expected to play the primary role both offensively and defensively at least in the early stages, as the Army lacked troops on the ground and the means to project power in that theater.
Tactically, the plan declared that the Army would be given responsibility, along with the Marines (who were to play a minor role in Alaska), for the defense of Navy shore installations. The two services agreed that duplication of facilities should be avoided and that most could be shared. It was further agreed that Army facilities at such bases would be constructed through existing Navy contracts with civilian firms.
When war broke out in Europe in September 1939, there were about 200 Signal Corps personnel and an additional 300 Army troops at Chilkoot Barracks plus a handful of Navy personnel overseeing various construction projects at Dutch Harbor and other locations. The 286 enlisted men and 11 officers at Chilkoot were armed with 1903 Springfield rifles and used their Russian cannon, the only artillery piece in Alaska, as a flowerpot. There were no roads into the base and the only transportation link with the outside was a tugboat unable to make headway against a 15-knot wind. As Territorial Governor Ernest Gruening observed with considerable overstatement, a handful of enemy parachutists could capture Alaska overnight.
World War II in Alaska
(1939-1946)
Buildup (1939-1942)
In Aug 1939, Germany and the USSR signed a nonaggression pact which led to the partition of Poland after the German attack in September. In Dec, there were reports of a Soviet military buildup in Siberia, leading to strident calls for the defense of Alaska. However, it was the end of the phony war in Europe and the fall of the Low Countries and France in the spring of 1940, which finally galvanized the country. In Jun 1940, Gen George V. Strong of the Army’s War Plans Division argued that the US should look to hemispheric defense and take an essentially defensive posture in the Pacific. This argument was reiterated in November by Adm Harold Stark, Chief of Naval Operations, in a document is known as Plan Dog, which was to set a broad Allied strategy for the war, an active offensive stance in the primary European sector and a reactive defensive stance in the Pacific. As regards Alaska by early 1940, the War Department had agreed on a long-range program having five major objectives, to augment the Alaska garrison; to establish a major base for Army operations near Anchorage; to develop a network of air bases and operating fields within Alaska; to garrison the airfields with combat forces; and to provide troops to protect the naval installations at Sitka, Kodiak, and Dutch Harbor.
The defense of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the US and of the Western Hemisphere in general became a more pressing concern, as did the issue of Canada’s participation. Canada had declared war in support of Great Britain and had only limited military supplies available due to massive shipments of its reserves to Europe. Rainbow Plan 4 (R4) recognized Canada as an ally and recommended cooperation.
The framework for this cooperation was found in the Joint Basic Defense Plan of 1940, and the more definitive Joint Canadian-United States Pacific Coastal Frontier Defense Plan N°2 (ABC-Pacific-22) of 1941. Joint Task Four, the defense of Alaska, gave the Canadian Army no specific responsibilities and assigned the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) a secondary, supporting role. The mainstay of cooperation was the exchange of information and intelligence, the integration of communications and air warning systems, and the coordination of harbor and coast defenses.
The most important collaboration lay in the development of the Northwest Staging Route, a string of airfields between Great Falls MT and Fairbanks AK, for the support of air traffic to and from Alaska. This interior route, which would later be augmented by the Alaska Highway (generally known as the ALCAN Highway) land route, was considered important as an alternative supply link should enemy surface and/or submarine activity interdict ship traffic along the coast, the Inside Passage, or in the Gulf of Alaska.
The slowness of the buildup reflected the hesitancy with which the nation and its leadership moved from a position of neutral isolationism to one of belligerency from the mid-1930s to 1941. The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and the Sino-Japanese War from 1937 on, plus such events as the sinking of the US Gunboat Panay in 1937, the annexation of Austria, the Munich Conference, and the cession of the Sudetenland in 1938, not to mention the outbreak of hostilities in Europe in 1939, pointed to an impending conflict of supra-local scope and intensity, but the US remained immersed in domestic concerns.
Only gradually did public sentiment and Executive and Congressional interest shift towards the exercise of an international leadership role. Roosevelt’s reelection to an unprecedented third term by a wide margin gave him the leeway necessary to change course from recovery and restructuring at home to a foreign policy focus. The Strong Memo prior to the election had little effect, but the Stark Memo (Plan Dog) was readily embraced after it.
Roosevelt had already appointed two prominent Republicans and internationalists, Henry L. Stimson and Frank Knox, as Secretaries of War and the Navy to underscore national unity and a new outward-looking emphasis. Policy goals were to oppose aggression, defend the US and develop the capability to actively enter the fighting if necessary. The necessity appeared more likely as, following successes in Europe, Germany, Italy, and Japan signed a mutual-assistance pact in September 1940, forming the Axis Alliance. The US enacted the first draft law since World War I. Before the Alaska garrison could be augmented according to plan, facilities would have to be constructed, largely from scratch. Following the uphill battle waged by Alaskans and defense advocates, the first modern military construction in the Territory began in 1939. The FY 1940 budget contained $4 million for a military cold weather testing facility to be built at Fairbanks plus about $15 million for the recommended naval construction at Sitka, Kodiak, and Dutch Harbor. With the beginning of these projects, defense spending became the mainstay of Alaska’s economy, a situation that would continue for the next 20 years.
