Water and sewage disposal also had to be provided. Most installations used dammed pools or natural and/or modified reservoirs, with wells as a backup for water supply. Water supply was often fairly informal since, in most areas of operations, there was a high water table. Where more formal systems were required, woodstove pipe and creosoted storage tanks were usually used. Alaska’s climate led to the introduction of innovation: the utilidor, an enclosed, heated utility conduit for utility lines. The ones installed at Ladd Field were walk-through structures which also allowed for ease of monitoring and repair. Some were even used as regular passageways between buildings during the winter. Sewage treatment was even more informal than water treatment.
Ladd Field had the only septic system built by the military in World War II. Other facilities used pit latrines or discharged sewage directly into bodies of water or streams. Other facilities were also lacking. Cold storage for subsistence and other perishables was an unexpected problem in Alaska. Initially, units used commercial cold storage where available, such as at canneries, but eventually, extra capacity had to be built. A variety of cold facilities were used, including 15-40hp self-powered permanent cold units, CCC-type units and speciall constructed Universal Cold Corporation units. Laundries, bakeries, repair shops, and various service facilities had to be built, as eventually did theaters, gymnasiums, and other recreational facilities. Dutch Harbor and Fort Richardson eventually received ski-lifts.
Forward bases usually lacked all but the bare minimum of such amenities, but rear bases often furnished a considerable range of opportunities. Major service facilities such as drydocks and ship repair facilities were also lacking. Most repairs were undertaken in Seattle, but commercial units were extant at Cordova, Ketchikan, and Juneau, though they were ill-equipped to handle major military shipping. Drydocks of varying sizes were ultimately built at Seward, Dutch Harbor, Excursion Inlet, Adak, and Attu. While much of Alaska had an abundance of timber, there were few mills and few ways to deliver lumber. Much lumber was shipped in from the Pacific Northwest, with more coming from southeast Alaska. Some were even shipped in from Siberia as payment for Lend Lease goods; Cold Bay was used as a depot for such lumber for a time.
Where available, local timber was used, and the Army built and/or operated sawmills at Whittier, Seward, Big Delta, Excursion Inlet, Cordova, and Juneau. Communications were also a problem within Alaska and between Alaska and other commands. As noted, the radiotelephone link with the outside left much to be desired, and much of the equipment for internal communications was obsolete. The undersea cable linking Ketchikan and Seward with Seattle had been placed on reserve status in 1931 and was no longer operable by 1940. Land lines had been abandoned in 1923 because of maintenance difficulties except for a line paralleling the Alaska Railroad so there were no backup systems or secure communication available.
The ACS (which officially replaced WAMCATS in 1936) had been run primarily to transmit civilian messages. In 1940, the 200 personnel of the ACS operated 11 stations at Nome, Bethel, Kodiak, Seward, Anchorage, Fairbanks, Cordova, Yakutat, Sitka, Juneau and Annette Island. Most used a system designated the DBR, which was said to stand for Damned Big Rush, since it was adopted and installed without adequate testing. With the military buildup, the ACS was taxed beyond its effective operating ability as War Department traffic increased by 200% from 1939 to 1941. The Signal Corps was ordered initially to build ten more stations (Dutch Harbor, Port Heiden, Naknek, McGrath, Galena, Cold Bay, Big Delta, Gulkana, Boundary and Umnak), repair the undersea cable, and establish new high-speed radiotelephone circuits between Seattle and Fairbanks and Kodiak.
It was also instructed to establish an ADC operating network with a control station at Fort Richardson, with substations at Kodiak, Seward, Yakutat and Annette Island. As with other areas of overlapping concern, the split of duties between the Army and Navy Communications required a somewhat arbitrary separation of responsibilities. The ACS became responsible for the security of communications within Alaska and between Alaska and Seattle (the only direct origination point for messages from the US); it was also responsible for communications monitoring, surveillance, and cryptography. The Navy would be responsible for the security of communications originating from points outside the US (which technically left them the responsibility for communications from Canada) as well as ship-to-shore communications. The services would share responsibility for censorship, which would prove to be anarchic in execution. The Navy had the edge in cryptography, and most cryptographic intelligence would actually originate from naval sources, although the Army would generally operate the SIGABA and M-94 cipher encoding machines throughout the war.
In addition, an attempt was made to standardize the equipment used in the Territory. In terms of the latter, a package was put together by the Signal Corps in Seattle consisting of four quonset huts (to house equipment, personnel, and generators), RCA ET-3626 750-watt medium frequency (MF) transmitters (these were obsolete marine radios modified and refitted by the Signal Corps in Seattle), Intervox H-300 300 watt high frequency (HF) transmitters (manufactured in Seattle to ACS specifications), Sargent ACS MF-HF receivers (made to specifications), an operations table, a variety of antenna arrays (loop, rhomboid, etc.) and an International Palmer 15 KVA gasoline generator power unit. There were 20 pages of layout plans and specifications, and a demonstration installation was set up at Signal Corps headquarters in Seattle. A variety of other equipment types would be used, but most installations, especially at forward bases, would utilize this configuration.
To complete its mission, ACS staff was increased to 428 military and 171 civilian personnel by January 1941. The ACS became involved in the scramble for space in Anchorage after it was designated as the control station for the ADC network. Initially, the Alaska Signal Depot operated out of a commandeered abandoned chicken coop and tents on a vacant lot in downtown Anchorage; later it would command two warehouses at the Alaska Railroad yards. A private would be assigned to sleep in the ACS offices in the Anchorage federal building to prevent other groups from taking it over during the night. The ACS was allotted the cable ship Restorer, which, working in fall 1941, had the Seattle cable repaired and operable by December. By January 1942, there were 23 ACS stations in operation and following Pearl Harbor, communications to the States by radiotelephone was restricted to military use. Still, it took four days to pass the word when a general alert was declared in July 1941, and the ADC was informed of the attack on Pearl Harbor by a civilian radio operator who heard of it by chance while fiddling with the dials on a shortwave set and called the duty officer at Ladd Field. The ACS was simply not adequate for a military communications role at the outbreak of the war.
Other aspects of the Signal Corps preparations in Alaska included the work on the Aircraft Warning System (AWS) and the development of the separate Army Airways Communications System (AACS) to handle air traffic control and weather reporting. The latter went into service in mid-1941. Radar was still new and had limited capabilities, but plans were made also in mid-1941 to install the available SCR-268 Antiaircraft (AA) searchlight radars and, mobile long-range SCR-270 and fixed long-range SCR-271 radars to provide early warning. Later SCR 521 (Air-to-surface vessel, or ASV) would be used, primarily for navigation rather than for detection, and SCR-296, surface vessel detectors, along with the SCR-588 improved long-range types. The initial plan of August 1940, called for the construction of eight radar stations, but this was increased to 12 by January 1941, and Buckner requested that the number be upped to 20. The number was later cut back to ten. None was operable before 1942.
The first mobile unit was set up at Fort Richardson in November 1941 but was later moved to Montague Island, with the first fixed unit at Cape Chiniak (Fort J. H. Smith) going into service in February 1942. By May 1942, there were four fixed units and one mobile unit in operation. The system was inadequate, given the vastness of Alaska, the anomalies of atmospheric conditions, and the limits of the equipment.
The 270 series required an unblocked 360-degree range, so installation on peaks was required, increasing the lag time, vulnerability to attack, and construction and support costs for access and support infrastructure. While numerous radar stations would ultimately be built, supply could not keep up with demand, and most proposed installations were dropped in the planning stage as the war moved westward or, if begun, were never completed. Nor would they prove to be particularly effective, since most aircraft warnings in combat zones came from visual spotting by ground observers and there proved to be little need elsewhere.
During the second half of 1941, while the Navy continued working on the joint facilities at Sitka, Kodiak, and Dutch Harbor, the Army’s construction focus shifted from Ladd Field, Fort Richardson, Yakutat, and Annette Island (which were essentially complete) to construction at Cordova, Seward, Whittier, and Nome. Cordova and Seward turned out not to be particularly important, and Whittier was handled by a civilian contractor, requiring only ACOE oversight.
However, with the USSR-German nonaggression pact, there was renewed concern in August 1939, that the Bering Strait area was vulnerable to attack from Russia and/or Japan. With the Red Scare engendered by the supposed Soviet buildup in Siberia, construction at Nome became a priority item. Preliminary work had began early in 1941. The remains of turn-of-the-century Fort Davis were adjudged useless, and the new installation centered on the site of the new airfield west of town.
Construction personnel had to contend with cold weather, a lack of equipment (no heavy machinery or even vehicles were available until after July 1941), and inflation which increased prices by 100% during 1941. By the time the base was completed at the end of 1941, the strategic situation had changed, and the USSR was no longer considered a threat. Soviet flying boats (PBN Nomads built under contract by Consolidated) visited Nome in fall 1941, harbingers of an uneasy relationship which would last throughout the war.
The German-Russian nonaggression pact had made Alaskans and military planners fear a Soviet attack. The formation of the Axis Alliance in October 1940, and the signing of a nonaggression pact between Japan and the USSR in April 1941, made the likelihood of joint or independent Japanese-Soviet aggression in Alaska seem even greater. It was not until Operation Barbarossa – the German surprise invasion of the USSR in June 1941 – that Russia ceased to be perceived as a threat in the North Pacific.
In fact, the rapid advance of the German troops on the Eastern Front made it seen likely that Russia would soon be out of the war entirely. With Russia removed from activity in Alaska, the emphasis changed from the Bering Strait area to the Aleutian Chain, the most likely point of contact with Japan. Such contact became more probable when Roosevelt, in response to Japan’s move into Indochina and a draft callup of 1 million conscripts, signed an executive order freezing Japanese assets in the US and instituting an embargo on strategic materials, mostly oil and scrap steel, to Japan. This July 1941, order was seen by the Japanese as an act which clearly threatened their interests, was arbitrary, and a threat to their security. Roosevelt also called Gen Douglas MacArthur out of retirement and put him in command of the US garrison and the newly activated Philippine Army in that possession as a signal of the US determination to resist.
In August 1941, Roosevelt and Churchill announced the Atlantic Charter, further binding the US to the belligerants.
Navy construction had been expanded to include the new facilities recommended by the Greenslade Board. The Sitka base now included jurisdiction over support bases (NSBs) at Port Armstrong and Port Althorp, as well as at Ketchikan, which was built and operated by the Coast Guard. Kodiak expanded with the addition of perimeter facilities on Woody Island, Entrance Point, and Afognak Island.
Dutch Harbor was initially chosen for its natural harbor and its strategic location near Unimak Pass, the primary route around the end of the Alaska Peninsula between the Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea. It was also thought to be close enough to the Alaskan mainland to be supplied and defended while not appearing too aggressive to the Japanese as a base further out the Chain might have. The main naval facility was located on Amaknak Island, as were the barracks of Fort Mears. The rugged volcanic island provided a large number of locations requiring defense. A wide variety of subsidiary facilities – mostly observation points, batteries, and fire control/searchlight installations – were built. Three of these batteries were given separate fort designations: Fort Schwatka at Ulakta Head at the harbor entrance, and Fort Learnard at Eider Point and Fort Brumback at Constantine Bay flanking it. Other outposts included Hill 400, Pyramid Peak, Hog Island, Morris Cove, Kalekta Bay, Erskine Point, English Bay, Agamgik Bay, Zharaoff Point, Ugadaga Bay, Uniktali Bay, Udagak Strait, Cape Prominence, Cape Wislow, Nateekin Bay, Portage Bay, Makushin Village and Unalga. The initial battery construction at Dutch Harbor, as well as at Kodiak and Sitka, consisted of mobile 155-MM batteries on Panama mounts. Panama mounts consisted of a concrete center plug and a concentric ring of concrete on which the carriage trails rested so that the piece could be rotated for a 360-degree field of fire.
