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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.
We Fought the Road is the story of the building of the Alaska-Canada Highway during World War II. More than one third of the 10,607 builders were black; thought to be incapable of performing on a war front by many of their white commanding officers. Their task--which required punching through wilderness on a route blocked by the Rocky Mountains and deadly permafrost during the worst winter on record--has been likened to the building of the Panama Canal. Unlike most accounts that focus on the road's military planners, We Fought the Road is boots-on-the-ground and often personal, based in part on letters from the "Three Cent Romance," the successful courtship via mail discovered in the authors' family papers
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.
On December 7, 1941 the United States suddenly found itself at war with the Empire of Japan. Alaska's Aleutian Island chain led through the North Pacific from Japan to North America, and the army desperately needed to convoy the material of war to Alaska's undefended coastline. That required a 1600-mile road through northern Canada and Alaska. The army dispatched four white and three segregated Black engineering regiments north to build the Alaska Highway. One of the Black regiments, the 97th Engineers, arrived at snow covered Valdez, Alaska in April 1942, tasked with building the northernmost end of the Highway. The soldiers of the 97th worked and suffered and their racist, disorganized white officers offered virtually no leadership. When the army finally fired their commander, "Old Grandma", his replacement got the regiment under control. But, focused on getting the job done, he abandoned military protocol and discipline. The black soldiers adapted, became, in effect, civilians in uniform and they completed the road. To help a third commander scare his black soldiers back to normal protocol and discipline, the army court-martialed ten of them for mutiny, convicted nine and sentenced them to long prison terms at hard labor.
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.
Author : Lawrence Hill Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company Page : 313 pages File Size : 38,28 MB Release : 2016-01-25 Category : Fiction ISBN : 0393285464
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