In early 1942 the United States found itself at war with the Empire of Japan. It’s leaders looked north and panicked. The Aleutian island chain, extending in a broad arc across the North Pacific from the remote territory of Alaska almost to Japan’s Kurile Islands, offered the Japanese an obvious path to North America.
Outpost Alaska had 15,000 miles of undefended coastline and no transport route other than the sea existed between Alaska and the contiguous United States. The Navy had suffered grievous losses and a flood of new commitments stretched its resources to the breaking point. Clearly the Navy could not guard the sea lanes leading to Alaska and the Aleutians and at the same time ferry men, weapons and supplies there.
America desperately needed a land route to Alaska and her leaders launched the Army Corps of Engineers into the vast, forbidding subarctic wilderness of Northern Canada and Alaska to build it. The Corps had four white regiments; not enough. They reluctantly added three segregated black regiments to the lineup; resolved to keep them in the woods, out of sight and away from the local population.
