Ordinary Men Build A Legendary Road
Black Engineers & The ALCAN Highway
Alaska Highway, Company C Commander, Civil Engineer. Born: 21 August 1911, Alabama Died: 22 November 2000, Alabama. Buried at Auburn Memorial Park. He graduated from Alabama Polytechnic Institute [Auburn University] and after retirement from the Army, he taught industrial engineering at Auburn for fifteen years. He was one of the original officers in the cadre assigned to the…
The 340th Regiment landed in Skagway on April 25th. One battalion went to Whitehorse and the other battalion stayed in Skagway until after the Dutch Harbor bombing in early June.
The rapidly expanding Corps of Engineers, activated the 340th Regiment at Vancouver Barracks in March of 1942, ‘seeding it’ with a small cadre of officers from the 18th Combat Engineer Regiment. On March 9, sixty-two enlisted men from Fort Francis E. Warren joined them and in short order several hundred more arrived from Fort Leonard…
On April 12, 1942, the 93rd Engineers boarded five trains and left Camp Livingston, Louisiana in the early afternoon. They arrived at Camp Murray, Washington on April 16. From the 15th to 25th of April, three ships transported the regiment through the Alaska panhandle up the fjord to dock at Skagway Harbor in Alaska. At Skagway the…
The armed services of the United States expanded as fast as possible during the late 1930’s and early 1940’s. Few among the country’s civilian and military leaders doubted that war was imminent. Among thousands and then tens of thousands of new recruits who poured into the Army were thousands of black men, and they presented…
The armed services of the United States expanded as fast as possible during the late 1930’s and early 1940’s. Few among the country’s civilian and military leaders doubted that war was imminent. Among thousands and then tens of thousands of new recruits who poured into the Army were thousands of black men, and these segregated…
The 340th Engineering General Service Regiment was activated at Vancouver Barracks, Washington on March 5th, 1942 built around a cadre of officers and enlisted men from the 18th Combat Engineering Regiment. In late April 1942, Colonel Russell Lyons landed his brand new regiment at Skagway, Alaska. They were one of four white Engineering Regiments to…
On February 10, 1941 the segregated 93rd Engineer Battalion was activated with a small cadre of white officers at Camp Livingston in Louisiana. By May of 1942 this Battalion, now a General Service Regiment, was in Carcross, Yukon Territory under the command of Colonel Frank M. Johnson. They were the first of three black Engineering Regiments…
In early 1942 the United States found itself at war with the Empire of Japan. Its 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…
