This turned out to be a surprisingly-interesting episode. I've seen a few of these bridge-building stories and they were so--so, but this highway-construction story had some very unique angles to it.
I mean, how many times do you read about 11,000 soldiers given the task of making a 1,500-mile road through a wilderness during the middle of a World War? That's what happened here. Also unique was the fact that three of the seven regiments were all-Black ones. What those guys accomplished gained respect and helped race relations down the road (no pun intended).
After watching this hour-long show, what stood out for me wasn't just the race angle but the brutality of conditions that all the men - white and black - had to endure to make this road (which has been changed in name from the Al-Can Highway to the Alaska Highway.) Men were clothed with jackets that were okay if it was 40 degrees out, but not 70 below zero! Frostbite killed numerous men, as did accidents as some of early machinery was not able to handle the harsh forest terrain in Canada.
Workers were given two years to build this highway as a preventative measure in case the Japanese tried to take Alaska. The bombing at Pearl Harbor shook up American and Canadian governments to the point they felt this road had to be made.
This Modern Marvels episode tells us all the things the men had to battle to succeed and how they did it in an incredible eight months, way ahead of schedule! We also see the upgrades to it since those days in 1942. I guess this is just another demonstration of "The Greatest Generation," which had a lot of guts and determination no matter what they set out to do.
I mean, how many times do you read about 11,000 soldiers given the task of making a 1,500-mile road through a wilderness during the middle of a World War? That's what happened here. Also unique was the fact that three of the seven regiments were all-Black ones. What those guys accomplished gained respect and helped race relations down the road (no pun intended).
After watching this hour-long show, what stood out for me wasn't just the race angle but the brutality of conditions that all the men - white and black - had to endure to make this road (which has been changed in name from the Al-Can Highway to the Alaska Highway.) Men were clothed with jackets that were okay if it was 40 degrees out, but not 70 below zero! Frostbite killed numerous men, as did accidents as some of early machinery was not able to handle the harsh forest terrain in Canada.
Workers were given two years to build this highway as a preventative measure in case the Japanese tried to take Alaska. The bombing at Pearl Harbor shook up American and Canadian governments to the point they felt this road had to be made.
This Modern Marvels episode tells us all the things the men had to battle to succeed and how they did it in an incredible eight months, way ahead of schedule! We also see the upgrades to it since those days in 1942. I guess this is just another demonstration of "The Greatest Generation," which had a lot of guts and determination no matter what they set out to do.
