Coincidences - Twice in a Week

I may have been aware of them before but the coincidence of coming across their exploits twice in a week has caught my attention. I was aware that the US military in World War II was a segregated institution. I might have been aware, but never focused on the fact that there were segregated engineering battalions and regiments building the far flung infrastructure for fighting the war.

At the beginning of the week I was watching a documentary on the History Channel about the building of the Alaskan Highway from Dawson Creek, Canada to Fairbanks, Alaska (a distance of some 1,500 miles) in WWII as part of the effort to improve the ability to defend Alaska from attack by Japan. The construction was an amazing feat performed by about 11,000 troops from several engineering regiments, a third of whom were segregated black engineering regiments. Construction started from both ends in April, 1942, and met up 1,500 miles of road later in October, an astoundingly brief seven months after beginning.

So that was pretty impressive. The fact that a third of the troops were part of segregated engineerings units is an interesting historical fact but somewhat incidental to a hugely impressive engineering feat. They collectively accomplished an amazing outcome.

A couple of days later I am reading Time-Life's Bombers Over Japan, part of their World War II series. In January, 1944, the US B-29 bombers are just beginning to show up in India and China where they will be based for the initial bombing raids on Japan later that year. However, before they can be deployed, airfields and supply routes have to be built to service them and progress has been slow and beset by problems. Army General Wolfe has been dispatched to untangle the mess and starts in India.

Wolfe flew to General Stilwell's headquarters in the Burmese jungle and borrowed a batallion of black American construction engineers who had been working on the Ledo Road, the land supply link between India and China that Stilwell was building through Burma.

Using this batallion, Wolfe quickly completed the construction of a B-29 airfield in Calcutta, India.

I had never heard of this before and am fascinated by the idea of black American troops pulled from the segregated cities and countryside of the US, laboring through the jungles of southeast asia building these huge and hugely critical infrastructure projects. I am particularly intrigued by what their experience might have been in India, a country with its own complex history of caste and race segregation and at that time with the further complexity of being under British colonial rule.

There must be some stories in there somewhere. I know the Alaska Highway story has been told in a couple of books but have never seen anything about the experience of black engineering batallions elsewhere in the world.

And what a coincidence to come across both these incidents in the same week.