“DOT SPOT"

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 77, 12 August 1942, Page 3

“DOT SPOT"

Few people, even in the United States or Canada, realised that it was a potential military hot spot. As recently as 1935, the Into General Wililam Mitchell, of tlie U.S. Army, warned his countrymen that Alaska was “the most important strategical place in the world;” despite his foresight, the garrison of the whole Territory of Alaska at the outbreak of the war in 1939 consisted of 300 soldiers! There was not a single military airfield up to 1940. and even today there is no through road from the U.S. to Alaska, although one is being rapidly completed with the cooperation of the Canadian defence authorities. In the current financial year at least. 150 million dollars have been earmarked for the defence of Alaska, and airfields have been constructed with that American speed and thoroughness to which we, too. have recently become accustomed. Alaska was discovered by the Russians during the eighteenth century, but very little was known about it for a full hundred years after Peter Popoff sailed through the Bering Strait in 1711 and reported to the Czai that "a continent existed on the other side ol’ Asia.” Seventeen years later Peter the Great sent out the Danish navigator, Vitus Bering, to investigate: but it must have been very foggy, for Bering, though he went through the strait bearing his name, did not see the American shore or even the Diomede Islands in the middle/ However, he tried again later and was successful; he anchored near the mouth of the Copper river. Later, Captain Cook explored this region and charted some of the coastline; the King of Spain also sent a navigator, and several American trading ships visited Alaska toward the end of the eighteenth century. Strangely enough, these explorers did not think of claiming the Territory for their respective countries, and thus the Russians could undisputedly stake out their claims. At that time, Catherine the Great and her grandson, Alexander I, had a great ambition to control the Pacific, and it is recorded that they wanted to grab the whole ol’ California and the Hawaiian Islands as well.