How Important Is The Arctic? “. . . if this were a ball game, the US wouldn’t be on the field, in the stands, or even in the stadium.”

I picked up Bob Reiss' The Eskimo and the Oil Man (May 2012)  at the library the other day.  The Eskimo in the title is Edward Itta, whaling captain and former Mayor of Barrow.  The oil man is Pete Slaiby, Shell's lead man in Alaska.  I figured it might give me some insight into who this man leading Shell's troubled project to drill the Arctic. 

I'm about one-third of the way in, but it's already clear this book has information that every American should know.  And Alaskans, who think they know about the North, should be paying attention too. 

While some are still denying global climate change and humans' role in it, the world is changing fast and the North is going to take on a very big role in the world we will soon be living in. 

I suspect I'll be giving you bits and pieces as I go through this book.  Here's stuff on the importance of the Arctic and how far behind the US is compared to other Arctic nations.


Will the Northwest Passage become the new Panama Canal?

“. . . the Northwest Passage - the long-dreamed-of trade route between Europe and Asia, and the US, around the top of Canada and Alaska - could open to ships in summers as soon as 2020, some computer models predicted.

“If that happened up to 25 percent of the earth’s shipping might be passing Barrow within ten years, and if the specter of one drill rig could bother whalers, the idea of hundreds of unregulated ships out there was a nightmare.  (p. 29)

 “A single Chinese container ship sailing between Shanghai and New York could save up to $2 million on fuel and fees each way, using the northern route instead of the Panama Canal,”  Scott Borgerson, Oceans Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, had told me." (p. 30 )

There's no permanent Coast Guard base in Arctic.  

 '[The Coast Guard has [n]o way to monitor ship traffic or know whether or not a vessel was friendly, or about to rupture and spill oil, or whether it carried proper lifeboats for passengers.'

"Arctic could become pivotal place like Arabian Peninsula, Panama Canal."  (p. 30 )

Barrow the next Singapore?

"Borgerson predicted, “In twenty years the Arctic coast of Alaska may look like the Coast of Louisiana today, lit by the lights of ships and oil rigs.  One port there may become a trade hub as important as Singapore.  Singapore, once a mangrove swamp, is now the biggest seaport in the world.”(p. 31)

The US lags way behind other Arctic nations

“By spring 2010 many offshore oil advoates and opponents could agree on one thing at least:  the United States was notoriously unprepared for changes occurring in the region.  The nation had not signed the Law of the Sea Treaty.  It had not filed a claim for territory.  The US had one functioning icebreaker to address emergencies, while the Russians had twenty.  The US lacked proper communications equipment, lacked a deepwater port, lacked even basic science that could inform decision makers as to natural processes in the region before they made plans.  There was no cohesive national policy for addressing Arctic energy extraction. 

“In contrast other Arctic countries - Russia, Canada, Norway, Denmark - were much further along when it came to purchasing new icebreakers and awarding undersea oil and gas leases, and they had begun the process of expanding their national territories through the Law of the Sea Treaty.

“‘The Arctic is crucial and the Arctic is now,”  said Adm Gene Brooks of the Coast Guard.  “But if this were a ball game, the US wouldn’t be on the field, in the stands, or even in the stadium.” (pp. 38-39)

 People make grandiose claims all the time, but Alaskans, because we travel a lot, understand that although we look remote on flat maps of the world, we are a in the middle of the shortest routes between Europe, Asia, and the US East Coast - about 8 hours by air to each.  From Europe to Asia via Barrow would be much shorter than the Panama Canal as the example above so clearly demonstrates.

Barrow might not become the new Singapore, but it will soon be on everyone's map.  I know a few people in Anchorage who have been very involved with Arctic issues and they are always telling me this same message.

It's understandable that the US is behind.  Alaska is the only Arctic state and we're not even attached to the other states.  The other nations - Russia, Canada, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland,  and Denmark (representing Greenland and the Faroe Islands) - have a much larger proportion of their land on or near the Arctic.  You can learn more about the organization of Arctic nations - the Arctic Council - here.

But for us to ignore what we have, as these quotes suggest, will cost us dearly in the future.

How The US Got Its First Japanese Zero In WW II

Synchronicity - I thought I would use that word to describe how I've been reading Brian Garfield's The Thousand Mile War:  World War II In Alaska And the Aleutians and just recently saw a photo at the Anchorage Museum of an event I had just read about.

But when I looked up synchronicity online, I realized that while it sort of has that meaning, it has a lot more meaning than I really want to imply.  I don't think I want to suggest that these two events - reading about Japanese Zeroes in the Aleutians and finding a picture of a downed Aleutian Zero at the museum - had any special meaning beyond coincidence and the fact that I was especially alert to WWII Japanese Zeroes when I happened to see this picture at the museum.  I might have passed by a similar picture a month ago, not giving it any special notice.  But now that I just read about it, I'm paying more attention.  Like when a couple is pregnant, suddenly they see a lot more pregnant women than they had before.

But, I will take this opportunity to share some Alaska WWII history with you.  The book is full of stories of incredibly far sighted thinking on the part of some - General Simon Bolivar Buckner gets lots of credit for getting Alaska as ready as possible given the inter-service rivalries, the general lack of military resources in the US in general, and the belief by many that Alaska was irrelevant - and equally incredible lack of preparedness as, for example, primitive communications systems that prevented critical information from getting delivered.

Photo of photo at Anchorage Museum

The quote below comes from a description, in The Thousand Mile War, of day two (June 4, 1942) of the Japanese attack on Dutch Harbor.  The weather is horrible.  Buckner has managed to put in a landing strip on Umnak Island and get some planes there to help protect Dutch Harbor.  The Japanese have no idea this air strip or these fighters are there.  The whole Japanese mission to go after Dutch Harbor was to divert US ships and planes to Alaska while the Japanese attack Midway.  US planes fly out into the storm to try to locate and torpedo the Japanese fleet.  (Yes, they have torpedoes, not bombs.)  They find them, but can't hit them.  The Japanese zeroes are far superior planes to the ragtag collection that Buckner's been able to cadge out of the military brass in the Lower 48.

The Japanese have bombed Dutch  for 20 minutes,  hitting a wing of the hospital and setting fire to a warehouse.  750,000 gallons of fuel exploded when they hit four storage tanks.   Garfield writes that because Dutch Harbor knew the Japanese were coming, only eighteen men died.

Heavy antiaircraft flak scored no hits on the wheeling enemy aircraft, but the Japanese did not escape untouched.  The Rube Goldberg radio had failed to get through, but Umnak had been alerted by the noise, and the Japanese choice of the west end of Unalaska Island as a rendezvous point to rally after each attack.  Now eight Japanese planes from Junyo had formed up in plain sight of the Umnak runway - and eight Flying Tiger Warhawks scrambled to meet them.

American fighters corkscrewed through the enemy formations, striated the sky with tracers, and sent one Zero into a spin, surrounded by a white vapor that turned black and erupted before the Zero touched into the water.
Lieutenant John J. Cape, a good-natured boyish twenty-three year-old pilot who loved to drive an old tractor around Umnak, watched a Japanese dive-bomber swell in his gunsight until, at point-blank range, he triggered a burst that hammered the enemy plane into a ball of flame and sent it down in fragments.  Then a snapped warning in his radio headset made him look behind:  he had a Zero on his tail.  He zoomed upward, hung desperately on his propeller, and rolled over on his back in a wild attempt to evade the Zero. 

In 1942, the United States had no fighter capable of outmaneuvering the Japanese Zero.  When Cape righted his P-40 he found the Zero still with him.  The panel instruments blew apart in Cape's face.  Ammunition exploded in his gun racks and fumes rolled through the cockpit.  Engulfed in flame, Cape fell into Umnak Pass, unable to get out of the spinning airplane.

From Navy webpage The Forgotten Theater  (Japan to lower left not on map)

As Cape when down, Lieutenant Winfied E. McIntyre tried to break away from another pursuing Zero.  The Zero's guns knocked out McIntyre's engine and set it afire.  McIntyre put the ship into a screaming dive, trying to blow out the fire;  he could not get the engine restarted, and almost went into a spin before he glided to a crash-landing on the Umnak beach.  He put the burning P-40 down so skillfully that he climbed out of it and walked unaided into camp.

Meanwhile, four of the homeward-bound Zeroes spotted an American PBY flying low on the water.  The PBY's waist-blister gunners raked the sky with tracers that seemed to have no effect on the diving fighters.  But three of the Zeroes broke off and headed away, too low on fuel to stay for the finish.  One stayed behind to finish off the PBY:  Flight Petty Officer Tadayoshi Koga, a slim young man with an abiding hatred for Americans.  Koga blew the plane apart in the air with his guns.  The Catalina splashed into the ocean, but Koga stayed to make sure.  Finally one man (Aviation Machinist's Mate W. H. Rawls) crawled out of the burning wreckage and paddled away in a life raft.  

Rawls, the blister gunner, had put a machine-gun bullet into Koga's plane, though Koga did not know he had been hit.  That one bullet, a third of an inch in diameter, was to bring the Allies a decisive prize of war.  Koga circled the bobbing rubber raft and machine-gunned Rawls to death in the water.

Koga climbed into the soup after that, but at that moment the needle of this oil-pressure gauge dropped to zero.  Convinced his engine was about to pack up, Koga turned toward the nearest land - Akutan Island.  He sent out a voice broadcast to the I-boat submarine which he had been told was standing by to pick up downed pilots.  Coming in over the island, he prepared to make a forced landing on the flats.  

He made the mistake of lowering his landing gear;  his wheels caught in the boggy tundra, snagged and flipped the Zero on its back.  The crash broke Koga's neck.

The alerted Japanese submarine searched the coast by periscope, but could not find Koga's plane.  (The Zero remained undisturbed on the lonely island until a month later, when a U. S. Navy PBY sighted it.  Navy crews were immediately dispatched to collect the prize.

(Aside from a few dents, Koga's Zero was intact.  Its only damage was a single bullet hole, from A/M Rawls' gun, severing the pressure gauge indicator line.  The gauge was broken, but the engine was unharmed.  American crews quickly dismantled the Zero and shipped it back to the States.

(Tadayoshi Kogoa's fighter was the first Zero captured intact by the Allies in World War II.  The apparently trivial loss cost Japan dearly.  American engineers, with this opportunity to fly and study the war's fastest, deadliest and most secret fighter aircraft, would design the Navy's F6F Hellcat around the principles they learned from Koga's Zero;  in less than eighteen months the Hellcat would drive the zero from Pacific skies and insure Allied supremacy of the air.) [pp. 40-42]

Such little things can make such a big difference.  One bullet in the pressure gauge indicator line, because Koga hung around to kill Rawls before flying back.  Koga trying to land, not knowing he could get back to his carrier, and getting his landing gear caught in the brush.

The book was published in 1969.  I'm not exactly what you'd call a war buff, but as you can tell from this quote, the prose moves you right along.  And for Alaskans, the book is full of back stories on familiar names and places. 

How Big is Africa? Readjusting Your Brain

This blog's underlying theme - though it might not always be obvious - is how do we know what we know? This image surely must challenge how you know the world.

From Information is Beautiful via ConBon Thanks!

Great New York Times Election Results Map

Click here (not on map) for interactive version

While checking on the results for the black candidates for Congress, I found this  New York Times interactive map where the cursor highlights individual districts and numbers and percentages.  It was the easiest way to check different races around the country. 

In some places it was hard to find a specific district until I realized I could click on the map and enlarge it.

Also, knowing your geography helps a lot.  And putting Alaska and Hawaii in Mexico doesn't help.  They could have approximated the real locations by moving the map legends around a bit.  But they live in New York so even if they knew, they wouldn't care.  (Do I sound bitter?  Sorry.  Maybe if New York showed up regularly in the Gulf of Mexico on maps, they'd understand how we feel.)



Election trivia I picked up along the way:

Democrat Adam Smith won a seat from Washington State.


And a lesson from Minnesota on the importance of where you put the district lines:

• In Minnesota District 4, Democrat Betty McCullum beat her Republican opponent by 56,000 votes.
  
• In Minnesota District 5, Democrat Keith Ellison beat his Republican opponent by 99,000 votes.
  
• In Minnesota District 6, Republican Michele Bachman beat her Democratic opponent by 39,000 votes.
  
  The Democrats' left over votes were 4,000 less than Bachman's 159,000.

For the Snowbound - Consider a Break in Springlike Juneau

I'm afraid these aren't great photos, I've been trying to get some shots, while rushing to work in the mornings,  that would show off why the snow bound might want to consider a weekend break in Alaska. 

 

 Wednesday

Wednesday - This is Franklin Street.  

Notice the snow is on the mountains, not in the streets.

Thursday. Mountains, not in the streets.

Today.  With Sunshine. From our window.

Today, sun and blue sky.  From another window.

And just so I don't get accused of misleading you, here's a map of Alaska, showing you that Juneau is in what is called Southeast Alaska.  To get your bearings, Southeast is north and west of the US Northwest.  The map will enlarge a lot if you click it.

And for those who want to wish Abraham Lincoln a happy birthday (and Charles Darwin), you can singalong at least year's post on this day with the Anchorage cast of Hair.

Skeletons on the Zahara

It's been taking me a long time to finish books lately, and I've got three or four started. But I got invited to a book club and I had three days to find and read Skeletons of the Zahara, by Dean King. It's one of those unexpected adventure tales - a US commercial ship wrecks off the coast of Africa and everyone gets captured and enslaved. The author had found the original account - a best seller in the early 1800s, mentioned as a favorite by Abraham Lincoln - while researching something else. He's taken that account and the account of a second survivor and tried to mesh the two tales together.

The ship The Commerce set sail May 2, 1815 with 11 men and after stops in New Orleans and Gibralter (where a 12th hitched a ride) wrecked on the coast of North Africa on August 28. After a brief time on shore, they escaped capture by swimming back out to the grounded ship and continued in one of the ships longboats in hopes of being rescued by a passing ship. Instead they beached 200 miles south sometime between September 5 and 7. The men who survived with Captain Riley made it to safety of the Amerian Consul in Swearah on November 7, 1815. They'd been captives for two months. Four of the men left for Gibralter on January 4, 1816. Captain Riley followed sometime later and made it to New York City on March 19, 1816.

I thought maybe it was just me, but others in the group although thought the writing was pretty uninspired and it took everyone a while to get into the story. We know from the start that the captain, who wrote this, survives, since we have the book. But eventually you want to know how.

I don't think I ever considered that American sailors were taken as slaves by Arabic speakers in Africa. Their lives were pretty basic on the camel treks through the desert, but so were the lives of their new masters. I learned that you CAN survive on salt water if you mix it with fresh water; human urine is better than dying of thirst, and you can drink liquid stored inside a camel.

They placed the small intestines, with their contents still inside, in the kettle, along with the liver and lungs. One man slit open the camel's rumen - its first and largest stomach, where it partly digests its food before regurgitating it as cud - reached inside with a bowl, and scooped out some of the chunky green liquid. . .

Riley saw a teenage boy plunge his head into the camel's gaping rumen and drink. Hamet [the captor], seeing Riley's [the captured captain] interest, told him to remove the boy and take his place.

Riley scooped the nauseating cavity with a bowl and poured the ropy green fluid down his throat. What he swallowed could not have been more refreshing . . . [pp. 152-3]

That they survived was a combination of sheer luck, wit, and determination. The captain strove hard to have as many of his men saved as possible and talked his master into taking all four of the crew still with him, rather than save his own life without them. It appears that this loyalty to his men, in fact, impressed the master who eventually arranged to get him to an American consul in exchange for a sizeable ransom.

And while this characterization is based on what the Captain himself wrote, there was confirmation in the other account, written by a survivor who was separated from the captain's group and stayed captive an extra year. Furthermore, the captain also gave accounts where his behavior was not laudable - as when he escaped the first encounter with Africans by leaving the older, Gibraltar hitchhiker on the beach in his place. He rationalized that the man was not as critical to the survival of the rest as he himself.

The captain also had an ability to see the world through the eyes of others which I think also helped in their survival. You can see it in this passage where they were taunted by a black African slave. The slave, Boireck, had worked all day and came back to find the emaciated Americans, who had rested the day, in a tent. He tried to chase them out, but the master said no.

That evening [Boirek] amused the family and some visitors by taunting the Christians. He pointed at their slack genitals and laughingly compared them with his own. His sneering references to the gaunt Riley as "el rais" [the captain] brought howls of laughter. He poked their wounds with a sharp stick and made fun of their skin, which died and turned foul beneath the very image of Allah, the sun. What further proof was needed that these miserable white heathens were worthy only of slavery and scorn?

Clark fumed. "It's bad enough to be stripped, skinned alive, and mangled," he whispered to Riley, "without being obliged to bear the scoffs of a damned negro slave."

"It's good to know you're still alive, Jim, " Riley responded with a nod. The [camel] milk and water they had consumed that day, the rest, the shade had boosted his spirits. He would not let Boireck's buffoonery beat him down just now. "You feel the need to revenge an insult, but let the poor negro laugh if he can take pleasure in it," he told Clark. "God knows there's little enough here to provide that. He's only trying to gain favor with his masters and mistresses. I'm willing he should have it, even at our expense."[p. 136]

While author King only has Riley's word for what happened, the fact that he could even think like this - even if he didn't really say it - says a lot for him.

Of the seven who made it back from Africa, two died within seven years of their return at ages 29 and 44. Another died in 1831 at age 36. Captain Riley made it to age 62 dying at sea in 1840. Another died in 1847 at age 63. The other sailor to write an account of the trip upon which the book is based, Robbins, died in 1860 at 69. The youngest crew member who was only 15 when The Commerce set sail, died in 1882 at age 82. So, while the near starvation and severe physical strain affected them all, a couple still managed to live to a reasonable old age.

Cuddy Family Midtown Park - Almost Ready

To get to the Peter's Sushi fire site the other day, I ran through the new Cuddy Family Midtown Park (CFMP). I say 'new' because although it's been there a few years, with a path and an amphitheater, now the speed skating rink is in, there's a couple of small lakes (ponds?), and it looks like lawn has been seeded. There's also an asphalt path that wanders around the edges of the park.
The northwest end - which you can get to from the Loussac Library parking lot was full of poppies this week.

There's a small amphitheater near the west entrance. It's been there a while and is already starting to look uncared for. There's a lot of potential for outdoor concerts and even some theater. But this is no Greek amphitheater.

Here's the west entrance at the end of 40th. Never heard of 40th? This is just south of 36th and C. Or just north of Tudor and C. The previous post puts this into a larger context.

This map shows you where the pictures were take from and the direction I was shooting. Google Earth is a little behind the times as you can see from the pictures. But you can also see the scrubby trees that were cleared to make this park. If I understand the function of bogs right, we've traded a natural water filter for lawns that will probably be fertilized and maybe pesticided. Or maybe the parks people have gone organic.

Here's a veiw looking toward Loussac Library not far from the east entrance off of Denali. This is off that new out of the way road into the Loussac parking lot. You can see the road barely in the upper right of the picture.


And here's a view of the tiny lakes, looking west from near the east entrance.



Finally, a panorama from the south side of the park near the back of Lowe's (on Tudor). This is three different pictures spliced together, so the right side is basically looking north and the left side more to the west.

This isn't one of those typical Anchorage parks where they chopped down a bunch of trees to add some playground equipment or sport fields. As I recall, uncertainly, this had some stunted bog spruce. There's still some of that green on the Google Earth map It looks like its going to be rolling lumps of lawn. Maybe they'll even put some trees back in. It's in a residential-free island surrounded by Tudor, C St., Denali, and 36th. So it's not a neighborhood park.

The speed skating rink will probably attract a certain crowd. There really aren't too many places to sit and watch the skaters - a few small benches. Sitting on the grass knolls might be good, but they'll be under snow and ice when there are skaters.

And there isn't a lot of parking. Well, there's Loussac's parking lot, but it's pretty full most of the winter. There's room for some cars down on the park end if there aren't too many people using the park.

Well, it's just in the beginning stages, so let's see what other amenities come in - picnic benches, covered table areas, seating near the rink, etc. And some trees maybe. It does look more like a Lower 48 Park than any other one I can think of. The water is artificial lakes, the lawn areas were sculpted, and the natural vegetation was nearly completely cleared out (except for the edges of the Loussac parking lot) and replaced by...well we'll have to see.

B Street & 40th Street Anchorage

We spent a year in Washington DC long ago. We explored much of the area and our maps were worn out at the end. I came back thinking that I could take a map of Anchorage and mark off every road I'd been on and that we were small enough that I could
eventually mark off every road.

Well, I didn't. But in the 31 years I've lived here, green open space has been replaced by view blocking buildings of various sizes. Or by new roads like Elmore Road. And quickly we forget what things looked like before and we adjust to the new use of that space.

Both thoughts - checking out all the roads and documenting the changes - came together Wednesday when I ran over to B St between 40th and Tudor to look at the remains of Peter's Sushi. This is a street that is hidden off the beaten path. So let me show you some pictures. First, with the help of Google Earth.

First an overview of the area I'm talking about. The red box is enlarged below. But this is between 36th and Tudor (Loussac and Lowe's) and C Street and Denali. It includes the new Cuddy Family Midtown Park which is pretty messed up in the Google Earth photo and now has a finished speed skating rink and lawns that have just been started. Pictures in the next post. The red star is at the intersection of 40th and B Streets.


Again, part of the documentation here comes from the Google Earth picture below which has dirt where the RE/MAX building is now. You can also see how tiny - just a path really - 40th is between B and C Streets. Pictures of now are below.

This is the red square from the first map with pictures of the buildings that are in the maps. Another way to do this is to go to Google Street map.

4oth and B Streets looking NORTH. On the left is the new RE/MAX building.

This is 40th and B Streets looking SOUTH. Note that whoever built this street didn't consider pedestrians or cyclists because there is no sidewalk.



This is a view from 40th and B Streets looking EAST. There is nothing here but a tiny parking lot and a park entrance. People working in the offices along B Street or people coming to the park from the south have no sidewalk along B St to this park entrance.

This is two pictures loosely meshed together to give you the sense of looking WEST from 40th and B (the red star in the two maps above.) According to the top map, this was just a path not long ago. Looking this way actually jarred, briefly, very briefly, a memory of walking in Singapore at the end of April - looking toward a busy street (C Street) with tall buildings, particularly the glassy Arctic Slope Building.

We ride down streets with lots of buildings that we never go in and we have no idea what goes on in those buildings. So I went into two of the buildings on B Street (the others seemed like there was basically one tenant; 3 buildings were DOWL engineers, another TTT Environmental) and took pictures of the list of tenants.



Above is the Northwest Building and below is the list of tenants in this buiding.






The Park View really has a park view, in the back. I'll put up pictures of the park in the next post. The directory, which looked very good in person, proved to be a bitch to photograph, what with the reflections of the light from behind. As I look at it now, I should have used my flash. Since I normally dislike how a flash changes the mood of the scene, I forget all about it in situations like this. In any case you can enlarge the pictures and squint if you want to read it.




Note that B St. is something of an oddity because A St here for a block or so is in between C St and B St. The dilemma is that north of here is where A street splits off to the right from C St. There is no A St to the south. There are a few tiny pieces of B St to the south (map on right) and a few blocks to the north (map on left)

40th Street is another that appears here and there. A new section of 40th is scheduled to become a reality from Lake Otis eastward through what is now mostly woods and a big hill near the McLaughlin Youth Center. It's the dotted yellow line between A and B in the map.


From the Community Council Survey Capital Projects Needs Ranking Survey : (This is a screen capture of the original so the missing words were like that. You can click on the image to enlarge it.)



Notice the language used here:
traffic calming, increase connectivity, relieve pressure. All sounds really good, until you see another chunk of wild green in the city chewed up and spit out as pavement.

Here's just a bit of this future 40th, looking east from Laurel (another road recently punched through) at the hill south of McLaughlin Youth Center.


And then near the end of working on this I found wikimapia that has Google maps with some of the buildings identified as you pass the mouse over them. I could have gone in and added the names of the buildings I've got here, but this is taking me long enough. In any case, the link above goes to their map that coincides with part of mine.

And you can also go to Google Maps Street view to see this from a somewhat different view of the B Street. I would link it, but I couldn't. You can go to Google Maps and search for 40th and B Street Anchorage and then click on Street View on the top.