The recent show of Japanese naval power throughout the Pacific, and the belief still held by some senior U.S. Navy officers that America’s only hope of defense now lay in shambles along Battleship Row in Pearl Harbor, heightened fears that the entire Pacific would soon be a Japanese lake. If that happened, all sea routes to Alaska would be cut. It was in this atmosphere that Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes suggested at a cabinet meeting on January 16, 1942, that the various alternatives for the long-proposed highway to Alaska be reexamined for a safer and more reliable route to getting
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