Secondary Socities: War in the Circumpolar

Battle of the Aleutian Islands

• For fifteen arduous months, American forces in the Aleutians suffered through Arctic gales, bitter cold, and painful isolation as they fought to eject the Japanese from Attu and Kiska islands. The Aleutian Campaign claimed thousands of lives and culminated in one of the deadliest battles in the Pacific.
• In a tragic and shameful episode, the U.S. government forcibly removed nearly 900 Unangan (Aleut) people from their homes in the Aleutian and Pribilof islands in 1942. These innocent civilians were taken to Southeast Alaska and placed in internment camps, where they spent the next three years in squalid and appalling conditions.
• The islands had very little strategic value for either side, but control of the Aleutians would prevent a possible U.S. attack across the Northern Pacific
• Similarly, the U.S. feared that the islands would be used as bases from which to launch aerial assaults against the West Coast, and it became a matter of national pride to expel the first invaders to set foot on American soil since the War of 1812
• But Japan lacked both a long-range bomber and the resources to establish and operate an air base in the Aleutians.

The DEWLine

• The Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line began on 15 February 1954 when President Eisenhower signed the bill approving the construction. It, was designed and built during the "Cold War" as the primary line of air defence warning of "Over the Pole" invasion of the North American Continent.


• The actual construction of the 58 sites took place between 1955 and 1957. Many tons of supplies and equipment were moved to the Arctic by air, sea and river barge. One such carrier, the USAF 62nd Airlift Wing, moved over 13 million pounds of materiel in this monumental effort. The DEW Line was declared fully operational on 31 Jul 1957, (ref: USAF Museum "This week in Airforce History), and remained in operation for better than 30 years.

Arms Race

• The term arms race in its original usage describes a competition between two or more parties for military supremacy. Each party competes to produce larger numbers of weapons, greater armies, or superior military technology in a technological escalation.
  Perhaps the most prominent instance of such a competition was the rapid development by the United States and the Soviet Union of more and better nuclear weapons during the Cold War


• The Soviet Union devoted their command economy to the arms race and, with the deployment of the SS-18 in the late 1970s, achieved first strike parity. However, the strain of competition against the great spending power of the United States created enormous economic problems
  
• Another prime example of an arms race is during the period leading up to World War I. Several European nations competed to build up their military capacities, and this arms race is thought to be one of the many causes of the war.