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American Experience - Building the Alaska Highway
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List Price: $29.98
Special Price: $26.99
Your Savings: $ 2.99 ( 10% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: PBS (Direct)
Starring: David McCullough, David Ogden Stiers, Joe Morton, Blair Brown, Liev Schreiber
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 0841887005135
Format: Color
Label: PBS (Direct)
Manufacturer: PBS (Direct)
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: PBS (Direct)
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 2005-02-08
Running Time: 60
Studio: PBS (Direct)
Theatrical Release Date: 2005-04-18
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Editorial Reviews:
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In May of 1942, across the rugged sub-Arctic wilderness of Alaska and Canada, thousands of American soldiers began one of the biggest and most difficult construction projects ever undertaken-building the Alaska Highway. This program tells how young soldiers battled mud, muskeg, and mosquitoes; endured ice, snow, and bitter cold; and cut pathways through primeval forests to push a 1,520-mile road across one of the world's harshest landscapes.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Man faces adversity to get the job done!
Comment: In 1941, the government ordered the military to build a 1,500-mile highway from the lower 48 states deep into Alaska within one year. Viewers may want to look at this documentary alongside those on climbing Mount Everest. This may make many viewers, especially men, feel good because it shows (hu)man's ability to conquer the environment and transform it for his own purposes. This work shows white and black military men battling mosquitoes, Mother Nature, and monotony to get a job done. Unlike the creation of the Egyptian pyramids or the Panama Canal, there seemed to be only a few deaths of workers here.
Recent reports say that black enlistment in the military is down. Perhaps recruiters may want to show this video. Anywhere from one-quarter to one-half of the soldiers working on this highway were black. Still, segregation was the rule of the day and in the many photos one sees here, there is only one photo of a black soldier and a white soldier standing together as equals. Usually, either white commanders are "leading" black enlisted men or the two racial groups are completely separate. Just like the Tuskegee Airmen, these brothers survived the military despite horrible conditions and acute racism. I enjoyed finding out about this little known aspect of black history.
The interviewees are diverse. They include history makers and historians; whites and blacks; Americans and Canadians. Even though no military women are shown, women are interviewed in this documentary. The black interviewees mentioned their interactions with Native Alaskans, so this film has triracial, rather than biracial, coverage.
This film does leave certain topics out. The soldiers were drafted, but they are never asked whether working on a highway was preferable to the actual combat going on in France and the Philippines. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor gets attention, but the fact that the Americans hit Nagasaki with a nuclear bomb is not. The documentary stresses that no one knew what would be the best route for a highway into Alaska. However, they never bother to go into historical resentment about the acquisition of Alaska, what its naysayers called "Seward's Icebox," in the first place.
Along with the documentary on Hawaii's Massie Affair, this documentary also proves that the American Experience documentarians are just as interested in the other two states as they are in the lower 48/Mainland. I appreciate this diversity. But what I loved more is that this is the first public television documentary that I've seen with BRIEF MALE NUDITY!!!
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