River Views

This time of year always puts me in mind of World War II. A little known story of that “good war” concerns Wake Island. The entry of the United States into the war seemed a certainty to our government long before December 7, 1941. The US Navy funded something called CPNAB in 1939. CPNAB stood for Contractors Pacific Naval Air Bases, a combine of construction companies that built runways and military bases throughout the Pacific. These combines of several construction companies working together built Boulder Dam and Grand Coulee Dam. Companies like Morrison-Knudsen out of Boise, Idaho, participated in and benefitted from those New Deal projects. Besides refitting bases in Hawaii, the Contractors Pacific Naval Air Bases consortium built seaplane bases, landing strips and barracks on Midway as well as Johnston and Palmyra Islands in 1940. While work continued at Midway, CPNAB expanded in 1941 to include construction on Guam and the atoll known as Wake Island. The US government, through the Navy’s Bureau of Docks and Yards, paid Morrison-Knudsen Company $11,987,869 for its work on Wake during 1941. By December 7, 1941, Morrison-Knudsen employed 1,221 civilian contractors at Wake. Those contractors ran the gamut from engineers to surveyors, hammer and nail construction workers, cooks, barge pilots, crane operators, a doctor, and soda jerks. Ages of the contractors varied from teenagers to men in their sixties; many were from Idaho or the Pacific Northwest, but many more stemmed from practically every state in the Union; several father and son teams worked together. CPNAB jobs offered two to three times the salary these men could make back in the States.