SITKA — Thursday was the 75th anniversary of an explosion that killed six men at a military construction site on Japonski Island.
The death toll from the October 1941 blast remains the highest since then from any cause in the Sitka area.
The explosion of a storage shed filled with dynamite occurred during the construction of the naval air base and coastal defense installations on the islands across the channel from Sitka.
The U.S. was on the eve of World War II, and information about the military buildup in Sitka on the island was restricted as a matter of policy.
But within four days of the Japonski disaster, the weekly Sitka Sentinel was on street with the names, rank, military unit and hometowns of everyone who died in the accident, information obviously provided by the military authorities.
The names and conditions of the dozen or so people injured were also reported.
The Sentinel reported that “fire of undetermined origin in a dynamite shed” caused the explosion.
The blast occurred as an Army firefighting detail, with a fire truck, were responding to a fire at the dynamite shed.
“The truck, which was parked close to the shed, was a mass of twisted metal,” the Sentinel reported.
Capt. Francis C. Allen, Pvt. Ralph Kirkbride, Pvt. Frank C. Hayton and Prvt. Hedley C. Estabrook all died in the blast.
Marine Corps Pvt. T.A. Baskin was also a victim, as he was on guard nearby, and Army Pvt. Albert Spurling died when a rock from the blast fell on him more than a half mile from the shed.
“The explosion was marked by a fountain of flames which shot hundreds of feet into the air,” the Sentinel reported in its Oct. 17 edition. “The area around the shed was a scene of utter desolation with trees blown flat onto the ground and with many uprooted and thrown far back into the woods. The explosion formed a crater 20 to 25 feet deep and 75 feet across where the shed had stood.”
It was a different era, and political correctness was not a concern for the Sitka Cold Storage store, which had an ad in the same issue of the Sentinel:
“Wham! The building shakes and out goes the windows. You might think we would raise our prices to pay for new glass but, no. The same sensational low prices prevail.”
The four firefighters among those killed in the explosion are honored on the walls of the Alaska Fallen Firefighter Memorial, said Sitka WWII history buff Matthew Hunter.
“It is important we don’t forget these folks who died defending Sitka,” Hunter said.
Albert Brookman Sr., who wrote a memoir of his life in Sitka in 1984, wrote about his recollection of the blast. Brookman, who had worked as a laborer on the Japonski Construction, was out on his boat on the Sunday that the explosion occurred. He said he later found out what happened from his personal civilian and military contacts on the island.
One military sentry was on duty at the powder house where approximately 5,000 boxes of 40 percent dynamite were stored. No one ever knew what caused the fire because the Marine sentry who turned in the alarm was killed in the blast.”
The head of the military fire department, Capt. Allen, also was killed.
Brookman said that Capt. Tate, commandant of the naval base, arrived at the scene of the fire and saw the fire fighters stringing hose from a hydrant “to put water on that burning dynamite,”
“Capt. Tate apparently knew what Capt. Allen did not know: that water on dynamite is almost sure to cause an explosion,” Brookman wrote. He said the firemen were so excited they would not listen to Tate.
“When he saw it was impossible to stop them, self-preservation took over,” and Tate sped away, Brookman wrote. He was 400 yards away when the blast went off, blowing all the glass out of the car, “but leaving Capt. Tate with badly injured eardrums and a few minor cuts and scratches.”
• This article first appeared in the Daily Sitka Sentinel and is republished here with permission.
