The segregated troops of the 93rd Engineer Regiment built 240 miles of the Alcan Highway. They felt that their work did not receive any public recognition in comparison with that of other units on the highway. The enlisted soldiers wanted their friends and family to read about what they were doing and how their outfit was making an important contribution to the war effort. Lt. Col. James L. Lewis, 93rd Regimental Executive Officer, wrote in a letter “that the failure of correspondents to visit their portions of the road or to mention them in their articles had a bad effect on morale and espirit de corps of the individual soldier and his regiment.”
