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Railway Demolition Unearths New Discoveries From World War II

Laura Kraegel/KUCB

About 75 years ago, the U.S. Navy built a marine railway in Unalaska. It was basically an underwater railroad that helped the military haul boats out of the Bering Sea during World War II.

Since then, the railway has slowly gone to seed and recently, it was demolished for good.

Next to Unalaska’s small boat harbor, in the shadow of Bunker Hill, construction crews are tearing down a piece of history.

“They’re loading up the steel carriage that they used to pull the boats up in,” says Joe Sacramento.

Sacramento is the property manager for Pacific Stevedoring, the shipping company that took over the railway site a year and a half ago. He’s standing next to a giant mechanical carriage that was the crux of this whole operation, back in 1942.

Credit Laura Kraegel/KUCB
Long before it was demolished, the Navy used this carriage to reel boats out of the Bering Sea.

“The bottom of the carriage sat on these rails," he says. "They’d block it up with wooden blocks to pull it straight up and out.”

If you’re not a mariner, the procedure may be hard to picture, but it went something like this.

Navy men would drive a boat into the harbor -- where ghostly train tracks still emerge from the water, continue up the bank, and run straight through an open space in the hollowed-out railway building.

They’d pull up on the train tracks and fit blocks around the boat’s hull. That way, it wouldn’t tip as they used the carriage to reel it out of the water and into the workshop area, where welders and carpenters were waiting.

“They could take a boat as big as a minesweeper," says Jeff Dickrell. "That's a wooden-hulled boat less than 100 feet long.”

Dickrell is a local historian who has spent his career studying the Aleutians Islands and their role in WWII.

When the Japanese bombed Dutch Harbor in June of 1942, he says the island’s military base was still pretty small. More than 50 people died during the two-day attack, and it became clear the Aleutians were vulnerable.

So the military got to work. Navy construction battalions expanded the base. The battalion members were called Seabees, and they built the marine railway.

Credit Laura Kraegel/KUCB
Small boats were hauled out of the water on these train tracks. Wooden blocks were fitted around the hulls to ensure boats didn’t tip.

“They did it because there was no place to pull a boat out of the water between here and Seattle,” says Dickrell.

The structure was finished a year after the attack, but it never got to play a heroic role.

The war had become air battle, and the railway was only equipped to repair small boats, which were already struggling to navigate the region’s rough waters.

“You don’t operate with small boats in the Aleutians," says Dickrell. "They tried to bring up YP boats -- or yippee boats -- for in-shore patrolling and close-to-shore work. The boats got so kicked around by the weather that they couldn’t really use them.”

Meanwhile, the war moved west to Attu and Kiska, where U.S forces fought the Japanese invasion.

The marine railway wasn’t used much, but it lived on -- even after the war ended in American victory. The space was actually used into the early 2000s, when welders used the train tracks to haul out crab boats.

Like all of the surviving WWII buildings on the island, Dickrell says that longevity comes down to good old-fashioned construction. No power tools. Everything cut and pounded by hand.

“The buildings were designed to last five years for the war," he says. "But they did such high-quality construction methods and used such high-quality materials that here’s a building that’s lasted 75 years. That’s pretty cool.”

He says it was a comfort too -- once the railway was condemned.

“You can take some solace in a building that was supposed to last five years lasted 75," says Dickrell. "It’s like the Russian Orthodox cross. You don’t put the person’s name on it, so that when people stop remembering who it was, you let it fall to disrepair and that’s fine.”

With the demolition now done, Pacific Stevedoring is deciding how to use the railway space for the present day. Sacramento says it could become storage or employee housing.

Either way, it’s hardly the end of WWII’s legacy in Unalaska. 

Credit Laura Kraegel/KUCB
In another WWII building nearby, construction crews found this signature – “Carl Oberlitner, USA Seabee, 7/29/42” – behind mold and drywall.

Just across the property, Sacramento’s crew is renovating another WWII building that’s held up a bit better, and they’ve discovered a memento from 75 years ago, hiding behind mold and dusty drywall.  

“We wanted to start fresh, so we gutted the whole inside," says Sacramento. "One of my guys came to me and said he found some writing on the wall, so I went over to see it. Two U.S. Navy Seabees had signed and dated it -- 7/29/42.”

Written with a deep blue grease pencil, the two names stand out against the wood.

“Carl Oberlitner," reads Sacramento. "And then that one I didn’t look up. W.B. Morphu? I’m not sure.”

Credit Laura Kraegel/KUCB
The property manager is still researching the origin of this signature, also dated July 29, 1942.

While he works on deciphering the second signature, Pacific Stevedoring has already begun reaching out to the family of Carl Oberlitner.

The Navy man died in 2014, but Sacramento says he hopes to send Oberlitner’s signature to his daughters.

That way, he says, this piece of history can live on.

Laura Kraegel reported for KUCB from 2016 until 2020. She was KUCB's news director starting in 2019. We are proud to have her back in the spring of 2023 filling in as an interim reporter for KUCB.
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