Alaska America s New Frontier

The Pacific story is the story of the Pacific and its people, of the peaceful sea and the lands and lives it touches, and their meaning to us and to the generations to come. The National Broadcasting Company presents the second in a new series of programs dedicated to a fuller understanding of the vast Pacific basin.

This new broadcast series, another feature of the Inter-American University of the Air, will deal with a different aspect of the Pacific each week, with drama of the past and present, and commentary by Owen Latimore, a quality on the Pacific, and director of the Waterhines Page School of International Relations, John Hopkins University.

America's new frontier. Hey, Sergeant. One of those planes up there. Huh?

Oh, those, uh, transports? Yeah. I've been seeing them go over every day. How long have you been up here in Alaska? Well, my after just got in a week tomorrow. Huh? They're carrying the lend lease material to Russia.

Land lease to... Over Alaska? Alaska is not only the shortest way to Russia and China and Japan. and it's going to be one of the greatest places on earth when it wars over. Scorsets on top of the world, a distant wilderness that has become a key to victory in the Pacific.

Today at last its value is understood. Years before the American frontier was pushed to the Pacific, Russian traders and explorers invaded Alaska set up trading posts, fortifications, settlement. From the allute name, a laksure, which means the great land, they named it Alaska.

For years they exploited the fur trade and then, believing they had drained Alaska of its resources, lost interest in it. Then, one night in 1867, thousands of miles away in Washington, D.C., Secretary of State William A. Stewart, that's playing quick.