Digital Bob Archive

APRIL 1918 - PART 6:

The wartime draft for military service was managed locally by the Gastineau Channel Exemption Board which kept track of the men who registered for the draft and had the power to grant exemptions when merited. Toward the end of April the Board gave to each of the local papers a list of several hundred men who had, according to the Board, registered for the draft but had not reported for induction when called. The Empire did not publish the list; the Dispatch did publish it under the heading \"Slacker List.\" There was an immediate and indignant outcry because the list contained the names of at least 20 men who had not waited to be drafted but had enlisted in one or another of the armed services. One of the names on the list was Alford John Bradford who had been an engineer with the U.S. Land Office and had been one of the first to enlist after the United States entered the war. Four of the five members of the Exemption Board resigned. (Not long after that word was received that Bradford had been shot down at the front while an aerial observer in the U.S. Air Corps. He was the first Juneau man killed in the war and the local American Legion post was named for him when it was organized.)

The big warehouse on the Pacific Steamship Company wharf was filled to capacity when all of the cargo from the northbound Admiral Farragut was unloaded there. The ship had struck bottom at the north end of Wrangell Narrows, puncturing one of her fuel tanks and causing some leaks that could, however, be handled by her pumps. She was escorted to Juneau by the freighter Redondo of the same line. The Admiral Farragut had passengers aboard for Port Althorp, Yakutat, Katalla, Cordova, Valdez, Port Ashton, Latouche, Seldovia, Anchorage, Kodiak and Alitak and the company arranged for them to be picked up by the Alameda of the Alaska Steamship Company and taken to their destinations. The Alameda could not take any of the cargo which remained in the warehouse for a week until a freighter could come from Seattle.

Reports had been reaching Juneau ever since the first of the year that the deer population was in bad shape because of the unusually heavy snows. Dozens of starving deer were said to have congregated on the beaches of Admiralty, Chichagof and Baranof Islands. The Southeast Alaska Fish & Game Club held a number of meetings to discuss ways of saving the deer. For the future it was suggested that the club plant Scotch wickbean along the beaches to provide winter browse, but for the present it was decided to procure several tons of bran and alfalfa hay and have them distributed. Several local fishermen offered to take care of the distribution. Others thought that those items, suitable for cattle, might do the deer more harm than good and suggested that cutting hemlock boughs in places where deer had congregated might be the best answer.