1940 to 1952 Ruth Gruber reports on her life and travels in this time. 5/2/25
Harold L Ickes was Secretary of the Interior. he had cleaned up the Teapot Dome Scandal. The Teapot Dome scandal has historically been regarded as the worst such scandal in the United States[ of cabinet corruption. It is often used as a benchmark for comparison with subsequent scandals.
1924 Revenue Act. the right to obtain the tax records of any taxpayer.
1939,I Went to the Soviet Arctic, Ickes wife read this book and as a result wanted Ruth to work for him to report directly on what was happening in Alaska as it was only 3 and a half miles Bering Straight from Russia and could be important in the case of war. Alaska was a 5th the size of the US and only had 30,000 Whites and 30,000 native peoples. Alaska became state in 1959 (Note 2023 the population was 733406 with full employment. 16% are Native American.) So she informed the Herald Tribune that she was working for the government and not doing a series of article for them. The question was how to populate the territory and also conserve its resources and natural beauty.
She was the only women reporter at press conference with FD Roosevelt. She knew Walter Lipman 1889 to 1974 a leading reported who introduced the concept of the Cold War.
She attended an all women press conference under Eleonor Roosevelt. People hated her power over the President.
She had to get a security clearance and be fingerprinted at the FBI and Edgar J Hoover assured Ickes that she was clean. She was now sworn in as the representative of the Alaska Railway. She took a train to LA and then from there to Seattle She was warned that she would be attacked in the press but they were really attacks on Ickes. The Arctic explorer Vihijalmur Stefanson, explored Alaska in 1908. He wrote in the press that Ruth Gruber was a very suitable person for the job. 1898 Alex Hrdlicka an anthropologist who had spent 4 years in Alaska, studying the migration routes of man from Siberia to America. There was not much other research done on Alaska.
Sourdoughs was the name for early Alaskan settlers. On the steamship she was told that only 2 types of women came to Alaska schoolmarms and whores and the purser seats them by profession. However she found young women who were travelling to be clerks , stenographers, telephone operators and brides. Prostitution was a big profession in the Gold Rush days then settled down to marry. As on all frontiers few middle class types were there. Doukhobor sect were Christian who had fled Russia 75 years earlier and wanted religious freedom as the rejected the Russian Orthodox Church.
She visited Juneau the Territory Capital. The Baranhof hotel a 9 story building named after the Russian governor Alexander Baranov who ruled Alaska between 1790 and 1818.
Drinking and gambling was a major problem. The big companies paid Federal taxes but refused to pay local taxes. She was taken to the Mendenhall Glacier. (Note we also saw this on our Alaska cruise)
Anchorage 1941 the biggest town along the Railroad was where she set up home and workplace. She met the upper crust of Alaska and the military brass who were preparing Alaska for war. Alaska had 22,000 US troops and airbases were hurriedly being build at Kodiac and Sitka, as refueling station between the US and Soviet Union. Here there were gold and coal in the mountains a good harbor for ships and a railroad linking Mt. McKinley to Fairbanks. It had a row of brothels in wooden shacks. There was a school in every village and the University of Fairbanks which opened in 1922. Fairbanks was founded by the gold find there in 1902. At the cemetery a section for prostitutes.
Ruth could imagine farmers who had left the dust bowl coming there, people who wanted adventurous independent . lives and doctors and nurses who wanted to help the native peoples who were being destroyed by alcoholism and new diseases. Tuberculosis was a big problem and she recommended a hospital be set up for that. Airmen from Britain, Canada Australia, USSR and US from Fairbanks flew to Russia. Women here were doing everything from running businesses, judges, community leaders as well as a woman miner running her mine. Mount McKinley, is the highest mountain peak in North America, 20,310 feet above sea level.
At None there was the Catholic Church and the Swedish Lutherans. At one time you had the Russian Orthodox Church there. At St. Michaels you had the onion shaped domes of the Russian Church. When she showed children magazines they were most interested in the adverts. She met a women that had a herd of over 4000 deer.
Dancing is important in Eskimo folk law and it usually follows a successful hunt. At this time the average lifespan Eskimos was 24 years. Teachers had been sent but there was a resistance to sending doctors. Movies brought the war to this isolated area. You could see Japanese cannery ships fishing in these waters.
St Paul's has the Pribilof island largest seal rockery in the world where seals came out of the water to mate and bear their young. The Fouke Fur Company had an exclusive contract with the Federal Gov. for seal skins. The eerie death fields for women's coats. 1182 seals were killed the morning she was there. The pelts were scraped for blubber for soap and the ground up carcass for dogfood. Commercial harvesting of seals was ended in 1984. There are about 900,000 seals left at the peak there were 3 million. The cinema was segregated with whites in the gallery and Aleuts sat below. When the US bought Alaska in 1867 the picked up where the Russians left of by treating the Aleuts as and government slaves.
Stinson105 an aircraft with high wings were build in the 1940s and carries 2 people. The Arctic is the hardest place to fly. In 1935 the entertainer Will Rogers had died near Point Barrow. Life here revolved around whaling and walrus hunting and this was not hunting for the profit of people far away but only to feed their families. The catch of a huge walrus would be divided up amongst the hunter and frozen to survive the long harsh winter.
Dutch Harbor was preparing for war and young soldiers were keen to talk to here about their longing for home. The were displaced from their farms , jobs and schools and traumatically their homes.
From Anchorage she visited Matanuska valley a government project to take people out of the dustbowl, and this was a success. 750 people lived at Palmer an agricultural dream of lush fields and healthy cattle. Many farms were run by the wives while the men had jobs at the army base. People who had living on relief, here now had jobs on farms , sawmills roadwork and the air base.
Once America entered the WW2 Alaska was on the front line. The Japanese canneries on the coast - How many of them were spy ships. A thousand Aleuts were evacuated from the islands. Japanese bombed Dutch Harbour and captured Kiska and Attu islands. At wars end the native population was returned to their homes. The army now wanted to get army wife's and children off Alaska but they refused to go. Once the women were evacuated then many business folded, leaving liquor as the only viable business.
Once Ruth returned from Alaska, Ickes wanted here to remain on as his special assistant. She now edited a movie about the territory. She drafted speeches for Ickes. All mail to do with homesteading came to her. She discussed the need for more women in Alaska. Eleonor Roosevelt phoned her as she had letters from soldiers who wanted to homestead in Alaska after the army service and could she write replies. She now wrote a book that would be sent to these potential settlers. This was 63 pages including maps and Alaska's history. 1867 the US bought Alaska from Peter the Great for $7.2 million.
When Ruth returned to Washington the train was packed with soldier, sailors and airmen. The imminence of war was everywhere.
1943 Ickes called her to go to Canada's Northwest territories and report on the Canol Project and Alcan Highway and how the army was getting along with the project. The Canol Poject involved the construction of 3985 kilometers of winter and summer roads, 2512 kilometers of pipeline, tank farms, airfields, and an oil refinery. This project was abandoned in the end as there was not sufficient oil. Oil had been discovered in 1919.
From White Horse in British Colombia to Skagway in Alaska. There were not yet good maps or the area. You had to wear sunglasses and there was a problem of dust, and mosquitoes. The Alcan Highways was from Edmonton to Fairbanks to take food, munitions and medicines to win the war. Most of the workers were African American from the South. She complained that these soldiers were not given clothes for the cold weather. This highway was built in 9 months. A network of weather bureaus was set up. In Seattle the US Employment Service started recruiting single women for Alaska. The Matanuska valleys farmers earned very well and were able to feed the local army and civilian population. Roads and transport was still a problem
Helen Reid took over running the Herald Tribune and hired more women reporter than other papers. She had just printed a series of articles that government official were Nazi sympathizers. Eleanor "Cissy" Patterson was the owner and publisher of the Washington Times. She also met Henri Bernstein a French playwright
1941 Ion Antonescu the Romanian Dictator began murdering his Jews. The State Dept. wanted to hear no more about Hitler atrocities against Jews. Morgenthau approach Roosevelt who set up the War Refugee board a thousand refugees from Romania were taken to Naples, they also took Lion Feuchtwanger , Thomas Mann and Marc Chagall as well as 425,000 German POWs. The 1000 refugees taken to Camp Ontario at Oswego. Ruth went with the refugees by train. Later on She went with Eleonor Roosevelt and Elinor Morgenthau to visit the camp. The refugees were surprised to see the First Lady visiting. These refugees were brought in by FDR on the pretext that they would go back at the end of the war, with much maneuvering they were allowed to stay.
Robert Sherwood was a playwright and FDRs speechwriter.
When the war ended she corresponded through Europe the Middle East. UNSCOP the United Nation Special Committee on Palestine. Travelling abroad immediately after the war was only for journalists, camera men and people with special permission. You flew from Gander Newfoundland to Shannon ,Ireland. The 6 American were meant to support the opening of Palestine to Jews while the British 6 were meant to veto it.
Stuttgart was a city to which German Jewish Holocaust victims had returned and hoped to rebuild there lives there.
This was the 20th committee studying the Jewish Palestine issue. Later she was in Israel to write on the 1973 War
The farm that had been owned by Julius Streicher publisher of the Sturmer amti-Semitic paper was turned into a training centre for youths who intended to go to kibbutzim in Palestine.
Nuremburg was a demolished city US bomber knew it was Hitler's favorite city. The UNSCOP committee met in Vienna which before the war was a city of operas and symphonies now was a kaleidoscope of post war poverty. Amongst the rumor's was that the US was sending German Jews to govern Germany and Austria. In Cairo Arab speakers stated that Jewish immigration to Palestine would be regarded as an act of war.
Gershon Agronsky was the American editor of the Palestine Post. At the Hadassah Hospital Jerusalem there were many American doctors and nurses.
Ruth went to Amman and met King Abdulla as well as his grandson Prince Hussein. Haifa she considered a morning city with people working in factories and oil refineries, Tel Aviv was High Noon while Jerusalem a Night City. The report was finally decided in Lausanne Switzerland. Bevin announced that Britain would not accept the report.
There were American students studying in Israel under the GI bill.
When Israel's war of Independence began Ruth was sent back report on it. While in Alaska settlers were cutting down trees to develop towns in Israel they were planting trees. There were no flights to Israel and she came by ship. The nightly curfew under the British were over. She met Ben Gurion and told him that the condition in the new immigrant camps were bad. He asked her to write a report on the situation and got all his minister to visit them. They started building development towns to absorb the immigrants
1952 She showed Eleonor Roosevelt around Israel and that it was absorbing thousands of immigrants.
Spouse: Henry Rosner(m. 1974–1982), Phillip Michaels (m. 1951–1968) Children: David and Celia Michaels. Ruth Gruber died in 2016
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