The United States needed a road to Alaska so they could defend the Aleutians from Japan. They sent soldiers to build the Alaska Highway. The segregated Black 97th Engineers built the road in Alaska, and when their disorganized white officers struggled to make progress, the army replaced their commander. The new one got the job done but ignored military protocol and discipline, so the army, worried about undisciplined black soldiers, replaced him too. And to put the fear of God into the soldiers, the army trumped up a mutiny charge against ten of them and sentenced them to long prison terms at hard labor.