Farish Matthew
Department of Geography and Program in Planning, University of Toronto, 5047-100 St. George Street, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G3, Canada.
Isis. 2013 Mar;104(1):1-29. doi: 10.1086/669881.
The militarization of Alaska during and after World War II created an extraordinary set of new facilities. But it also reshaped the imaginative role of Alaska as a hostile environment, where an antagonistic form of nature could be defeated with the appropriate combination of technology and training. One of the crucial sites for this reformulation was the Arctic Aeromedical Laboratory, based at Ladd Air Force Base in Fairbanks. In the first two decades of the Cold War, its employees conducted numerous experiments on acclimatization and survival. The laboratory is now best known for an infamous set of tests involving the application of radioactive tracers to indigenous Alaskans--experiments publicized by post-Cold War panels established to evaluate the tragic history of atomic-era human subject research. But little else has been written about the laboratory's relationship with the populations and landscapes that it targeted for study. This essay presents the laboratory as critical to Alaska's history and the history of the Cold War sciences. A consideration of the laboratory's various projects also reveals a consistent fascination with race. Alaskan Natives were enrolled in experiments because their bodies were understood to hold clues to the mysteries of northern nature. A scientific solution would aid American military campaigns not only in Alaska, but in cold climates everywhere.
二战期间及战后阿拉斯加的军事化催生了一系列非凡的新设施。但这也重塑了阿拉斯加作为一个恶劣环境的想象角色，在那里，通过技术与训练的适当结合，可以战胜敌对的自然形态。这种重新塑造的关键场所之一是位于费尔班克斯拉德空军基地的北极航空医学实验室。在冷战的头二十年里，其员工进行了大量关于适应环境和生存的实验。该实验室如今最广为人知的是一系列臭名昭著的测试，这些测试涉及对阿拉斯加原住民应用放射性示踪剂——这些实验由冷战后成立的小组公布，目的是评估原子时代人体实验对象研究的悲惨历史。但关于该实验室与它所针对研究的人群和地貌之间的关系，几乎没有其他相关著述。本文认为该实验室对阿拉斯加历史以及冷战科学史至关重要。对该实验室的各类项目进行考量还会发现，其中始终存在着对种族的迷恋。阿拉斯加原住民被纳入实验，是因为他们的身体被认为掌握着解开北方自然奥秘的线索。一个科学解决方案不仅将有助于美国在阿拉斯加的军事行动，还将有助于在世界各地寒冷气候地区的军事行动。
