>> Funding for Director's Cut
is provided by the University
of Wisconsin System eCampus,
providing access to online
degree programs and certificates
offered throughout the
26 campuses of the UW System.
Information is at:
eCampus.Wisconsin.edu
>> They were some of the
most wonderful people.
I loved it.
I just loved it here.
>> We all felt close together.
We were all leaving home, and
we became a close-knit group.
>> We had lots of fun.
And then of course, the men
would go hunting, fishing.
Everybody went salmon fishing
that first year.
We got so fed up on salmon,
I think they'd had it!
( laughs )
>> Hi, and welcome
to Director's Cut.
I'm Charles Monroe-Kane.
That was a clip from
"Alaska Far Away,"
a documentary about a group of
Wisconsin farmers who start a
colony in Alaska during the
Great Depression.
We're joined today by Paul Hill
and Joan Juster, who wrote,
directed and produced the film.
Thank you both for joining us
today.
>> Thanks for having us.
>> First to you, Paul, why did a
group of Wisconsin farmers go to
Alaska during the Depression
to be colonizers?
It seems so odd to me.
>> Well, there's multiple
reasons for going, but the real
reason was they were coming from
farms that were just impossible
to survive on.
They were looking for a chance
to start over,
and the federal government
is giving them a chance.
Usually, for programs like this,
they would move you from one
part of the state to another, so
there are other resettlement
colonies in Wisconsin.
But Alaska was looking for
people, and the government
wanted people to go to Alaska.
The government knew that there
was a war coming, and that some
day they'd have to send
soldiers.
And if you want your soldiers,
if you're going to send your son
to go fight in Alaska, then you
want him to be fighting for
people like you.
So they send Wisconsin farmers,
the most normal people on earth,
up to Alaska.
>> It's interesting.
It's 2011, why make a film about
this?
>> We first heard this story in
1994 when Paul and I decided to
take a vacation in Alaska.
I'd never seen U.S. snow,
so we went in February, 1994.
I'm from California.
We had a friend in Alaska that
we could visit.
Our friend was living in this
town of Palmer, Alaska, which is
about 45 minutes outside of
Anchorage, in the beautiful
Matanuska Valley, surrounded by
magnificent mountains.
He was, at that time, living
with his grandmother, Irene
Benson, who was one of these
original colonists.
She was still living in her
original 1935 colony-built
house.
We stayed there for a few days,
and heard all of her stories
about this grand adventure of
leaving the Midwest and going up
to Alaska, with the help of the
government, being followed by
reporters and Newsreel cameras
the whole way, and settling in
this relatively remote,
at that time, valley.
We turned to each other and
said, what a great story.
Somebody ought to make a film
about this.
Swear to god, after three days,
we had a moment of shared
insanity, and said, why don't we
do it, it can't be that hard.
It will only take a year or so.
>> It's not like you're
filmmakers and you decide this
is another film you're going to
make.
You've never done this before.
>> Correct, we've never done
anything like it before.
I'm in the entertainment
industry, and we knew a few
things like that.
But we just thought we could do
it.
The real answer to why did we
make a movie, is because we
didn't have anybody to tell us
not to.
>> There you go!
>> We didn't know.
If we had any clue how long it
would take, or how much money it
would cost, or how hard it would
be, we never would've had the
nerve to do it.
But I'm so glad we didn't know
that, because this has been the
grand adventure in our lives.
>> It's a great film.
We're going to show another clip
from the film.
You talked about Newsreel.
It's interesting, because for
the colonists, they were
followed around by news cameras.
>> They were national
celebrities.
It was on the front page of
every newspaper.
It was in the editorial pages of
every newspaper, because it was
highly controversial.
These were just normal folks.
They were not just from
Wisconsin.
There were families from
Minnesota, Wisconsin and
Michigan.
The upper-most counties,
which at that time was still--
It had been clearcut and
logged over during the early
part of the century, so it was
called the cutover at that time.
All the trees have grown back
since then, so now it's called
the north woods.
( all laugh )
Cutover is a term that your
listeners may not be familiar
with.
Let's show a great clip.
This is a Newsreel from that
time.
? ?
>> From these barren farms
in Michigan, Wisconsin,
Minnesota, 1500 men, women
and children are moving.
Uncle Sam is lending the money.
He's taking them to greener
pastures in Alaska,
to fertile land,
normal climate.
Here's one family ready to go.
>> I hope that when we get
in Alaska that things will be
better up there, and I can make
a living without asking anyone
for help.
>> I'll do my best to make
a real home for my family.
>> For years, life here has been
severe, but in Alaska, 40 acres
of land for each family,
a $3,000 loan, farm equipment,
a new chance to live.
? ?
>> That seems like a grand
adventure to me.
Let's get some basics down,
so people understand what we're
talking about here.
How many colonists were there?
How were they chosen?
You know, how did the government
organize this?
This was a big undertaking,
right?
>> It was a huge undertaking.
It was a while in the making.
There were people trying to get
people up to Alaska for a long
time, to populate Alaska.
>> The Alaskans wanted people.
Alaska is trying to get the
government to send people to
them.
>> The Alaska railroad had been
built in the teens, but didn't
really have a market all the way
along this railroad, so they
needed people, not only to help
support the railroad, but also
people to grow food to support
the people in Alaska.
But this project was part of
Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal.
>> Right.
>> And it fell under the
auspices of the newly created
New Deal agency, the Federal
Emergency Relief Administration,
FERA, which shows up in the
film.
They created about 100 of these
settlement projects around the
country.
This one was authorized by
Congress on March 9, 1935.
I remember that date because
it's my birthday.
Not 1935, March 9!
( all laugh )
On May 1, the first batch
of colonists were on a train
on their way.
>> Right, because they have to
make it there before summer.
>> It had to happen that year.
Can you imagine the government
moving that fast today to do
something this big?
There were 202 families.
There is some discussion about
how many families, but we came
up with 202 families.
>> These are big families.
These are families with eight,
nine, ten, 11 children.
These are big families.
>> They're supposed to only have
two.
( all laugh )
>> Oh, really?
>> In fact, one woman tells the
story, she goes, well, we only
really want you to have two, or
maybe four kids.
And she goes, well, I'm not
going to knock the fifth one
on the head!
It's done on a national level,
but it's done on a county level.
It's the county relief workers
that are sending people.
>> They were chosen because they
wanted farmers.
The Matanuska Valley wanted
people to move to this area of
Alaska, 200 farmers, who want to
go there and farm.
But it was a colony, though,
they weren't homesteaders.
>> They also wanted people who
had other skills, too.
A lot of the colonists also had,
shall we say, lumberjack skills.
They had forestry skills.
They had blacksmiths.
They had people who had other
skills, as well.
>> They're starting a city.
There's no one there, right?
Where they were going, there was
nobody.
>> A community totally from
scratch.
>> But normally, when something
like that would happen, when you
have the pilgrims coming over,
people going in covered wagons,
they all know each other.
If they don't know each other,
they know each other along the
way.
Now, they meet on the train.
They've got like six days to
meet each other.
They have to become a community.
And they're a community where
nobody is over the age of 35.
>> Right.
>> Everybody is young.
There are a bunch of parents,
one woman has a baby and she has
no adults to teach her how to
take care of the baby.
She had the baby three days
before she goes on the trip.
>> It's funny, you had mentioned
earlier that these guys were
celebrities along the way, from
when they left Wisconsin
locally, to nationally.
They were followed by cameras
and crews.
This became romantic.
When they ended up on the train
in San Francisco, by the time
they got to San Francisco, they
were celebrities.
People greeted them like they
were movie stars.
I'm surprised by that.
>> These are people, most of
them came from isolated areas.
You know what northern Wisconsin
was like.
It's pretty sparsely populated.
A lot of these came from very
isolated areas.
Some of them had never been on a
train.
Some of them had never seen an
ocean.
>> Sure.
>> This was a very big deal for
many of them to come together in
this huge group and travel
together.
They were on the train for two
or three days.
They had their respite.
The Wisconsin folks stayed over
in Seattle on their way to
Alaska.
They were given the red carpet
treatment in Seattle.
They were given red ribbons that
said, "Wisconsin Colonists."
>> You can ride the street car
for free!
>> You could go to the movies
for free.
They took them to the zoo.
They took them all over and
really gave them a wonderful,
warm welcome, and then sent them
off on a ship with serpentine.
>> Wow, I love it.
>> Hundreds of people were on
the dock.
>> We don't have this on camera,
because the guy told us this
story separately and we didn't
actually get it.
But he talks about the fact
that, you know, there has to
have been a purpose, that
part of their purpose was to be
entertainment, because every
time we turned around, there was
a camera in our face, and we
just weren't that interesting.
( all laugh )
>> Let's see another clip
from the film.
This one's a great clip
that I really like.
I think it speaks for itself.
This is from leaving the train
in San Francisco and going on
the boat.
This is a great clip from the
colonists going on the boat
to Alaska.
? ?
>> May 1.
Left Frisco at 4:35pm.
The water is a little rough.
We're going to have to sleep
in Hatch 6-7.
>> Some colonists may have had
visions of a honeymoon cruise,
but the St. Mihiel was an
uncomfortable Army transport
with separate holds
for men and women.
Everyone slept in bunks
and hammocks,
rocking with the ocean waves.
>> There was one woman,
she got a chair and she sat down
at the foot of the stairs there,
that came down where the women
were.
She was going to see to it
that no men got down in there.
Well, you'd be surprised
how many there were.
( laughs )
>> The boat was kind of a
hilarity too, because of all the
mothers trying to take care of
their babies, and big families
and kids running all over.
You got probably 150 families,
or roughly, with probably an
average of two to three children
per family.
That's a lot of kids.
>> I got seasick of course,
right away.
You have the swell of the ocean.
It just comes up kind of slow,
you know, and it goes down
kind of slow, and oh.
That I couldn't take.
I'd sit out on the deck,
facing into the wind.
And my husband was bringing me
crackers and cheese,
and pineapple all the time.
>> It was a terrible boat ride.
Most of the women were sick.
Somebody said there was a crack
in the boat, but I didn't--
I was too sick to give a darn.
I didn't care if the darn boat
went down or not.
I was ready to go!
( laughs )
No, I was ready to go.
>> The adventure begins
before the adventure begins.
The journey, tell me more
about the journey.
It sounds pretty intense
once they got on the boat.
>> That last voice that you
heard was a woman from
Sheboygan.
There were two groups of
colonists.
The first batch were from
Minnesota, 67 families from
Minnesota who took the train and
left from San Francisco.
They had a nice trip up.
>> Their trip was perfect.
Everything is nice.
The boat ride is smooth.
Everything is excellent.
>> But the second batch are the
folks from Wisconsin and
Michigan, who took the northern
route and left from Seattle.
Their ship did not go up the
inside passage, it went straight
across the open ocean.
There was, I just heard this
story the other day from a
colonist, who told me that the
captain of the ship told her it
was the worst storm he had ever
been in.
They developed a hole in the
boat.
>> For all these poor
Midwesterners who had never even
seen the ocean, oh my god.
>> Everybody was so sick.
I can't tell you how many
seasickness stories we had to
choose from.
>> I bet.
To give us perspective, how long
would it take?
>> It was three or four days.
>> Five days, I think.
>> Okay.
>> They must have been exhausted
when they finally arrived.
>> Oh, my god.
>> Imagine, it's the kids that
are less seasick than the
adults.
All the adults, one woman tells
the story, she's five.
She's running back and forth
bringing oranges to her mother
and father who are just like
dying on their separate bunks.
>> I just can't imagine.
That's your precursor to getting
to one of the harshest places in
the world.
>> So the Wisconsin folks
actually had the hardest voyage.
>> They get sick on the train.
They have a miserable boat ride.
They arrive, and they have to
share tents with people who have
already been there, who are mad
that they--
Because their tents aren't done.
So people have been living in
their tents for two weeks and
then they have the Wisconsin
people.
>> So what happens?
They get off the boat, they're
exhausted.
They've been seasick.
They've been gone for like a
week.
They're nervous.
They have all their stuff.
They get there and what are they
greeted by?
Keep in mind, there's no town
there yet, right?
They're just greeted by the
people from Minnesota, who just
have tents, right?
>> They arrived in Seward, where
the ship actually ran into the
dock and almost tore it down.
And the women have to stay
behind on the boat, while the
men are sent immediately up on a
train to Palmer to draw for
their lot of land.
>> Oh, wow.
>> There's a lottery to decide
which 40-acre lot of land you're
going to get.
>> Sure.
>> This was a huge, huge,
historical moment for them, this
long line of 202 men standing
there.
They drew numbers first to see
which spot in line they would
get, and then they drew.
>> They must have vivid memories
of that.
That would be a huge memory.
>> The journey itself, the whole
getting up there and everything,
the stories that we heard from
people were so vivid in their
minds, 60-65 years after the
fact.
This was a turning point in
their lives.
They remembered so much of it.
>> We had this one woman, it's
again, not in the film, it's in
a different project that we had
done, but she talks about how
her husband went along, and
she's got the five kids, and she
has to get off the boat.
She is terrified of getting off
the boat, because it's just this
narrow gangplank.
But she is so horrified at being
on the ship one more second that
it's like, okay, just grab the
children and off we go.
( all laugh )
>> I want to show another clip
from the film.
I think this really illustrates
very well what they're greeted
with when they arrive in Alaska.
>> The colonists were exhausted
from their difficult journey.
19-year-old Virginia Berg
from Anchorage was there
to help them get settled.
>> They'd had a rough trip.
They were far from home.
They got up there and things
weren't all ready for them,
you know, so some of them
were a little bit discouraged.
>> There was nothing here.
I didn't expect to come
someplace where there was
absolutely nothing.
They had a little store,
and a post office.
They had a boxcar for a depot.
In May, we had a cold east wind.
>> Things were just a little bit
out of kilter there for a while.
A lot of stuff arrived before
there was a place to put it,
including people.
They didn't have the tents ready
yet for all the colonists.
So the colonists had to stay
on the train.
We were rustling around
for blankets and milk
for the babies on the train.
>> When we hit Palmer,
there was nothing.
You couldn't buy a loaf a bread.
Nothing was set up in the tents.
And it was rainy, and mud
up to your ying-yang, you know.
I'm carrying the baby.
My husband picked up the
daughter and we got into a tent.
My husband said,
"This is for the birds."
It was cold.
It was muddy.
It was rainy.
I thought "My God, what did
we get into?"
>> She's right, that must've
been for the birds.
I can not imagine.
It seems totally crazy.
For you all, what was it like
when you go to Palmer and you
interview these people that we
see in the film?
What was it like interviewing
them?
What was it like talking to them
about these stories?
>> First of all, it was
an incredible privilege.
These are people who have really
lived their lives.
When we first did our
interviews, it was at the 60th
reunion.
These people had been up there
for 60 years.
They had not only gone through
that grand adventure and the
trials and tribulations of that
first summer, but then they'd
gone on to live lives for 60
years, you know, in Alaska.
60 years of Alaskan winters.
These are people who were
absolutely, there's no pretense
to them.
It's a whole different
generation.
It's a whole different feeling.
They did not want to talk about
hard times.
They did not want to talk about
the Depression.
They didn't want to talk about a
time when it was so hard for
them to take care of their
families and to be
self-sufficient.
You know, one man said, you
know, when you're out of work
and the kids need something to
eat, what are you going to do?
>> Right.
>> It was hard for them to go
and ask for help.
They didn't want to be on
relief, but there was nothing up
here for them, up in the
cutover, there was just nothing
left.
They didn't want to talk about
those times.
These are not people who came
together as a colony because of
their shared ideology.
They had an opportunity to have
a better life for their
families, and so they took it.
>> I was going to say, one of
the things is, they hadn't
talked to people in a long time.
They went through a period where
they got a lot of bad press.
So they were burned, they felt,
by the press.
So they were very reticent to
talk to outsiders.
We were concerned about what
would happen.
We'd sit down, you know, the
first interview we did was in a
very small house, where I have
to actually sit in the bathroom
to run the sound machine,
because there's no other place
to go.
We start the interview, and they
just start talking immediately,
like there's no stopping them,
like they've been waiting all
this time for us to finally ask
them these questions.
>> It's funny they don't want to
talk about hard times.
I think it's implied in this
film, the whole time you're
watching it, but Alaska's tough.
You've got mosquitoes.
You've got black flies.
I mean, you've got winter that's
nothing like winter here.
>> But that's just living your
life.
>> That's tough living up there.
>> It's tough living up there,
but you know, once they got up
there and got used to it, it's
just like, well, this is the
hand you're dealt, you deal with
it.
>> Were they ready?
When you talk to them now, do
they laugh about it?
Were they ready for the first
dark, minus-40-degree winter for
nine months?
>> You know, northern Wisconsin
isn't that easy.
>> That's true!
>> Some people said, you know,
when we were living in
Wisconsin, we not only didn't
have jobs, we didn't have
running water, we didn't have
electricity, we didn't have a
hospital, a school nearby.
We didn't have any of that
stuff.
>> The government chose the
right people.
>> One woman said she went
because she knew she could get
an education for her kids.
>> Wow.
>> That was it.
she knew there'd be a school.
That's why she went.
>> I want to show another clip.
This one, I think, is much more
sad.
But it's also inevitable what's
going to happen when you have a
group of people in a small
space, mostly children, and
sickness is going to hit the
colony.
I want to show this clip,
because I think it does show
that though this was dubbed a
great experiment in Socialism,
that some things could go awry.
This is a clip from when
sickness hits the colony.
>> Well, it started out
with measles.
And then the measles
turned into pneumonia.
My oldest daughter, she was 4,
she had the measles.
The doctor checked her that day.
The next morning,
she was worse.
He said "Well, I think she's got
a touch of pneumonia.
I can't give you a permit
to move a pneumonia case."
I said "I don't care whether
you okay it or not,
I'm going to have her
on that train tomorrow morning."
And when we got to Anchorage,
old Doc Romig, he says
"You know," he says, "I think
you got her here just in time."
>> I can remember the first
two children who died
very, very clearly.
The one was the Campbell child.
I can remember my dad helping to
build the coffin, and my mother
helping her prepare the child.
>> My little son got sick
with poliomyelitis.
I thought you had to be sick
a long time before you ever
would die, and he just had
the sniffles.
You know, you just didn't think
that anything like that
could ever happen.
First thing you know,
he just died.
Donny was 14-1/2 months old
when he died.
Then I went down to
these other people's tents.
Their babies were sick.
And they lost them, too.
Four of them in one camp,
Camp 8.
>> That's so sad.
You say this was your first
film, so this is your first
experience with doing all this
stuff.
Were you prepared for being in a
small house in Alaska, Paul, say
where somebody is suddenly
talking about the death of their
child?
That must be a pretty intense
experience, if you've never done
it before.
>> We had known that her son had
passed away.
And I'm thinking, how am I going
to bring this up in the
conversation.
We turned on the camera, and
it's the very first thing she
says to me.
That's why there's that pause,
because I am so taken aback, I
don't have a follow-up question
ready to go.
I'm thinking, you know, how are
you going to bring it up, how am
I going to say it.
And she is just ready to talk
about it.
Again, it was less about us
getting the stories out of them.
They had them.
It was just, we have 100 hours
of footage.
It was us figuring out how to
get all those stories into an
hour and a half.
>> This was dubbed, I think, by
the newspapers as the great
Socialist experiment.
Could we do this again today?
Is it possible to have this
great Socialist experiment
today?
>> First of all, if you watch
the film carefully, you'll
notice that our narration never
uses that word.
We let people choose or draw
their own conclusions about this
project.
If you really know what
Socialism is, this wasn't really
Socialistic, anymore than
building Denver was Socialistic,
which was built with government
money, too.
However, a lot of people felt
that way, so we let them speak
their own mind.
There's different ways to look
at it.
Could this happen again today?
Oh, I can't even imagine.
The one thing that definitely
will never happen again is that
in this era of instant
communication, from not only all
over the globe, but we get
instant pictures from Mars,
never again will anybody feel
that far away and that isolated.
When they went up there, they
thought they would never see
their families again.
>> Right.
>> It took six weeks for a
letter to get back home, and
back again.
They were completely isolated up
there.
We'll never have that feeling
again.
We will always be in touch.
>> It's funny, in the end,
it was a social experiment.
>> A social experiment.
>> In the end, how did it work
out?
I mean, from what I know from
Alaska and the Matanuska Valley
where they did this, that's the
famous farmers.
Famous vegetables, they have
huge cabbages and award-winning
tomatoes.
It's a great place to farm.
>> It's a great place to live.
Palmer is a lovely little town.
It has a very Midwestern feel to
it.
People still have a Midwestern
cadence in their voices.
The values of the community are
very much Midwestern.
The look and the feel of the
town is Midwestern, because it
was planned for Midwesterners.
It doesn't look like other parts
of Alaska, as you know from
being up there.
>> They formed their own
community.
Part of the thing that we tell
in the movie, that the best
farmer, they throw out of the
co-op.
They get rid of him because he's
too good, you know.
To make something like that in
the frontier survive, you needed
individualists, and you can't
have individualists if everybody
has to work together in
community.
So exactly the people you want
are exactly the people you don't
want.
>> Well, it was an excellent
film.
Thank you very much for joining
us today.
>> Thank you for having us.
>> You're welcome back next time
you make another film.
>> Both: Thank you.
>> Thank you for watching
Director's Cut.
For more information on
"Alaska Far Away," please go to:
www.wpt.org
and click on Director's Cut.
While you're there, send us an
email, 'cause we loving hearing
from you.
I'm your host,
Charles Monroe-Kane.
For everyone here at Director's
Cut, thank you very much.
Check the gate.
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