Ft. Richardson
Fort Richardson was named for the military pioneer explorer, Brig. Gen. Wilds P. Richardson, who served three tours of duty in the rugged Alaska territory between 1897 and 1917. Richardson, a native Texan and an 1884 West Point graduate, commanded troops along the Yukon River and supervised construction of Fort Egbert near Eagle, and Fort William H. Seward (Chilkoot Barracks) near Haines. As head of the War Department's Alaska Road Commission from 1905 to 1917, he was responsible for much of the surveying and building of early railroads, roads and bridges that helped the state's settlement and growth. The Valdez-Fairbanks Trail, surveyed under his direction in 1904, was named the Richardson Highway in his honor.
Fort Richardson was built during 1940--1941 on the site of what is now Elmendorf Air Force Base. Established as the headquarters of the United States Army, Alaska (USARAK) in 1947, the post moved to its present location five miles (8 km) northeast of Anchorage in 1950. The post then had barracks for 500 soldiers, a rifle range, a few warehouses, a hospital, and bachelor officer quarters. From 1986-1990 the fort was headquarters of the 6th Infantry Division (Light). Fort Richardson is now headquarters for United States Army Alaska (USARAK), a subordinate unit of United States Army Pacific Command. For more than a decade, the major combat unit at Fort Richardson was Task Force 1-501, the only airborne infantry battalion in the Pacific Theater. Task Force 1-501 deployed to Afghanistan from October 2003 through August 2004.
The majority of USARAK combat forces were at Fort Wainwright, 300 miles to the north, with Fort Richardson as the primary support base.
[edit] Recent history
During the Army's expansion following the September 11, 2001 attacks, Task Force 1-501 was expanded into an airborne brigade. Flagged as 4th Brigade (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, the unit is now the primary strategic response force for the Pacific Theater. It comprises two infantry battalions, one cavalry squadron, a small artillery battalion, a support battalion, and a special troops battalion. A full range of family and soldier support facilities common to any small Army community are found on post, ranging from a shoppette to childcare and recreational facilities. The post has small but modern dental and medical clinics, and receives major medical services from the 3rd Medical Group hospital at Elmendorf. The Joint Military Mall, also located on Elmendorf, provides post exchange and commissary services.
The post's largest military tenant is the Alaska National Guard, with facilities at Camp Carroll and Camp Denali. Fort Richardson also hosts several non-military activities, including a United States National Cemetery and a state-owned fish hatchery. The post has 3,300 soldiers, as well as over 3,200 family members, and employs about 1,200 Army and DOD civilian employees. Fort Richardson's military payroll for fiscal year 2003 was $85 million. The civilian payroll was $49 million. Including other expenditures of $111 million, Fort Richardson put more than $245 million into the local economy.
The fort encompasses 62,000 acres (250 km²), which includes space for offices, family housing, a heliport, a drop zone suitable for airborne and air/land operations, firing ranges and other training areas. Nearby mountain ranges offer soldiers the opportunity to learn mountain/glacier warfare and rescue techniques.
Wind Kicking Up on Mountain Top
Wake Island | Wikipedia audio article
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Wake Island
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SUMMARY
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Wake Island (also known as Wake Atoll) is a coral atoll in the western Pacific Ocean in the northeastern area of the Micronesia subregion, 1,501 miles (2,416 kilometers) east of Guam, 2,298 miles (3,698 kilometers) west of Honolulu and 1,991 miles (3,204 kilometers) southeast of Tokyo. The island is an unorganized, unincorporated territory of the United States that is also claimed by the Republic of the Marshall Islands. Wake Island is one of the most isolated islands in the world and the nearest inhabited island is Utirik Atoll in the Marshall Islands, 592 miles (953 kilometers) to the southeast.
Wake Island, one of 14 U.S. insular areas, is administered by the United States Air Force under an agreement with the U.S. Department of the Interior. The center of activity on the atoll is at Wake Island Airfield (IATA: AWK, ICAO: PWAK), which is primarily used as a mid-Pacific refueling stop for military aircraft and an emergency landing area. The 9,800-foot (3,000 m) runway is the longest strategic runway in the Pacific islands. South of the runway is the Wake Island Launch Center, a missile launch site of the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site operated by the United States Army Space and Missile Defense Command and the Missile Defense Agency. The Base Operations Support contractor at Wake is Chugach Federal Solutions, Inc. About 94 people live on the island, and access to it is restricted. Population fluctuates depending on operations being conducted by Missile Defense Agency activities.
On December 11, 1941, Wake Island was the site of the Empire of Japan's first unsuccessful attack on American forces in the Battle of Wake Island when U.S. Marines, with some US Navy personnel and civilians on the island repelled an attempted Japanese invasion, sinking two enemy destroyers and a transport. The island fell to overwhelming Japanese forces 12 days later in a second attack, this one with extensive support from Japanese carrier-based aircraft returning from the attack on Pearl Harbor naval and air bases in Hawaii further east, four days previously. Wake Island remained occupied by Japanese forces until the end of the war in September 1945.The submerged and emergent lands at the atoll are a unit of the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument.
Wake island, together with eight other insular areas, comprises the United States Minor Outlying Islands, a statistical designation defined by the International Organization for Standardization's ISO 3166-1 code. They are collectively represented by the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code UM; Wake Island itself is represented by the ISO 3166-2 code UM-79.