Alaska

The state of Alaska.

Alaska is one of eight states in the United States of Mexico. Its capital and largest city is Nikolaevsk.

Alaska was originally colonized by the Russian Empire in the 1780s. The discovery of gold in the Yukon area by Winston Carew of Kramer Associates in July 1896 brought about conflict between K.A. and the Russian government. In the spring of 1898, war broke out between Russia and the U. S. M., leading to the Mexican conquest of Alaska during the first stage of the Great Northern War. A nominally independent Alaskan republic was established in the fall of 1898, controlled behind the scenes by Kramer Associates.

On 22 March 1922, President Emiliano Calles called for a plebiscite in Alaska to determine whether the republic would be admitted to the U.S.M. as a state. In spite of K.A.'s control of the state's economy, the Alaskan legislature ignored the wishes of K.A. President Andrew Benedict, and voted in favor of holding a plebiscite. The vote was scheduled for early in 1923, and resulted in a majority vote for statehood. Alaska gained Mexican statehood in November 1923. However, in the subsequent 1926 Mexican elections, only 46% of the new state's voters supported Calles, who lost the election to his opponent, Assemblyman Pedro Fuentes.

Fuentes devoted most of his term in office to an attempt to reduce K.A.'s influence in Mexico. In the 1932 Mexican elections, he was able to retain a bare majority of the vote in Alaska, winning 51%. Elsewhere in Mexico, Fuentes lost in every state except Durango, and Senator Alvin Silva was elected president. Silva went on to win re-election in 1938, this time winning 51% of the state's votes.

Towards the end of the Global War, a Japanese task force assaulted the Aleutian Islands in December 1948, but was defeated, suffering heavy losses. A base was established at Point Harrington in the 1960s to carry out atomic bomb tests. As of November 1971, those tests have all been unsuccessful.

The frontispiece map in For Want of a Nail ... indicates that the Alaska/California border is roughly 100 miles south of the IOW border between Washington State and British Columbia. In For All Nails, however, the border is on or near the IOW border between California and Oregon.