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It was the day the seagulls did not follow the ferry. On the first day of sunshine in the summer 1967, a body bobbed to the surface of Auke Bay. Where the man came from, how he got to southeastern Alaska and his true business there were never determined. Even his full name remained unknown.
However, the birds didn't care. The swooping and diving gulls abandoned their usual search for garbage in the wake of the passing ship. Instead they stayed with the body, loudly screeching their delight at the man's resurrection from the depths.
Perhaps by coincidence, on that same day a new prosecutor named Brian Thomas arrived in Juneau. 'Coincidence' is a term often debated. Many crime investigators do not believe in it.
During the following ten days, a vicious war broke out between law enforcement and an incipient criminal group. It bloodied the streets and hills of Juneau. Men died as far away as Skagway and Haines. It overloaded the schedules of the autopsy doctors and it filled the walk-in cooler at the Burns Family Mortuary. There scarcely was time for any funerals.
The ten-day war was conducted entirely under heavy gray cloudiness and through curtains of nightly rain. The combat blackened and fueled decisions by some Alaskans to leave this once-promising wilderness.
Some of the plotting and planning added validity to the old axiom that the way to hell is paved with good intentions. The mirror of self-inspection was offered to those who survived and some saw their own blemishes. Yet for others, the conflict polished the shield of noble thinking and sharpened the sword of integrity.
Alaska may have become a better place because of these warriors, but they failed to earn a meaningful reference in the credible histories to be written. The truth may die with the last of these 20th Century Alaskans. The only record of this war may be a literary epitaph engraved in a fictional place.
At the time, the newsworthiness of this conflict was minuscule. It was dwarfed by the drama of the Vietnam War and the national disgrace exposed by the civil rights movement. Alaska was a long way from the power centers of the world. Who cared about a few killings in Juneau?
The rewards to those involved may be fulfilling only to a fortunate few. For them, that fulfillment was huge -- as huge as the wake from the Alaska State Ferry that washed up the body in Auke Bay and rerouted the flight of the hungry gulls.
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