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The Spruce Production Division was a unit of the United States Army, established in 1917 to supply the army with high-quality Sitka spruce and other wood products needed for the production of aircraft for the United States war effort in World War I. The division was part of the Army Signal Corps's Aviation Section. Its headquarters were in Portland, Oregon, and its main operations center was at Vancouver Barracks in Vancouver, Washington. Workers in the division were members of the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen, a union specifically established to support the army's wood production operations. The division produced nearly of spruce in just 15 months, halting work almost as soon as the war ended. Col. Brice Disque was then put on trial for accusations that he had wasted millions of tax dollars. He was found not guilty of malfeasance. The division had a large impact on logging in the Pacific Northwest. Logging companies adopted working conditions similar to those the division had, and they took advantage of new logging roads and rail lines that the division had built to access more timber. == Activation == From the beginning of World War I, wood products were in great demand for war production. Sitka spruce was the most important tree species because its combination of lightness, strength, and resiliency was ideal for aircraft production. In addition, its long, tough fibers did not splinter when struck by bullets. Even before the United States entered the war, the Pacific Northwest had become the main supplier of spruce for aircraft production in Great Britain, France, and Italy. Northwest lumber mills, however, were never able to meet Europe's demand for spruce.〔 This is based on a paper by Gail E. H. Evans that was presented at the Washington State History Conference held at Camp Murray, Washington, on 30 March 1984.〕 The government wanted a monthly production of of spruce, but before the division was activated, only were produced monthly. When the United States entered the war in 1917, General John J. Pershing sent Brice P. Disque, a former army captain, to the Pacific Northwest to determine if local labor issues within the forest products industry could be quickly resolved. Disque met with mill owners and representatives of the Industrial Workers of the World, the union that was trying to organize loggers and sawmill workers in the Pacific Northwest. After studying the situation for several months, Disque determined that the long-standing labor management dispute could not be resolved without direct intervention by the army. Based on Disque's report, the United States Army Signal Corps was given the job of reorganizing the forest products industry in the Pacific Northwest to support United States war production.〔 On 29 September 1917, Disque was brought back into the army as a lieutenant colonel and was assigned to develop plans for an army unit to produce wood products for the war effort. On 6 November, Disque was promoted to colonel and given command of the newly formed Spruce Production Division, a part of the United States Army Signal Corps. The headquarters of the new unit were in Downtown Portland, which was "the centre of the great spruce area of the Pacific Northwest,"〔 while the division's induction, training, and operations center was established at Vancouver Barracks across the Columbia River in Vancouver, Washington,〔 where it employed about 19,000 soldiers. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Spruce Production Division」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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