Stories by Martin Middlewood

Columbian freelance contributor

A monument to the first transpolar flight stands at Pearson Field Airport in Vancouver, where a Soviet crew landed successfully in 1937.

Clark County History: How a Vancouver monument helped thaw the Cold War

April 13, 2024, 6:07am Clark County Life

When the Cold War ended in 1991, few considered the thaw had started in Vancouver 16 years earlier. In 1975, Russian delegates came to Pearson Field to dedicate the monument to the 1937 Chkalov Transpolar landing. Read story

A 1917 poster promotes the 4L, or Legion of Loyal Loggers and Lumbermen. Backed by the government, the union was started to prevent the International Workers of the World to gain enough strength to disrupt spruce production. The wood was essential in the manufacturing of early military aircraft.

Clark County history: Industrial Workers of the World

April 6, 2024, 6:07am Clark County Life

America entered World War I on April 19, 1917, unprepared to provide the spruce essential to every airplane of the era, which helped protect Allies in muddy European trenches. Airplanes required the spruce found only along 50 miles of Oregon and Washington coastline. Read story

Three founders of the Catholic Church in the Pacific Northwest posed for a formal portrait on an unknown date. Left to right: Fathers Augustin Magloire Blanchet (1797-1887), Norbert Blanchet (1775-1883) and Modeste Demers (1809-1871).

Clark County history: Catholic Church in the Northwest

March 30, 2024, 6:05am Churches & Religion

In 1837, Hudson’s Bay Company Gov. George Simpson wrote to the Archdiocese of Quebec to request a Catholic mission be established in his company’s territory north of the Columbia River. Read story

In this undated photo of an Oregon Trail reenactment, a long line of oxen-drawn wagons stops to rest along a trail. In 1878, a 21-year-old Missouri woman, Sarah Elizabeth Butler, kept a diary of her journey along the trail to Fort Vancouver.

Clark County History: Sarah Butler’s Oregon Trail journey

March 23, 2024, 6:05am Clark County Life

Just east of the Kansas border at Carthage, Mo., 21-year-old Sarah Elizabeth Butler (1857-1931) opened her diary. Inside, she wrote eight sentences recording the first day of her trek along the Oregon Trail to the Washington Territory. She loaded that entry with information, perhaps rivaling her family’s packing of their… Read story

Bob and Marian Russell, who survived the Japanese invasion of the Philippines, look over some old newspaper clippings at their Vancouver home in this photo originally published in The Columbian in 1998.

Clark County History: Local couple survived Japanese death camp

March 16, 2024, 6:04am Clark County Life

A lesser-known fact about America entering World War II is the bombing of a U.S. Navy base at Cavite on Manila Bay, Philippines, on Dec. 10, 1941, three days after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Japanese wanted the Philippine Islands because they needed access to the raw materials of… Read story

Clark County history: Vancouver High graduate received WWII Distinguished Service Cross

In this 1942 photo, American and Filipino prisoners of war captured by the Japanese are shown at the start of the Bataan Death March. A Vancouver High School graduate and Army chaplain, Ralph W.E. Brown, was among the prisoners. He ministered to soldiers until his death in January 1945 in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, and was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.

Three months after the invasion of the Philippine Islands and the Battle of Bataan, the Japanese captured nearly 78,000 Filipino and American prisoners of war. Japanese soldiers marched them for six days down the Bataan peninsula to a railhead, denying them food and water before dispersing them to internment camps.… Read story

Images From the Attic: Clark County history

A group poses at the Vancouver Municipal Airport, perhaps sometime around its 1930 dedication. From left to right, the sitting front and standing back rows show Bert Justin, Charles Mears, Freddie Sauers, Art Whitaker, Sid Monastes, an unknown man and Fred Rafferty; and in the rear row: Henry Rasmussen, Ed Klysner, Les Boyd, Edith Foltz, Major Gilbert Eckerson, ìDadî Bacon and Lt. Carlton Bond.

February 24, 2024, 5:43am Clark County Life

Forced labor helped build Vancouver’s Municipal Airport during 1929. Several men guilty of vagrancy or drunkenness found themselves working at the nascent field constructing its first hangars while others cleared ground for more. While on the job three prisoners took “French leave,” as The Columbian chided. One was found dining… Read story