I can't imagine living in Alaska in the winter. It was strange the one summer I spent there and out fishing at 11 PM in daylight.
I had one of those and yes the switch had to be flipped for DST. Mine had the 555 timer chip with a couple of microswitches to set the time manually and you had to find the holes and use a straightened paper clip to reset the time should the power fail and the backup batteries were dead. A real pain in the patoot, so I tossed it.