Military | Page 38 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

August 23, 2016 by Peter T Young 3 Comments

Camp Andrews

On March 28, 1917, the Territory of Hawaiʻi gave the US Government 31.6-acres of land located where Nānāikapono Elementary School is presently located. They named it ‘Camp Andrews.’

Prior to construction of Camp Andrews, the property was used for agriculture. Constructed prior to 1942, it was used as a rest and recreation (R&R) area for military personnel, both prior to and during World War II.

Nānākuli beach (Kalanianaʻole Park) was just across the road. “(T)he village just back of the camp, and the stores close by always welcomed us; by being next to the main road we could watch the preparations for offensives in the making; and on that main road we could watch tomorrow’s heroes of war being taught to do their stuff on the beaches and in the jungle.”

“The quiet seclusion of four of us to a hut was a welcome change from the crowded barracks. And what we couldn’t talk the camp out of we built ourselves. The swabs who lived in the camp after we left were fortunate because of our stay at Camp Andrews.” (76th Naval Construction Battalion)

Sailors were often given a couple weeks of leave to stay on shore, swim, watch movies and hang out at the beach. The accommodations were very rustic tents with cots. (Cultural Surveys)

“While it is far out at sea, (ship’s) officers arrange liberty port parties for all men who want them and within a few minutes after the ship docks, the sailors are whisked off to one of the several camps or centers. Some officers even fly in ahead of time to line up recreation for the men.” (Cmdr. Hickey; The Morning Herald from Uniontown, Pennsylvania, May 18, 1945)

“Dividing popularity honors for the longer-trip spots are Camp Andrews and Nimitz beach each drawing 2,000-men daily. Camp Andrews, with neat little cabins for overnight, guests, boasts one of the best beaches on Oʻahu.” (The Morning Herald from Uniontown, Pennsylvania, May 18, 1945)

“As they prepared to head for Camp Andrews for a few days of rest and relaxation, each packed a bathing suit, a towel, and maybe a toothbrush and some underwear. At the camp they wouldn’t need much.”

“The boys who wanted to go to Camp Andrews left the ship in large groups, each group spending four or five stress-free days in a place where reveille and general quarters did not exist. When one group returned, another departed.” (Ramsey)

“It’s 23 miles from noisy Pearl Harbor and is reached by a tiny cross-island train. The official camp uniform is swimming trunks.” (The Morning Herald from Uniontown, Pennsylvania, May 18, 1945)

“The train arrived at the station – an open wooden structure with a bench – in the town of Nānākuli. A few native residents waited to board as the sailors grabbed their ditty bags and jumped off both sides of the open cars. The town was very small, just a collection of a few houses, a grocery store, and a service station.”

“The boys walked into the forest of palms that surrounded Camp Andrews. They were assigned tents where they would spend the next few days. Off came the uniforms, on went the swimming trunks – tight form-fitting short trunks that would be the only thing most of them would wear for the duration of their stay at the camp.”

“The tents were semi-permanent, secured on wooden platforms about a foot and a half off the sand. The sides were rolled up or down; most of the boys kept them up because they needed the breeze. Mosquito netting attached to poles could be lowered to surround them while they slept.”

“They could each three meals a day if they wanted, but even that was optional. Food was standard Navy fare, with lots of pineapple desserts.”

“The camp had a mess hall and an area where the sailors could purchase candy and chewing gum and other things they might like to have. Each day they were given the standard two cans of hot beer each.” (Ramsey)

“Life at the camp was very relaxed. We slept, ate, played games and drank beer. The uniform for the ride out and back was ‘whites,’ but at the camp it was dungarees or Navy issued bathing trunks.”

“Diary entry: September 19, 1943 – Left the ship with several hundred other men to spend three days at Camp Andrews. We took motor launches across the harbor to an Oʻahu Railway station to catch the narrow gauge train. The little train was a steam engine pulling five or six open coaches.”

“We wound around the northwestern end of Oʻahu to a small town, Nānākuli, We were off loaded and hiked ¼-mile to the camp. At the camp we were assigned four men tents with Army cots and mosquito nets. We were told we didn’t have to do anything except keep the tents clean.”

“Life at camp was very relaxed. We slept, ate, played games and drank beer. There was no reveille on your three days there or bed check. We slept in tents. All we had to do was cross the road and we were on our own little beach.”

“After three days of swimming on the beautiful beach with black sand and hiking up into the hills and eating as much as we wanted, we departed Camp Andrews and took out little train back to Pearl Harbor.”

“It was a sad occasion when we had to go back to the Ship because we knew that we would soon be going back into the combat zone.” (Charles Paty, Radioman 2/c) (Lots of information and images come from Battleship North Carolina.)

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Camp Andrews (Kolowena)

Camp ANdrews entrance

Camp Andrews

Sailors Camp ANdrews

CampAndrews

Train-Camp Andrews

Camp Andrews

Kalanianaole Park acros Camp ANderws

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Camp-Andrews-Google_Earth

August 11, 2016 by Peter T Young 3 Comments

Lessons from Bosnia

I have firsthand experience in seeing US Soldiers protecting Muslims from Christians.

I had the chance and took the opportunity to visit our troops and was part of a weeklong trip to Bosnia. It was life-changing. This world is not a very happy place; our warrior Soldiers helped to bring peace and security to that corner of the world.

I saw firsthand the appreciation and gratitude the local Bosniaks shared with our Soldiers (we were protecting Muslims (Bosniaks) from Orthodox Christians (Serbs.))

Bosnia is a part of the Balkans; it was part of the Roman Empire. Throughout the centuries, the Balkans were primarily Orthodox Christian.

Then, in 1463 (30 years before Columbus crossed the Atlantic,) the Ottoman Empire (Muslims of the Islam faith) invaded and conquered the region. Over time, some Orthodox Christian converted to Muslim.

In 1918, Yugoslavia was formed, here. Following WWII, the area was under Tito’s rule. Tito rebuilt Yugoslavia as a Communist federation of six equal republics.

Tito died in 1980 and Yugoslavia started to break up – in part, growth in the Muslim population turned Bosnian Serbs (Christians) into a minority in a republic where they had been the largest group.

The collapse of Communism in 1990-91 led to civil war. In 1992 the United Nations recognized Bosnia. Then, later that year, Christina Serbian forces cross the river Drina and attacked the Muslims.

In July 1995, in Srebrenica (what the UN had determined a ‘safe area,’) the Bosnian Serb Army rounded up and mass-murdered more than 8,000-men and boys.

In December 1995, the Dayton Peace Agreement brought ‘peace’ to the region; this agreement effectively ended the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina and NATO forces were moved in to keep the peace. US and other forces were called to keep the peace.

Peacekeeping-missions for our military are not a new thing, including Hawaiʻi’s Soldiers from the 25th Infantry Division.

On October 1, 1941, the transition by the War Department in operations restructured the Hawaiian Division to form two divisions at Schofield: 24th Infantry Division and the 25th Infantry Division. (Over the following decades, the 24th ID was inactivated, reactivated and subsequently deactivated in October 2006. Schofield remains the home of the 25th ID.)

In 2002, Soldiers from the 25th joined militaries from other countries as part of the NATO-led Stabilization Force in Bosnia-Herzegovina (SFOR) to see compliance with the Dayton Peace Agreement. This was the first time the Tropic Lightning had served in Europe.

1,000 25th-Infantry Soldiers deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina from April to September 2002; our Soldiers took part in mine clearing operations, reconstruction and the destruction of weapons turned in by civilians to help Bosnia-Herzegovina rebuild after a devastating civil war.

Our Soldiers repeatedly spoke of the importance of working with the Bosniak kids – given the diverse make up of the people of Hawai‘i and Soldiers of the 25th – the Soldiers hoped that the local population seeing Soldiers that are discernibly different working well together can serve as an example to the people of Bosnia who are generally similar.

Although there was ‘peace,’ we were reminded that this was not a safe place, every time we left the base. While Soldiers carried their weapons wherever they went (on and off base,) before we left the base, each Soldier loaded their weapon.

We had tactical support wherever we went (we each had an armed Soldier (our ‘Ranger Buddy’) with us at all times; when we travelled outside of the base, fully-armed Humvees were in front and rear of us; and helicopter support was on stand-by.)

I remember a visit we made to the middle of town (the 25th was stationed at Eagle Base in Tuzla;) the weekend evening entertainment was couples and families formed in a slow-paced walk and talk in a continuous circle around the main part of town.

We had plans to visit a local bazaar, but intelligence reports suggested we should not visit it. Instead we went to Sarajevo (site of the 1984 Olympic Games.)

It was site of the ‘Romeo and Juliet Bridge’ (Vrbanja bridge) – where snipers shot a couple (a Christian man and Muslim woman) trying to cross and escape from Sarajevo.

On a couple helicopter tours of the region, we were encouraged to look and compare ‘brown roofs’ and ‘red roofs.’

Typical construction has terra cotta-like roof materials. Older homes have weathered (brown) roofs; new construction/ reconstruction had red roofs. (The red roofed homes were houses owned by Bosniak Muslims that had been blown up in the war and later rebuilt.) (Brown and red roofed homes were next to each other.)

Unfortunately, a computer crash lost all my photos, but not the memories of Bosnia and our Soldiers helping Muslims there.

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Bosnia – Our armored escort whenever we left the base

Tuzla Eagle Base

Civilians from Hawaii visting 25th-forces in Bosnia

Tuzla Countryside – note brown and red roofs

Bosnia-Church near Mosque

Bosnia – Srebrenica

Srebrenica-6,100-burials

Vrbanja bridge-Romeo and Juliet Bridge

SFOR-flag

Bosnia Challenge Coin

Bosnia Challenge Coin-front

Bosnia Challenge Coin-reverse

Bosnia-Certificate of Achievement

July 12, 2016 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Wailupe Naval Radio Station

“Navy officials said they received a garbled radio message early today, purported to have been sent by Amelia Earhart, which indicated her plane was sinking.”

“The message received by three navy operators was pieced together as follows: ‘281 north Howland call KHAQQ beyond north won’t hold with us much longer above water shut off.’”

“The operators said keying of the message was poor and they were able only to pick up the fragments of it was received between 4:30 am and 5:30 am Pacific coast time.” (Bakersfield Californian, July 5, 1937)

Reanalysis of the credible post-loss signals supports the hypothesis that they were sent by Earhart’s Electra from a point on the reef at Nikumaroro, about a quarter-mile north of the shipwreck of the British freighter SS Norwich City. (NBC)

The signal was picked up by radiomen at the US Naval Radio Station in Wailupe, O‘ahu.

“The Navy purchased a piece of land at Wailupe for the temporary station and it was very temporary as plans were in the making for a permanent station at Wailupe.”

The temporary station at Wailupe was built around the first part of 1919 and personnel moved there to allow the Kahuku and Koko Head stations to be remodeled. Almost the entire crew of operators at Koko Head was sent to Wailupe.

“There were three booths, more like chicken coops, scattered on the beach. Each booth, of crude construction, had room for two circuits. The roofs leaked and some of the operators had to sit under an umbrella suspended from the ceiling to keep water off the equipment.”

“We stood a three section watch, seven days a week, no rotation of watches, no days off. Straight 8 on and 16 off, and that’s the way it was at the start of NPM (long distance radio station at Pearl Harbor) at Wailupe as a Government and commercial traffic station.” (Phelps)

The station was completed early in 1921. It was a rectangular, one story building on pilings out over the water to provide more land space for the proposed officer’s quarters, two duplex quarters and the single men’s barracks.

The building was divided into compartments or booths, seven on each side separated by a hallway extending the full length of the building. The wireroom had Morse code landline circuits to the Old Naval Station in Honolulu (HU) for transmission of commercial, other government department traffic and press news dispatches for the Honolulu newspapers

One additional set of duplex quarters was built between the two original duplexes. A tennis court, swimming pool and recreation building had been constructed. A diversity receiving station had been built on the hill behind the quarters.

Facilities at Wailupe in 1939 were meager, and an entirely new receiving and control station was under construction. At Wailupe in December 1941 there were seventy-six men operating twelve positions to receive and send naval dispatches.

After the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the Navy realized that the station at Wailupe on the seacoast was very vulnerable to attack.

So, on the morning of December 10, 1941, the District Communication Officer decided to have all radio equipment at Wailupe moved to Wahiawa.

(Wahiawa was originally established in 1940 as a temporary Naval Radio Station and Naval Radio Direction Finder Station, but the need to expand receiving facilities and to separate transmitting and receiving facilities forced expansion at NCTAMS PAC Wahiawa.)

The Wahiawa site was an excellent receiving area arid the best protected radio station of the entire district. Relocation was completed on December 17 without interruption of communications. (Todd)

With the outbreak of World War II, the Coast Guard established a Training Station in early spring 1942 at the former Naval Radio Station at Wailupe. One of the most important schools at the Training Station was the 16-week Radioman School.

There were approximately 20 students per class, with the first class beginning in March 1942. In November 1943, the Coast Guard assumed control of all inter-island communications for the Navy. As a result of the increased traffic, a new primary radio station was constructed on the site of the Wailupe Training Station.

However, the Coast Guard felt “the site of the present District primary radio station at Wailupe is far from satisfactory because of lack of space and the character of the terrain which prevents the proper separation of transmitting and receiving antenna systems.”

During the period of September – October 1958, the receiver site and administrative spaces were moved to Wahiawa. (Coast Guard)

Eventually, the area makai of Kalanianaʻole Highway was transferred and is now Wailupe Beach Park; the Coast Guard maintains housing and recreational facilities, mauka of the highway. (Lots of information and images here are from Phelps, Todd and virhistory-com.)

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John Kriens at Position 5 – 01-46

McVeigh at Position 2 – 01-46

Radiomen

John Kriens at Position 4 – 01-46

Carter at Position 3 – 01-46

Radiomen-1946

1919 Radiomen-L-R-EL Harris, WG Tichenor, OH Scott, HB ‘Skinny’ Phelps

Ralph Murph at Position 3 – 01-46

Schmoeger at Position 1 – 01-46

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Wailupe Naval Radio Station-to Koko Head-t4376_dd-map-1928

July 4, 2016 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Independence Day

Independence Day celebrates the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, declaring independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain.

Drafted by Thomas Jefferson between June 11 and June 28, 1776, the Declaration of Independence is the nation’s most cherished symbol of liberty and Jefferson’s most enduring monument.

What Jefferson did was to summarize this philosophy in “self-evident truths” and set forth a list of grievances against the King in order to justify before the world the breaking of ties between the colonies and the mother country.

Fifty-six men from each of the original 13 colonies signed the Declaration of Independence – they mutually pledged “to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.”

Nine of the signers were immigrants, two were brothers and two were cousins. Eighteen of the signers were merchants or businessmen, 14 were farmers and four were doctors. Twenty-two were lawyers and nine were judges.

The average age of a signer was 45. Benjamin Franklin was the oldest delegate at 70. The youngest was Thomas Lynch Jr. of South Carolina at 27.

At the time of the signing, the American Revolutionary War was already underway (1775-1783.)

The British captured five signers during the war. Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward and Arthur Middleton were captured at the Battle of Charleston in 1780. George Walton was wounded and captured at the Battle of Savannah; Richard Stockton was incarcerated at the hands of British Loyalists.

Eleven signers had their homes and property destroyed. Francis Lewis’s New York home was razed and his wife taken prisoner. John Hart’s farm and mills were destroyed when the British invaded New Jersey, and he died while fleeing capture.

Fifteen of the signers participated in their states’ constitutional conventions, and six – Roger Sherman, Robert Morris, Benjamin Franklin, George Clymer, James Wilson and George Reed – signed the US Constitution.

Here are some other brief Revolutionary War highlights (and some Hawaiʻi July 4 events:)

1775
March 23 – Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty or give me death” speech
April 18 – The rides of Paul Revere and William Dawes
April 19 – Minutemen and redcoats clash at Lexington and Concord “The shot heard round the world”
June 17 – Battle of Bunker Hill (Boston) – the British drive the Americans
Throughout the year, skirmishes occurred from Canada to South Carolina

Initially, fighting was through local militias; then, the Continental Congress established (on paper) a regular army on June 14, 1775, and appointed George Washington as commander-in-chief.

The development of the Continental Army was a work in progress, and Washington used both his regulars and state militia throughout the war.

1776
January 15 – Thomas Paine’s ‘Common Sense’ challenged the authority of the British government and the royal monarchy
March 17 – the British evacuate Boston

Ultimately, on September 3, 1783, the war ended with the signing of the Treaty of Paris. The treaty document was signed by John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and John Jay (representing the United States) and David Hartley (a member of the British Parliament representing the British Monarch, King George III).

On June 21, 1788, the US Constitution was adopted (with all states ratifying it by that time.)

John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Charles Carroll were the longest surviving signers of the Declaration of Independence. Adams and Jefferson both died on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence; Carroll was the last signer to die – in 1832 at the age of 95.

On July 4, 1894, the Republic of Hawai‘i was established at Aliʻiolani Hale; Sanford B Dole became its first president.

On July 4, 1913, Duke Kahanamoku established three new West Coast records in swimming, winning the 50-yard, 440-yard and 220-yard races in a San Francisco regatta.

Following statehood of Hawaiʻi, the new flag of the United States of America, containing a union of 50 stars, flew for the first time at 12:01 am, July 4, 1960, when it was raised at the Fort McHenry National Monument in Baltimore, Maryland.

Attached is an image of the Declaration of Independence.

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Declaration of Independence

June 23, 2016 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Red Hill Underground

Originally Top Secret, Red Hill’s hidden facility became generally known in the early-1990s, when the facility was declassified.

Prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor all of the Navy’s fuel was stored in unprotected above ground tanks at Pearl Harbor, next to the submarine base.

When RADM Chester Nimitz was Commander of the Bureau of Yards & Docks (in 1940) he wanted the Navy’s 2 ½-year supply of fuel oil protected from aerial attack – existing aboveground unprotected tanks next to the Submarine Base presented a vulnerable enemy target.

Standard practice was to dig a trench and bury the tanks, but this was impractical to store 255-million gallons of fuel oil; here, the Navy’s initial plan was to dig a series of tunnels and insert the tanks

Instead, consulting engineer James P Growden came up with excavating large vertical tank chambers instead of horizontal tunnels. (Nothing like this had ever been attempted before.)

This would increase the volume of material that could be excavated simultaneously and decrease the number of heavy equipment needed for hauling muck. It also decreased the unit cost for rock removal substantially.

Starting the day after Christmas 1940, 20 underground fuel storage tanks were built more that 100-feet below the surface. (The facility was designed as an impenetrable, bombproof reserve of fuel for the military.)

To determine the depth necessary to protect the fuel from Japanese aerial attack, the engineers gathered data from the Army, multiplied it four-fold and rounded the figure off to 100 feet of rock cover.

The attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 had little effect on the work site – work on the storage facility proceeded virtually without interruption.

Each vertical tank is 100 feet in diameter and 250 feet high, roughly the size of a 20-story building, and lined with quarter-inch steel plates (it has an overall design capacity of 6-million barrels of fuel oil (9.97-billion gallons.))

Dug from the inside, the storage facility is connected with pipes (32-inch-diameter diesel pipe, and 18- and 16-inch jet fuel pipes) and tunnels down to a Pearl Harbor pumping station, more than two-and-a-half miles away.

The tanks were set up in two parallel rows with two main access tunnels, one above the other, bisecting the rows; smaller tunnels branched from these main axis tunnels to the tank cavities.

The upper dome of each fuel chamber was excavated first, starting with a ring tunnel, then working upward, towards the central shaft. They started digging in the upper portion of each tank chamber.

Upon completing the ring tunnel, the miners dug upwards in a hemisphere from all points around the ring, narrowing as they reached the central shaft. As soon as the upper hemisphere was concreted, workers were lowered down the central shaft to begin excavation of the tank chamber.

The miners continued to dig downwards in a cone until they reached the lower hemisphere of the tank chamber; tThe lining for the lower hemisphere was placed similarly to the top.

Then, they steel-lined the walls of the tank chamber. Reinforced concrete was placed against the rock and smooth continuously welded steel plates formed the inner liner. (Rogers)

Think of the scenario: with limited above ground disturbance, hollowing out twenty 20-story building-sized cavities 100-feet underground, lining each with ¼-inch steel (with concrete-backing,) testing and repairing leaks, and tunneling them together and to Pearl Harbor, 2 ½-miles away – in secrecy.

In 1995, the American Society of Civil Engineers placed the facility alongside Hoover Dam, the Eiffel Tower, Panama Canal and Statue of Liberty as a historic landmark.

In 2014, evidence of fuel leakage was noted. The Navy and City & County, State and Federal agencies have come together to evaluate the impact to the environment and community, and to look at solutions in dealing with the leak and strategies to mitigate the impacts.

While at DLNR, I had the opportunity to visit the Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility above Pearl Harbor; it’s a secured facility with no public tours or access.

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