Images of Old Hawaiʻi

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Battery Pennsylvania

On the morning of December 7, 1941, a fleet of Japanese carriers launched an air strike against the US Pacific Fleet at anchor in Pearl Harbor.  The attack decimated the ships and personnel of the fleet and thrust the US into WW II.

The USS Arizona (the second of two Pennsylvania-class battleships – built in 1916) was moored on “Battleship Row.”  Just before 8 am, the ship’s air raid alarm was sounded and the crew was ordered to general quarters.  During the attack the Arizona was struck by as many as eight aerial bombs.

In addition, one 1,700-lb armor-piercing shell penetrated the deck and detonated in the powder magazine, causing a “cataclysmic” explosion “which destroyed the ship forward” and ignited a fire which burned for two days. It is thought that most of the Arizona crewmen who perished in the attack died instantly during the explosion. (DPAA)

After the attack, the Arizona was left resting on the bottom with the deck just awash.  (U of Arizona)  Within one week of the attack, divers surveyed the submerged portions of the ship to determine which parts could be salvaged. (DPAA)

One of the divers, Lt Col Lawrence M Guyer of the Hawaiian Seacoast Artillery Command (HSCAC), concluded that, from an artillery viewpoint, Arizona’s aft turrets 3 and 4 (with three guns each) were serviceable and capable of being used on land.

Guyer was credited with establishing numerous seacoast gun batteries on O‘ahu, including four batteries, each armed with two twin-gun 8-inch 55-caliber naval mounts removed from the aircraft carriers Lexington and Saratoga in early 1942.

Before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the coastal defenses for the island were considered extremely inadequate.  Standard coast artillery then in production would have taken two to three years to procure, and Arizona’s 14-inch guns had much greater hitting power than the 6-inch and 8-inch guns being used on O‘ahu at the time. (John Bennett)

The Navy decided that the Army would receive gun turrets 3 and 4 for use as coastal defense guns. (NPS)  In June 1942 the Hawaiian Department Engineer and representatives of the Hawaiian Seacoast Artillery Command examined potential sites on O‘ahu after the War Department gave preliminary endorsement to reusing both 14-inch naval turret batteries.

Two sites were selected: one at Mōkapu (Kāne‘ohe – to cover the eastern portions of O‘ahu) , and the other at Kahe, an area known today as Electric Hill (HEI generating plant) on the western shore of Oahu, up the slopes of the Waianae Mountains – to cover the south and west.

Arizona’s aft guns were removed in May 1942. Because the removal of the turrets began before any consideration was given to their reuse, no consideration was given to their reassembly, and no attempt was made to safeguard the integrity of the turret shells, which had been separated into two major components.

The Navy’s 150-ton heavy-lift floating crane transported Turret 4’s faceplate and slide assembly and the aft catapult to Waipio Point for safekeeping in early March 1942. The smaller turret components were removed from the Arizona, transported to the Pearl City Peninsula, and taken to a nearby yard and warehouse, where they were set aside for the salvage operation in May 1943.

Once ashore the equipment was disassembled completely; then the time-consuming task began – cleaning the small parts of corrosion caused by immersion in seawater for over a year. This included reworking and rewinding electrical motors and completely overhauling the hydraulic systems. (John Bennett)

Batteries Pennsylvania (at Mōkapu) and Arizona (at Kahe) were named on October 21, 1942, by a directive from Brig. Gen. Robert C. Garrett, commanding HSCAC. Garret approved the construction plans for both batteries on May 7, 1943.

The adjutant general of the army gave final approval to both projects on August 13, 1943, based on a Hawaiian Dept. letter of May 11, 1943, ‘Plan for Batteries Arizona and Pennsylvania.’

The most complex project undertaken during World War II at Mōkapu Peninsula was that of the construction of Battery Pennsylvania at Mōkapu Point.

Battery Pennsylvania is a 7-stories deep self-contained unit, gouged out of the side of Ulupa‘u Crater. It contains reinforced concrete rooms for radar, plotting, powder and shell storage and eating and sleeping quarters for approximately 160 troops. The battery was completely air conditioned.

Project engineers had to design a central concrete barbette well that extended 70 feet down in rock. The nucleus of the battery was the barbette (the gun mounting system): 42.5 feet in diameter and 70 feet deep.

To sustain a vertical load of 780 tons and a firing thrust of 2,620 tons, a heavy circular steel foundation ring supported the roller path, with radial webs anchored to the reinforced concrete barbette that ranged from nine to 15 feet thick.

The barbette contained three service levels; the first two levels were accessed from the powder and projectile magazines 70 feet below ground.  Ammunition service was by a pair of naval-style shell skips powered by motor-winches that raised the shells from the floor of the magazine to the shell-loading platform in the turret 45 feet above.

The capacity of this room was 105 shells aboard ship; the number was increased to 150 at the batteries. A pair of powder hoists similar to those aboard ship raised the powder bags to the powder handling room, 25 feet above the magazine.

It took nearly four years to build the battery and reassemble the gun.  In 1944, Army Ground Forces had scheduled Batteries Arizona and Pennsylvania to be manned by four officers and 157 enlisted men each when completed.

Battery Arizona’s construction was halted on August 1, 1945. Although the turret and guns had been mounted, the battery still lacked some components. It was not probable that it was turned over to the coast artillery and manned. The heavy guns at Battery Arizona were never test fired.

Only Battery Pennsylvania was fully completed; it was completed just before the end of the war in the Pacific. Battery Pennsylvania was test fired on August 10, 1945 (the only firing of its guns). (HABS)  Today both sites are abandoned; the guns were removed and cut up for scrap shortly after the war ended. (Lots of information and imagery is from John Bennett.)

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Rainbow Plan

The primary war planning agencies of the period 1890-1939 were the war colleges of the US Army and US Navy. The US had a series of military plans in place to deal with an array of potential adversaries.

War plans outlined potential US strategies for a variety of hypothetical war scenarios. They were prepared and referenced by colors, each color corresponding to a specific situation or nation.

For instance, of the initial 12-plans, there was War Plan Black, a plan for war with Germany; War Plan Orange for Japan; and even a War Plan Red for Great Britain (with a sub variant Crimson Plan for Canada.)

After World War I, the Joint Army and Navy Board (the predecessor of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) reviewed all the prewar plans to ensure they were consistent with the current state of affairs in the world.

The possibility of war with Japan had led the Army and Navy in 1924 to draft a new joint Orange plan to govern the conduct of such a war.

War Plan Orange made no provision for a landing on the Japanese home islands. Japan was to be defeated by ‘isolation and harassment,’ by the disruption of its vital sea communications, and by ‘offensive sea and air operations against her naval forces and economic life.’

With events starting in 1938, with German and Italian aggression in Europe and simultaneous Japanese expansion in the Far East, US war planners realized that the US faced the possibility of war on multiple fronts against a coalition of enemies.

To that end, the Joint Planning Board developed a new series of war plans, the ‘Rainbow’ plans – the term being a play on the respective ‘color’ plans that had been previously drawn up.

The single most important strategy, made before US entry into World War II, in the context of a world threatened by Axis aggression in Europe and Asia, was that Germany must be defeated first.

“In the years preceding US entry into World War II, the Army’s war planners tasked students at the Army War College to prepare responses to a set of amazingly realistic wartime scenarios.”

“The students’ sound but imaginative solutions not only influenced the armed services’ post-1939 Rainbow plans for war with Germany and Japan, they also anticipated and provided answers to most of the war’s major strategic questions.” (Gole)

Ultimately, planning (and later implementation) resulted in War Plan Rainbow 5 – this plan included Hawaiʻi.

“Rainbow 5 assumed the United States, Great Britain and France to be acting in concert; hemisphere defense was to be assured … with early projection of US forces to the eastern Atlantic, and to either or both the African and European Continents”.

“Offensive operations were to be conducted, in concert with British and allied forces, to effect the defeat of Germany and Italy. A strategic defensive was to be maintained in the Pacific until success against the European Axis Powers permitted transfer of major forces to the Pacific for an offensive against Japan.”

As to Hawaiʻi, War Department message of November 27, 1941 read as follows: “Negotiations have come to a standstill at this time. No diplomatic breaking of relations and we will let them make the first overt act. You will take such precautions as you deem necessary to carry out the Rainbow plan. Do not excite the civilian population.” (Proceedings of Army Pearl Harbor Board)

Oʻahu held a position of the first importance in the military structure of the US before and during WWII. During the prewar years, Oʻahu and the Panama Canal Zone were the two great outposts of continental defense. (army-mil)

A key goal in the Pacific was to hold Oʻahu Island as a main outlying naval base and to protect shipping in the waters around the Hawaiian Islands.

In the year before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, American strategists developed a strategy that focused on “Germany first.” In the end, that was what occurred with the American war effort.

Rainbow 5 imagined the rapid projection of American forces across the Atlantic to Africa or Europe “in order to effect the decisive defeat of Germany, Italy, or both.”

Clearly implied in this statement was the concept that finally emerged as the basic strategy of World War II: that in a war with the European Axis and Japan, Germany was the major enemy and that the main effort therefore should be made in Europe to secure the decisive defeat of Germany at the earliest possible date.

But for much of 1942 and well into 1943, the US deployed substantially greater forces to the Pacific than to Europe. This was in response both to political pressure from the American people and the rapidly deteriorating situation in the Pacific over the first six months of the war.

On June 6, 1944, more than 160,000-Allied troops landed along a 50-mile stretch of heavily-fortified French coastline, to fight Nazi Germany on the beaches of Normandy, France.

General Dwight D Eisenhower called the operation a crusade in which “we will accept nothing less than full victory.” More than 5,000-ships and 13,000-aircraft supported the D-Day invasion, and by day’s end, the Allies gained a foot-hold in Continental Europe.

The final battles of the European Theater of WWII, as well as the German surrender to the Western Allies and the Soviet Union took place in late-April and early-May 1945.

On August 6 and 9, 1945, atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. On September 2, 1945, the Japanese signed the Instrument of Surrender on the deck of USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. (Lots of information here from army-mil and GlobalSecurity.)

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Codebreakers – Secret to Success at Battle of Midway

Around 7:20 Sunday morning, a single-engine Japanese reconnaissance plane entered the cloud-streaked airspace over Pearl Harbor.  Launched earlier that morning from the heavy cruiser Chikuma, the plane circled as the pilot studied the ground below.

Having seen all he needed to see, at precisely 7:35 the recon pilot radioed his report to the striking force, which quickly relayed the information to the Japanese planes now approaching Oahu from the north: “Enemy formation at anchor; nine battleships, one heavy cruiser, six light cruisers are in the harbor.”

The attack on Pearl Harbor set in motion a series of battles in the Pacific between the Japanese and the United States.

With the fall of Wake Island to the Japanese in late-December 1941, Midway became the westernmost US outpost in the central Pacific.

Midway occupied an important place in Japanese military planning. According to plans made before Pearl Harbor, the Japanese fleet would attack and occupy Midway and the Aleutian Islands in Alaska as soon as their position in South Asia was stabilized.

Defenses on the atoll were strengthened between December and April.  Land-based bombers and fighters were stationed on Eastern Island.  US Marines provided defensive artillery and infantry.

Operating from the atoll’s lagoon, seaplanes patrolled toward the Japanese-held Marshall Islands and Wake, checking on enemy activities and guarding against further attacks on Hawaiʻi.

The turning point in the Pacific came in June 1942, when the US surprised and overpowered the Japanese fleet in the Battle of Midway.

That victory was possible, in large part, because of the work of a little-known naval codebreaker named Joe Rochefort.  (Rochefort, responsible for the Pacific Fleet’s radio intelligence unit at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, felt immense guilt at the failure to predict the Pearl Harbor attack.)

The Japanese Combined Fleet depended on a complex system of codes to communicate by radio. The codes were regularly modified to avoid detection, but in the confusion of the rapid Japanese expansion in the South Pacific the change scheduled for early-1942 was delayed.

The course to Midway started not on a map in a top secret chart room with top strategists and tacticians contemplating Japan’s next move, but was set by the deciphering of messages from the Japanese Fleet.

This was done by a handful of US Navy intelligence officers stationed at Pearl Harbor.

In the spring of 1942, it took cryptanalysts in Australia, Washington, DC and Hawai‘i to achieve the breakthrough that made an American victory at Midway possible.

The Japanese naval code, known as JN 25, consisted of approximately 45,000 five-digit numbers, each number representing a word or a phrase.

Breaking this code, which was modified regularly, meant finding the meanings of enough of these numbers that a whole message could be decrypted by extrapolating the missing parts.

According to one of the leading codebreakers involved, it was like putting together a jigsaw puzzle with most of its pieces always missing.

Leading the codebreaking effort was Station Hypo, the code name for the combat intelligence unit at Pearl Harbor under Commander Joseph Rochefort.

Rochefort included members of the band from the battleship ‘California,’ damaged at Pearl Harbor.  He thought their musical skills might make them adept codebreakers in much the same way that Marine bandsmen used to serve as fire control technicians on ship — the ability to quickly read and play music made them excellent mathematical problem solvers.

By May 8, Rochefort knew that a major enemy operation, whose objective was sometimes called AF, was in the offing and that it would take place somewhere in the Central Pacific.

When they checked this against their partially solved map grid, the found that “A” represented on coordinate of Midway’s potion and “F” represented the other.

His superiors in Washington weren’t convinced; they devised a test that would flush out the location of AF.

The radio station on Midway dispatched an uncoded message falsely reporting that the water distillation plant on the island had broken, causing a severe water shortage.  Within 48 hours, a decrypted Japanese radio transmission was alerting commanders that AF was short of water.

Several days later, he was sure the target was Midway.  As a result, the Americans entered the battle with a very good picture of where, when and in what strength the Japanese would appear.

On June 4, 1942, armed with information from Rochefort and his team, American planes caught the Japanese by surprise and won the decisive battle – it marked the turning point in the war in the Pacific.

In the four-day sea and air battle, 292 aircraft, four Japanese aircraft carriers – Akagi, Kaga, Soryu and Hiryu, all part of the six carrier force in the attack on Pearl Harbor six months earlier – and a heavy cruiser were sunk.  There were 2,500 Japanese casualties.

The US lost the carrier Yorktown, the destroyer USS Hammann, 145 aircraft and suffered 307 casualties. (The inspiration and information in this summary comes from NPS, NPR and Naval History) 

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Hālawa Naval Cemetery

As a result of the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, there were 2,403 people killed and 1,178 wounded. Among the deceased were 2,008 Navy personnel, 109 Marine, 218 Army and 68 civilians.  (navy-mil)

World War II brought death to more than 300,000 Americans who were serving their country overseas.  While the war was on, most of these honored dead were buried in temporary US military cemeteries.

(Punchbowl was not a cemetery at that time.  In 1943, the governor of Hawaiʻi offered the Punchbowl for use as a national memorial cemetery; in February 1948 Congress approved funding and construction began.  The first interment at Punchbowl was made January 4, 1949.)

(Initially, the graves at National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific were marked with white wooden crosses and Stars of David; however, in 1951, these were replaced by permanent flat granite markers.)

After the attack on Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941, the Navy selected Oʻahu Cemetery to bury the dead. At the time, only 300 plots at the cemetery were available for use.  Burials began there on December 8, 1941. (navy-mil)

“Historical records show that the Navy originally purchased plots in the cemetery October 9, 1919, and additional land was acquired in 1931. The current cemetery site was acquired April, 13, 1932.”  (NAVFAC)

Several temporary cemeteries were constructed – one was in lower Hālawa Valley, overlooking Pearl Harbor.

“On Dec. 9 it became evident that sufficient land was not available in Oʻahu Cemetery for this purpose.  By direction of the commandant (of the 14th Naval District), a site for a new cemetery was selected by the public works department. This site (Hālawa) was approved by the district medical officer and remaining burials were made in this new cemetery.”  (US Naval Hospital; Cole)

Over the course of about 4-years, about 1,500 graves were prepared (some containing multiple sets of remains.)  All bodies, except those of identified officers, were placed in plain wooden caskets. “Bodies of officers were placed in standard Navy caskets in order that they might later be disinterred and shipped home if desired.”

Two officers of the Chaplain Corps and two civilian priests from Honolulu rendered proper religious rites at the hospital and at the funeral ceremonies held each afternoon in the Oʻahu and Hālawa Cemeteries. The brief military ceremony held at the burial grounds included a salute fired by a Marine guard and the blowing of taps by a Marine bugler.  (navy-mil)

Following the war, Congress passed, and the President signed, a bill that authorized the War Department to take steps to provide a reverent final burial for those who gave the last full measure of devotion.

“A first step in determining the final resting place for Americans who died outside the continental United States during World War II will be taken this week, Col George E Hartman, commanding officer of the Schenectady General depot, US Army, announced yesterday. … letters will be sent to more than 20,000 next-of-kin of American dead now in 15 of 207 temporary cemeteries overseas.”

“Next-of-kin may choose to have remains of WWII armed forces personnel who dies overseas returned to the US for burial in a private cemetery; returned to the US for burial in a National Cemetery; buried in a permanent US military cemetery overseas; or buried in a private cemetery in a foreign country which is a homeland of the deceased or next-of-kin.”    (Schenectady Gazette, March 5, 1947)

In September 1947, the American Graves Registration Service (AGRS) disinterred and moved the remains to the Schofield Barracks Central Identification Laboratory (Schofield CIL), located at the AGRS Pacific Zone Headquarters, in order to effect or confirm identifications and return the men to their next of kin for burial.

Between August and September 1947, the US military exhumed 18 remains at Kāneʻohe Bay, 339 from Oʻahu Cemetery, and 1,516 at Hālawa, according to a 1957 government report.  (Cole)

What was the Hālawa Naval Cemetery is the vicinity of the Animal Quarantine and Hālawa Industrial Park.  (Currently, there are 135 Sailors, Marines and spouses interred in Oʻahu Cemetery.)

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Howling Owl

In 1938, the Navy Shore Development Board began searching for a more secure and adequate method for storing the near 4 million barrels of fuel kept to supply the Pacific Fleet.

The intention was to move the fuel from the exposed Doheny oil tanks in the back of the Navy Yard to a series of underground horizontal tanks.

The tanks were arranged in two parallel rows, with adjacent tanks spaced by 100-feet at least. The parallel arrangement allowed access by tunnels built between them with branches to each tank. Tops and bottoms of the tanks were dome-shaped for strength.

Ninety percent of the work was done underground, below at least 110-feet of earth. Outside night work was done under blackout conditions brought on by the war. A 20-watt bulb mounted inside a tin can and suspended three feet from the ground was a typical light source.

Charlie Boerner of Maui, the civil engineer inspector of the Navy’s supervisory group, described it best. “All we’re doing is getting inside a hole that doesn’t exist and digging until it does. O.K., so the miners keep widening the hole out from the shaft, making it v-shaped so the rock will roll down.”

The sequence of operation in driving the tunnels was drill, load (dynamite), blast, muck out, timber, and repeat. Progress was hampered by the presence of cinder pockets and irregular rock stratifications.

Tunnels through softer rock required pre-fabricated arch-shaped steel ribs with heavy timbers between the ribs to make the tunnel safe for work to proceed. Tunnels through harder rock were simply coated with Gunite to consolidate any loose rock. (HAER No. HI-123)

Muck was carried by conveyor to a quarry. Eventually, all of the five million tons excavated from Red Hill was used in surfacing highways, making concrete and as landfill to connect Kuahua Island to the Pearl Harbor shoreline.

After the tanks were hollowed, the walls were lined with ¼” steel plating, much like stained-glass pieces create a Tiffany lamp shade, Gammon described. (John Bennett)

Each tank has a 300,000-barrel capacity, and all 20 can hold 252 million gallons of fuel. At its peak, the project employed 3,900 workers to build 20 cylindrical fuel tanks that are each the size of the 20-story Ala Moana Building. Two-thirds of the workers were local. (William Cole)

The first tank was completed and immediately utilized on Sept. 26, 1942; the last, on Sept. 30, 1943. The reservation was transferred to the Navy’s control upon completion of the project, and was part of the strategic fuel oil for the Pacific Fleet. Access to the complex is via a system of tunnels totaling 7.13 miles. (John Bennett)

“Snaking throughout the honeycomb are a series of tunnels. A short cross tunnel connects each pair of tanks at their bottoms, making ten cross tunnels altogether. Similarly, another ten cross tunnels connect the tanks at their springline, the base of the upper dome.”

“The lengthy harbor tunnel extends for an additional two and one-third miles before finally rising to the surface at a secluded and bombproof underground pumphouse on Pearl Harbor Naval Base.” (HAER No. Hl-123) There is a link which runs to the Commander in Chief of the Pacific’s Headquarters building located at Makalapa. (John Bennett)

To aid in the transport of materials, 13,000 linear feet of train tracks were removed from Oahu’s cane fields and laid in the lower tunnel.  (WestOfSunset)

As the miners inched their way through their subterranean passageway, gangs of track-laying crews followed at their heels. As fast as the tunnel moved forward, rail lines were laid, and the excavated rock and earth was rolled away in miniature rail cars. (HAER No. HI-123)

The only continuously-operated railroad on Oahu runs the 3½  miles from Red Hill to a pump house at Pearl Harbor. It’s 450 feet underground, transporting men and equipment. At the pump house, only four men at a time are needed to monitor the elaborate system that took thousands to build.  (Boykin, Hawaii Pacific Architecture)

The two-car train, pulled by a miniature electric-powered narrow-gauge ‘locomotive’, was named ‘Howling Owl’ that propelled the train through the underground, hauled workers and equipment to various stops along the route – it could reach 15 miles per hour at full ‘steam’. (WestOfSunset)

The train passes under Makalapa Crater, Makalapa Elementary School, Salt Lake Boulevard, and Foster Village, at which point it is nearly 100-feet below the surface.

As it snakes through the tunnel, riders could easily believe that they are in the New York subway except that no one has spray painted ‘Chico loves Gloria’ on the walls.

Leaving Foster Village, the Owl travels beneath Aliamanu Military Reservation, the freeway, and Coast Guard housing. At the last location, residents have claimed that their homes vibrate when the train passes below. (Mass Transit Exists!)

The origin of the name ‘Howling Owl’ is long lost.  One theory suggests that the train’s mournful hoot is similar to the hoot of an owl.

Another theory claims that the name stems from the Underground Railroad used by escaping slaves in the southern United States.  Slaves planning to flee were told to await the signal – a howling owl. (WestOfSunset) The 15-foot-tall lighted tunnels later accommodated electric engines Honu and Lapaki.

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