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October 1, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Pearl Harbor Yacht Club

In 1888, the legislature gave Benjamin Franklin (Frank) Dillingham an exclusive franchise “for construction and operation on the Island of O‘ahu a steam railroad … for the carriage of passengers and freight.”

Ultimately OR&L sublet land, partnered on several sugar operations and/or hauled cane from Ewa Plantation Company, Honolulu Sugar Company in ‘Aiea, O‘ahu Sugar in Waipahu, Waianae Sugar Company, Waialua Agriculture Company and Kahuku Plantation Company, as well as pineapples for Dole.

Passenger travel was an add-on opportunity that not only included train rides; they also operated a bus system.  However, the hauling for the agricultural ventures was the most lucrative.

In addition, OR&L (using another of its “land” components,) got into land development.  It developed Hawai‘i’s first planned suburban development and held a contest, through the newspaper, to name this new city.  The winner selected was “Pearl City” (the public also named the main street, Lehua.)

The railway owned 2,200-acres in fee simple in the peninsula.  First, they laid-out and constructed the improvements, then invited the public on a free ride to see the new residential community. The marketing went so well; ultimately, lots were auctioned off to the highest bidder.

Excursion trains filled with passengers traveled to Pearl City on weekends and the area became a favorite place for pleasure seekers and picnic parties.

“Boarding a train at the O‘ahu Railway and Land Company depot at King and Iwilei streets I we rode to Pearl City and transferred to a small section-train known as The Dummy for the short peninsula ride to within a few steps from our destination.”

“Usually the section-locomotive trailed one passenger car but when it trailed a flat car instead we were elated. We could sit on its edge and dangle our legs.” (Henrietta Mann, Watumull Oral History)

Wealthy families visited the peninsula on weekends or during the summers, maintaining mansions on the peninsula and enjoying parties and yacht races in Pearl Harbor. Dillingham promoted sail boat races, a large dancing pavilion, and many forms of entertainment and recreation.  (Aiea Pearl City Livable Communities Plan)

The local paper reported, “A new sporting club is being organized by a number of Honolulu men.  It will be called “The Pearl Harbor Yacht Club” and will have a handsome club house on the lochs”. (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, December 4, 1899)  There was even talk of building an ‘ark’ (a barge with a house on it), noting , “In San Francisco Bay … there are many ‘arks’. (Honolulu Republican, September 3, 1900)

“In 1901 the Hawaii Yacht Club was chartered and built a boat house near the west end of Aloha Avenue, about where the ferry landing was later built. The club later reorganized at the Ala Wai. Many of the wealthy families had yachts or other vessels for recreation, which joined the utilitarian fishing and ferry boats on the waters around the peninsula.”

The Pearl Harbor Yacht Club “became known for the many sail boat races it held. The Yacht Club had a wooden L-shaped pier at the end of Lanakila Avenue and a marine railway to pull boats out of the water.  (Historic Context Study)

The Pearl Harbor Yacht Club (PHYC) had two earlier locations on Pearl City Peninsula before it was established north of Lanakila Avenue in the late 1920s.

The first club house, called the “old Parker Place,” faced on Middle Loch and was loaned to the club by R.W. Atkinson, one of the club’s charter members and owner of that property.

The club purchased the “Jones Place” in November 1925, remodeling the house, and building a pier and “runway for hauling boats”.

In March 1928 the two-story residence of Albert F. Afong was purchased and “turned into a clubhouse for the Yacht Club”. The clubhouse was situated on the lot abutting the pier and some of its foundation is still visible.  (HAER HI-55)

“[Pearl Harbor] Yacht Club [property] was owned by this Chinese guy, Afong. And then, when Afong, in 1929, stock crash, he went bankrupt (I heard), and he had to get rid of all his land. That’s when the yacht club bought his home. It was a big yard, big home.”

“The Pearl Harbor Yacht Club originally bought the Ted Cooke home, but that was a smaller place. The building was big, big, two-story building. Originally that was built by the Jones Family. And then they sold it to the yacht club, and the yacht club first started in the peninsula over there. Then it was too small, so they took the Afong place.”  (Asada Oral History)

“Pearl Harbor was a great thing, for instance. In the late twenties and early thirties the Pearl Harbor Yacht Club was very active. A whole bunch of us young people had what we called eighteen-footers; they were center-board boats.”

“We’d go down virtually every weekend in the summer months and usually stay at Ben Dillingham’s grandmother’s house, we boys. And the girls would stay with the Theodore [Atherton] Cookes, both of whom had lovely homes right on the peninsula there.”

“We would go into these races and have just a glorious time. Of course all of that’s gone now, except over at Kaneohe; they’ve more or less continued the tradition. Honolulu, in our youth, was a small, simple, quiet, slow-moving town, which is no longer.”  (James Judd Jr, Watumull Oral History)

“[M]y dad liked sailing very much. He must have started sailing competitively when I was, oh I guess, around twelve or fifteen years old. Pearl Harbor Yacht Club was inside Pearl Harbor. There was a wonderful yacht club there and there were no limits. You could sail around Ford Island and all the way down West Loch, et cetera because the U. S. Navy hadn’t set up any restricted areas.”

“Every once in a while there’d be a naval exercise. Wonderful races with several classes of sailboats were what I participated in. My dad raced a star class boat and I had a little moon boat.”

“I can remember seeing all the great ships of the Navy there, and I’d just be sailing my own little twelve-foot sail boat and be looking at the Lexington and the Saratoga … and George Patton.”

“The great General Patton was a sailor, he was at Schofield, and he was a sailor. He was a very wealthy person. He had a schooner, about a seventy-foot black-hulled gorgeous schooner and he’d sail around Pearl before he’d go out the entrance and here we were just kids taking it all in.” (Stanley Kennedy Jr, Watumull Oral History)

“The pre-war club was a place for Hawaii’s leading families and members of the Big 5 commercial and plantation companies. They included the Dillinghams, Frears, Castles, Cookes, Dowsetts, Spauldings, McInernys, Mott-Smiths, Wilders, Atkinsons, Damons, James Dole and Princess Kawananakoa.”

“Pearl Harbor Yacht Club was also a magnet for local and national celebrities in those heady days of the late 1920s and through the 1930s.”  (Dean Smith; Sigall)

“Through the years, membership in the Pearl Harbor Yacht has included Shirley Temple, Duke Kahanamoku and Harold Dillingham, who sailed the 1934 Pearl Harbor Yacht Club’s entry into the biannual Trans-Pacific Yacht Race aboard ‘Manuiwa’ and won.”  (Ho’okele)

“Duke was quite an avid yachtsman and he belonged to the Pearl Harbor Yacht Club, which was at Pearl City at that time. We had raced up on Saturday to Waikiki and the following Sunday, which was December 7, we were supposed to race back again to Pearl City. Well, naturally, we couldn’t because the war started that morning.”  (Nadine Kahanamoku, Watumull Oral History)

Today, Pearl Harbor Yacht Club provides recreational and competitive boating opportunities for Active Duty, Reserve, Retiree, DoD personnel and their families, as well as the community at large.  It is situated at 57 Arizona Memorial Drive in Pearl Harbor.

© 2022 Ho‘okuleana LLC

Filed Under: General, Sailing, Shipping & Shipwrecks Tagged With: Pearl Harbor, Oahu Railway and Land Company, Dillingham, Benjamin Franklin Dillingham, OR&L, Pearl City, Pearl Harbor Yacht Club

August 30, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Honolulu Sugar Company

A little over 100-years after it started, its buildings were almost refurbished and saved from demolition … to serve as a headquarters and factory for Crazy Shirts Hawaiʻi.

For nearly 50 years the mill and refinery buildings were surrounded by thousands of acres of sugar cane fields with linkages by railroad to other mills and cane field sources.

It began as the Honolulu Sugar Company, but over the years it went by a lot of names – but to most folks it was known as the ʻAiea Sugar Mill.

Let’s look back.

September 1, 1888, Bishop Estate leased about 2,900-acres for a period of twenty years, until September 1, 1908 to James I Dowsett.

At about this same time, (1898,) the Hālawa Plantation Company was organized, with 4,000-acres from the coastal plain around Pearl Harbor up the hillsides to 650 feet.  A year later Hālawa Plantation Company was reorganized as Honolulu Plantation Company.  (NPS)

Dowsett died and on August 1, 1898, the administrator of his estate sub-let the land to the Honolulu Sugar Company (formed in San Francisco and headed by John Buck.)  That year, the Honolulu Sugar Company built a sugar mill in ‘Aiea.

Almost two months later, Honolulu Sugar Company assigned the lease to the Honolulu Plantation Company.  (US District Court)  Operations expanded; the plantation and mill prospered.

ʻAiea was named for a small shrub (Nothocestrum – used by ancient Hawaiians for thatching sticks (ʻaho) and fire-making) that once grew profusely there; it was plowed under to make way for sugar.  The town of ʻAiea was created because of, and grew up around, the mill.

Labor for the fledgling company was problematic; many workers had to be imported: “We have some 200 Contract Japanese Laborers now on the plantation and another hundred at the Quarantine Station in Honolulu which will swell our daily labor to about 500 men, there being nearly 300 Chinese, Japanese, Native and Portuguese free laborers now on the plantation.”  (Klieger)

The plantation expanded along the inshore and upland areas of Pearl Harbor – it extended from ʻAiea westward as far as Mānana and Waiawa Streams.  It included lands where the present Honolulu International Airport and Hickam Base are located.  (Cultural Surveys)

By 1901, Honolulu Plantation Company had started its own railroad. On the Hālawa property, the narrow-gauge rail line extended through the lower canefields (at what is now Honolulu International Airport,) crossed the OR&L at Puʻuloa Station (near the present Nimitz Gate at Pearl Harbor), skirted the southern edge of Makalapa Crater, wound its way past the fields at the confluence of Kamananui and Kamanaiki Streams, and climbed the grade up to the ʻAiea mill site.  (Klieger)

In December 1914, a newspaper article reported that “Generally, the first request of a visitor to Honolulu who wishes to see the sights and has but a few hours in which to do so is to be shown a sugar mill, and in nearly every instance the sugar mill of the Honolulu Plantation Company at Aiea is the one visited.”

“Malihinis receive their first impressions of sugar-making here, and they are always lasting, for the mill of this corporation is an up-to-date and model institution, incorporating all the latest devices and improvements in the manufacture of sugar, and in some instances putting into use innovations.”  (NPS)

By the early-1900s, all of the ʻEwa plains was transformed and planted in sugar; by the mid-1930s, Honolulu Plantation Company had more than 23,000-acres of land in and around ʻAiea.

In 1910 the Honolulu Plantation Company helped with the reforestation of ridges and uplands; about 125,000 trees were planted in the fall of 1910 and 1911.

In the 1930s the Honolulu Plantation Company employed about 2,500 people and refined more than 40,000 tons of sugar annually.

Pre- and post-World War II impacts and military needs affected not only the expansion, but also transformed the future of Honolulu Plantation.

The beginning of the end of ʻAiea as a plantation came in 1935 when the US government took 625-prime cane acres to build Hickam Field. With the advent of WWII, the company lost more of its best lands to military operations, roads and rapidly developing commercial and housing areas.  (NPS)

In 1942, the Army built a cupola or lookout tower on top of the refinery and manned it day and night for the next three years.

In 1944 and 1945, despite having lost nearly 50% of its lands to the Army and Navy, the company supplied the mid-Pacific area with 70,000-tons of white sugar – noted as “a remarkable wartime achievement.” Two years after the war, plantation operations were discontinued and houses sprouted in ʻAiea where sugar cane once grew.  (NPS)

Honolulu Plantation was forced out of business by rising labor costs, low sugar yields and military confiscation of half its canefields and went bankrupt in 1946; the plantation acreage was sold to Oʻahu Sugar Company and most of the mill equipment went to a Philippines firm.

Taking over the mill enabled C&H to refine raw sugar intended for the Hawaiʻi market in the Islands, instead of sending it to California for refining and shipping it back for use here.  By 1954, the ʻAiea mill’s refined sugar output, to Hawai’i retailers, manufacturers and pineapple canneries, reach 62,000 tons. (HHF)

Alexander & Baldwin Properties bought the site in 1993 and soon added a new liquid-sugar refinery in order to satisfy an increasing demand for soft-drink sweeteners. But granulated sugar production was becoming unprofitable.

A&B sought to scrap the site and develop an industrial park.  In steps Rick Ralston from Crazy Shirts to save the historic structure, restoring some to maintain the historic sugar flavor, as well as refurbish and reuse parts for the shirt production.

However, costs for clean-up mounted and forced abandonment of the restoration – Bank of Hawaiʻi took over the property.  The ʻAiea Mill was demolished in 1998.  The ʻAiea Sugar Mill property was bounded by Ulune Street, ʻAiea Heights Drive, Kulawea Street, Hakina Street, and ʻAiea Intermediate School.

© 2022 Hoʻokuleana LLC

honolulu_plantation_williams_1915
honolulu_plantation_williams_1915
C. Brewer's Honolulu plantation mill (1898-1946) located at 'Aiea, O'ahu, ca. 1902
C. Brewer’s Honolulu plantation mill (1898-1946) located at ‘Aiea, O’ahu, ca. 1902
Aiea Mill-Sugar Plantation, Oahu, TH-Feb 26, 1940-Babcock
Aiea Mill-Sugar Plantation, Oahu, TH-Feb 26, 1940-Babcock
14-1-14-17 =aiea mill looking toward Pearl Harbor- Kamehameha Schools Archives
14-1-14-17 =aiea mill looking toward Pearl Harbor- Kamehameha Schools Archives
Aiea Halawa-Sugar cane fields and sugar mill at Aiea, Oahu, T.H. Alt. 800' Aug 4, 1933-Babcock
Possibly-Aiea_Sugar-aep-his276
Possibly-Aiea_Sugar-aep-his276
Pearl Ridge Hill-Sugar cane fields at Aiea, Oahu, T.H. Altitude 800'-Aug 4, 1933-Babcock
Pearl Ridge Hill-Sugar cane fields at Aiea, Oahu, T.H. Altitude 800′-Aug 4, 1933-Babcock
Burning off a field of sugarcane, Aiea, Oahu, TH-Aug 1, 1932-Babcock
Burning off a field of sugarcane, Aiea, Oahu, TH-Aug 1, 1932-Babcock
Aiea-Nothocestrum
Aiea-Nothocestrum
Aiea-Nothocestrum_breviflorum_(4740368749)
Aiea-Nothocestrum_breviflorum_(4740368749)
Honolulu_Sugar_Company-Reg2643
Honolulu_Sugar_Company-Reg2643

Filed Under: Economy Tagged With: Aiea, Hawaii, Oahu, Pearl Harbor, Honolulu Sugar Company, Aiea Sugar Mill, Hickam, Joint-Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam

August 8, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Honouliuli

The island of Oʻahu is divided into 6 moku (districts), consisting of: ‘Ewa, Kona, Koʻolauloa, Koʻolaupoko, Waialua and Waiʻanae. These moku were further divided into 86 ahupua‘a (land divisions within a moku.)

‘Ewa was divided into 12-ahupua‘a, consisting of (from east to west): Hālawa, ‘Aiea, Kalauao, Waimalu, Waiau, Waimano, Mānana, Waiʻawa, Waipi‘o, Waikele, Hōʻaeʻae and Honouliuli.

‘Ewa was at one time the political center for O‘ahu chiefs. This was probably due to its abundant resources that supported the households of the chiefs, particularly the many fishponds around the lochs of Puʻuloa (“long hill,) better known today as Pearl Harbor. (Cultural Surveys)

Each had fisheries in the harbor, floodplains with irrigated kalo and fishponds, and interior (lower kula valley streams/gulches) and mountain forests.  One of these, Honouliuli, had a large coastal area, including what it is typically referred to as the “ʻEwa Plains.”  (Kirch)

Honouliuli includes lands extending from the mountains, to the watered plains where loʻi kalo (taro pond fields) and loko ia (fishponds) were developed, to the arid plains and rich fisheries on the ocean. Along the ocean-fronted coast of Honouliuli are noted places in lore and ancient life, such as Keahi, Kupaka, Keoneula (Oneula), Kualakai, Kalaeloa and Koʻolina.  (Maly)

Honouliuli (dark bay) includes a wide plain back of Puʻuloa (Pearl Harbor) and Keahi (a point west of Pearl Harbor) where the homeless, friendless ghosts were said to wander about. These were the ghosts of people who were not found by their family ʻaumakua or gods and taken home with them, or had not found the leaping places where they could leap into the nether world.  (Pukui)

In 1793, Captain George Vancouver described this area as desolate and barren:  “From the commencement of the high land to the westward of Opooroah (Puʻuloa – Pearl Harbor) was … one barren rocky waste, nearly destitute of verdure, cultivation or inhabitants, with little variation all to the west point of the island. …”

In 1839, Missionary EO Hall described the area between Pearl Harbor and Kalaeloa as follows: “Passing all the villages (after leaving the Pearl River) at one or two of which we stopped, we crossed the barren desolate plain”.  (Robicheaux)  In the 1880s, these lands were being turned over to cattle grazing and continued through the early-1900s.

Nearby Moku ʻUmeʻume (Ford Island) provided pili grass for house thatching. Ewa’s house builders gathered their pili grass for house thatching here until the time came when foreign shingles were introduced, then thatching was discontinued.

It was also covered with kiawe trees; it was noted that the kiawe forests there and the Honouliuli region supplied much of the fuel for kitchen fires in Honolulu.

Reported in 1898, a few fishermen and some of their families built shanties by the shore where they lived, fished and traded their catch for taro at ‘Ewa.  Their drinking water was taken from nearby ponds, and it was so brackish that other people could not stand to drink it. (Cameron; Maly)

James Campbell, who arrived in Hawaiʻi in 1850, ended up in Lāhainā and started a sugar plantation there in 1860 (later known as Pioneer Mill.)  He also started to acquire lands in Oʻahu, Maui and the island of Hawaiʻi.

In 1876, he purchased approximately 15,000-acres at Kahuku on the northernmost tip of Oʻahu from HA Widemann and Julius L Richardson. In 1877, he acquired from John Coney 41,000-acres of ranch land at Honouliuli.

Many critics scoffed at the doubtful value of his Honouliuli purchase. But Campbell envisioned supplying the arid area with water and commissioned California well-driller James Ashley to drill a well on his Honouliuli Ranch.

In 1879, Ashley drilled Hawaiʻi’s first artesian well; James Campbell’s vision had made it possible for Hawaiʻi’s people to grow sugar cane on the dry lands of the ʻEwa Plain.

“At 240 feet the water commenced to overflow. The bore was continued to 273 feet, the flow increasing and coming to rise from one-half to two-thirds of an inch crown above the pipe, 7 inches in diameter.  This success was a happy surprise to the community. (There was) a sheet of pure water flowing like a dome of glass from all sides of the well casing, and continuing to flow night and day, without diminution.”  (Congressional Record, 1881)

What they discovered was vast reservoirs of artesian water; the groundwater here is composed of a freshwater lens that generally moves toward the ocean but is impeded by a wedge of caprock that overlies the volcanic rock near the coast.  (Nellist, Bauer)

When the first well came in at Honouliuli the Hawaiians named it “Waianiani” (crystal waters.)  (Nellist) The ʻEwa Plain has been irrigated with ground water since 1890. By 1930, Ewa Plantation had drilled 70 artesian wells to irrigate cane lands; more were drilled later.

It was some years after the first artesian wells were brought in before there was a general understanding of the formation of the coastal caprock and its vital importance in the creation and functioning of the artesian reservoirs.

Discovery of artesian water at Honouliuli was beyond question the most important single contribution to the development of Oʻahu and Honolulu as we know the island and city today.  (Nellist)  (The flow from the well continued for 60-years until it was sealed by the City and County of Honolulu in 1939.)

In 1889, Campbell leased about 40,000-acres of land for fifty years to BF Dillingham (of Oʻahu Railway and Land Co;) after several assignments and sub-leases, about 7,860-acres of Campbell land ended up with Ewa Planation.

By 1923, Ewa Plantation was the first sugar company in the world to raise ten tons of sugar per acre and, by 1933, the plantation produced over 61,000-tons of sugar a year.

Ewa Plantation was considered one of the most prosperous plantations in Hawaiʻi and in 1931 a new 50-year lease was executed, completing the agreement with Oʻahu Railway and Land Company and beginning an association with Campbell Estate.

By 1936, ʻEwa Plantation Company was the first plantation to have a fully mechanized harvesting operation and by 1946 tests were made to convert the hauling of cane from railroads to large trucks.

During WWII, Japanese Americans were put in internment camps in at least eight locations on Hawaiʻi; one of those sites was at Honouliuli Gulch.  The forced removal of these individuals began a nearly four-year odyssey to a series of camps in Hawaiʻi and on the continental United States.

They were put in these camps, not because they had been tried and found guilty of something, but because either they or their parents or ancestors were from Japan and, as such, they were deemed a “threat” to national security.

In 1962, Castle and Cooke purchased majority control of ʻEwa Plantation Company stock and in 1970 ʻEwa Plantation Company merged with Oʻahu Sugar Company in Waipahu (the ʻEwa mill closed in the mid-1970s after the sale; the mill was demolished in 1985.)

Campbell became known by the Hawaiians as “Kimo Ona-Milliona” (James the Millionaire).  Despite his success in sugar, his interests turned to other matters, primarily ranching and real estate.

When James Campbell died on April 21, 1900, the Estate of James Campbell was created as a private trust to administer his assets for the benefit of his heirs (in 2007, the James Campbell Company succeeded the Estate of James Campbell.) The Estate played a pivotal role in Hawaiʻi history, from the growth of sugar plantations to the growing new City of Kapolei.

© 2022 Hoʻokuleana LLC

Filed Under: General, Place Names, Economy, Prominent People Tagged With: Ewa, Ewa Plantation, Puuloa, Hawaii, Oahu, Honouliuli, Pearl Harbor, James Campbell, Internment

August 4, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

The Last Survivor

The message: “Air Raid, Pearl Harbor. This is no drill” came at 0755 on December 7, as Japanese planes swept overhead in an attempt to cripple the Pacific Fleet.  Taney, moored alongside Pier 6, Honolulu Harbor, stood to her antiaircraft guns when word of the surprise attack reached her.

The US Coast Guard Cutter Taney (originally launched as the Roger B Taney) was named for Roger Brooke Taney, who was born on March 17, 1777 in Calvert County, Maryland.  Roger Taney was a lawyer and later served in President Andrew Jackson’s administration as Attorney General and Secretary of the Treasury – he was later appointed as Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court.

Roger B Taney, Coast Guard Builders No. 68, was laid down on May 1, 1935 at the Philadelphia Navy Yard.  She was launched on June 3, 1936.   The Roger B Taney departed Philadelphia on December 19, transited the Panama Canal from the 27th to the 29th, and arrived at her home port, Honolulu, Territory of Hawaiʻi, on January 18, 1937.

The Taney had arrived in the Pacific at a time when the US, and Pan-American Airways in particular, was expanding its commercial air travel capabilities.  The “Clipper” flights across the Pacific to the Far East made islands like Hawaiʻi, Midway, Guam and Wake important way-stations.

In the 1930s, the US Bureau of Air Commerce (later known as Department of Commerce) was looking for islands along the air route between Australia and California to support trans-Pacific flight operations (non-stop, trans-Pacific flying was not yet possible, so islands were looked to as potential sites for the construction of intermediate landing areas.)

To affirm a claim on remote Pacific islands, international law required non-military occupation of all neutral islands for at least one year.  An American colony was established at Canton (Kanton) and aney transported and supplied colonists on the island (1938-1940.) (Canton was picked by Pan-Am for its trans-Pacific flight flying boat operations.)

The 327-foot Secretary class cutter Taney was designed and initially missioned to interdict opium smugglers and carry out search and rescue duties from the Hawaiian Islands through the central Pacific Ocean.  In 1940 and 1941, Taney received successive armament upgrades in anticipation of war, with 3- and 5-inch guns capable of shooting at both surface and airborne targets, additional .50 caliber machine guns, depth charge racks and throwers, and sonar for locating submarines.

On the eve of Pearl Harbor, Taney was officially assigned to the US Navy’s Destroyer Division 80, though she retained her Coast Guard crew. When Japanese aircraft attacked Pearl Harbor and other American military installations in Hawaiʻi on December 7, 1941, she was tied up at Pier 6, Honolulu Harbor, where she was able to repeatedly engage Japanese planes which flew over the city.

When the attack subsided, Taney immediately commenced anti-submarine patrol duties off Pearl Harbor and was at sea for 80 of the first 90 days of the war.

After service in the Pacific and a major retrofit, Taney was sent into the Atlantic serving as the Flagship of Task Force 66, US Atlantic Fleet and command vessel for six convoys of troop and supply ships between the US and North Africa. Returning to the Pacific after a dramatic reconfiguration as an Amphibious Command Ship in 1945, Taney participated in the Okinawa Campaign and the occupation of Japan.

Immediately after the end of the Pacific war in September 1945, Taney steamed into Japanese home waters where she assisted with the evacuation of Allied prisoners of war.

Following World War II, Taney was reconfigured for peacetime duties and from 1946 until 1972 she was home ported in Alameda, California. Known as “The Queen of the Pacific,” Taney carried out virtually every peacetime Coast Guard duty including decades of Ocean Weather Patrol throughout the Pacific, fisheries patrols in the Bearing Sea and countless search and rescue missions.

During the Korean War, Taney received additional anti-submarine weapons and frequently carried out plane-guard duties off Midway Island and Adak, Alaska.

The mid-1970s were a period of transition for the Coast Guard with the passage of the Fisheries Conservation and Management Act and the nation’s shift towards increased interdiction of narcotics smugglers.  These operations called for off-shore patrols of up to three weeks.

Stationed in Virginia, Taney completed the last Coast Guard ocean weather patrol in 1977, and from 1977 to 1986 carried out search and rescue duties, training cruises for the Coast Guard Academy and drug interdiction in the Caribbean.

She was formally decommissioned on December 7, 1986 (after more than 50-years of continuous service) and turned over to the city of Baltimore, Maryland for use as a museum ship in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.  Over her distinguished career, Taney received three battle stars for World War II service and numerous theatre ribbons for service in World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

Since the 1960s, Taney is the last ship still afloat that fought in the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Consequently, from that time on she was often referred to as “The Last Survivor of Pearl Harbor.”  A plaque memorializing her participation in the attacks is at Pier 6, Honolulu Harbor.  (Lots of information here from USCG.)

© 2022 Hoʻokuleana LLC

Filed Under: Military Tagged With: Hawaii, Oahu, Pearl Harbor, Honolulu Harbor, Coast Guard, Taney

July 21, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Mitchellism

World War I, also known as the Great War or the War to End All Wars, began in 1914 after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. His murder catapulted into a war across Europe.

During the conflict, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire (the Central Powers) fought against Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Romania, Japan and the United States (the Allied Powers).

Four years later, when Germany, facing dwindling resources on the battlefield, discontent on the homefront and the surrender of its allies, was forced to seek an armistice on November 11, 1918, ending World War I.  (The Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919.)

At the dawn of WWI, aviation was a relatively new field; the Wright brothers took their first sustained flight just eleven years before, in 1903.  WWI was the first major conflict to use the power of planes, though not as impactful as the British Royal Navy or Germany’s U-boats.

The use of planes in WWI presaged their later, pivotal role in military conflicts around the globe.  During WWI, there was no ‘Air Force’ as we identify it today; the aviation forces were under the US Army Air Service, created during WWI by executive order of President Woodrow Wilson after America entered the war in April 1917.

Later, Congress created the Air Corps on July 2, 1926, and it was abolished with the National Security Act of 1947, establishing the United States Air Force on September 18, 1947.

Gen. William ‘Billy’ Mitchell, a staunch advocate and visionary of air power, became regarded as the ‘Father of the United States Air Force,’ because he was instrumental in bringing to the forefront the need for air superiority.

“Mitchellism” was coined by the press to symbolize the concept that airpower was now the dominant military factor and that sea and land forces were becoming subordinate.

In the intervening years, the correctness of his thinking, the accuracy of his predictions, the risks he took, the sacrifices he so willingly made of his health and his career, and, by far the most important, the influence he had on his successors have conferred a new, higher, and entirely contemporary meaning on “Mitchellism.” (AF Mag, Boyne)

Born Dec. 29, 1879 in Nice, France, Mitchell was the eldest of John and Harriet Mitchell’s ten children. John Mitchell was a representative and a senator from Wisconsin.

Billy Mitchell grew up in Wisconsin and enlisted in the Army in 1898 during the Spanish-American War. He served in Cuba, the Philippines, Alaska and in Europe.  In 1913, Mitchell was promoted to captain and became the youngest officer to serve on the general staff.

In 1916, he transferred to Virginia to become interim commander of Army Aviation, which at that time was a division of the Army Signal Corps.  After the new commander arrived, Mitchell was promoted to the rank of major, and assumed the position of deputy commander of Army Aviation.

Army Aviation is where Mitchell got his first taste of flying, and where his passion for aviation began to grow, so much so that he decided to become an Army pilot; he enrolled in a civilian flying school and paid for flying lessons.

In 1917, Mitchell was already in France studying the production of military aircraft, when the US declared war on Germany. He was promoted to the war-time rank of Brigadier General and given command of all of the American aerial combat units in France.

Putting his knowledge into practice at the Battle of St. Mihiel, Mitchell commanded 1,481 American and Allied airplanes. There he demonstrated what air power could do by massing an assault that sent wave after wave of planes to attack the Germans across battle lines destroying their ground power.

His strategy proved to be successful. Mitchell was the first American Army aviator to cross enemy lines and was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for valor. In 1919, Mitchell was awarded the Legion of Honor by France.

After World War I, Mitchell returned to the US and despite his achievements was reverted back to his permanent rank of colonel, due to Air Service drawdown in manpower.

Mitchell became an advocate of an independent Air Force, and promoted the small Army Air Service with border patrols, forest fire patrols, aerial mapping missions and any other activity that demonstrated the value of aviation.

Mitchell asked to do a test/demonstration to confirm that airplanes could bomb ships.  Congress and the Navy gave in and on July 20 and 21, 1921, Mitchell and the 1st Provisional Air Brigade demonstrated to the world the superiority of air power.

He and his unit sank the famous, ‘unsinkable,’ Ostfriesland, a captured German battleship. That proved that battleships were vulnerable to bombing attacks by aircraft (the enemy’s and your own).

Then, the Navy began developing aircraft carriers.

Mitchell was transferred to Fort Sam Houston, where he was assigned as the aviation officer of the Eighth Corps in 1925.  He lived on Fort Sam and resided in Quarters 14 (now designated as the Billy Mitchell House) on Staff Post Road. His office was in the Quadrangle.

He was concerned about the lack of priority to air power. Mitchell’s frustration climaxed after the Navy’s airship Shenandoah crashed due to weather in September 1925. Mitchell publicly accused the Navy and War Departments of “incompetence and criminal negligence.”

In November 1925, Mitchell was called to Washington D.C. and court-martialed on the charge of “Conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline and in a way to bring discredit upon the military service.”

Mitchell was convicted of insubordination, but rather than serve a five-year suspension, Mitchell decided to resign his commission.  During retirement in Virginia, he continued to be outspoken on the importance of air power. He wrote books, newspaper and magazine articles, and gave lecture tours until his death, Feb. 11, 1936.

Mitchell received several honors following his death including a posthumous promotion to major general by President Harry Truman.  A military aircraft bomber, the B-25 Mitchell, was named after him. In 1979, Mitchell was inducted in the International Hall of Fame.

Mitchell predicted that one day rockets would travel across continents and oceans and people would zip between New York and London in as few as six hours on fast commercial airliners.

He foresaw air forces attacking targets with unmanned aerial vehicles – he didn’t call them drones – and cruise missiles. He predicted that someday planes would be used for firefighting, evacuating the sick and wounded, photographing terrain, crop dusting and spying on enemies. (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

One notable action by Mitchell was his prediction that a war between Japan and the US was inevitable.  After visiting Japan while stationed with the Army in the Philippines, Mitchell wrote in 1910, “That increasing friction between Japan and the US will take place in the future there can be little doubt, and that this will lead to war sooner or later seems quite certain.”

In 1924, Mitchell toured Hawaii and Asia to inspect America’s military assets. After touring China, Korea, Japan, Siam, Singapore, Burma, Java, the Philippines and India, Mitchell wrote a 340-page report warning that the Asia-Pacific Rim could soon rival Europe in military might and America’s security depended on its foothold in the region.

To Mitchell, Japan was the country that posed the greatest threat because of its growing military strength and its quest for external sources of oil and iron for Japanese industries.

In a report he submitted after a trip to Japan in 1924 Mitchell predicted the attack on Pearl Harbor. He discussed Japanese expansionist ambitions and his belief that a Pacific War would begin with an attack at Pearl Harbor and the Philippines.

He wrote in 1924, “The Japanese bombardment, (would be) 100 (air) ships organized into four squadrons of 25 (air) ships each.  The objectives for attack are: Ford Island, airdrome, hangers, storehouses and ammunition dumps; Navy fuel oil tanks …”

“… Water supply of Honolulu; Water supply of Schofield; Schofield Barracks airdrome and troop establishments; Naval submarine station; City and wharves of Honolulu.”

“Attack will be launched as follows: bombardment, attack to be made on Ford Island at 7:30 a.m.” “Attack to be made on Clark Field (Philippine Islands) at 10:40 a.m.”

“Japanese pursuit aviation will meet bombardment over Clark Field, proceeding by squadrons, one at 3000 feet to Clark Field from the southeast and with the sun at their back, one at 5000 feet from the north and one at 10,000 feet from the west. Should U.S. pursuit be destroyed or fail to appear, airdrome would be attacked with machineguns.” (Mitchell; City on a Hill)

On December 7th, 1941 the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor at 7:55 A.M. and the Philippines’ Clark field at 12:35 P.M.

Mitchell’s claims about naval power being vulnerable to air power were ultimately proven true at Pearl Harbor when Japan sank or severely damaged nineteen U.S. warships, including eight battleships.

The minor differences include the actual number of aircraft (110 instead of 100), their launch from carriers instead of from Niihau, and the reduction of Wake Island instead of Midway.  (Billy Mitchell Court-Marshal-Mulholland)  (Information here is from Milwaukee Journal Sentinel; US Army; NC Historical Marker Program; American Heritage; Air Force Museum; Air Force Magazine.)

© 2022 Ho‘okuleana LLC

Filed Under: Military, Prominent People Tagged With: Pearl Harbor, WWI, Air Force, Billy Mitchell, Mitchellism, Air Power

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