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April 3, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Camp Smith

A committee of the Continental Congress met at Tun Tavern in Philadelphia to draft a resolution stating that “two Battalions of Marines be raised” for service as landing forces with the fleet.  November 10, 1775, the Marine Corps was born.

The Treaty of Paris in April 1783 brought an end to the Revolutionary War and as the last of the Navy’s ships were sold, the Continental Navy and Marines went out of existence.  (They were formally re-established as a separate service on July 11, 1798.)

Today, the US military organizational structure is a result of the National Security Act of 1947. This is the same act that created the US Air Force and restructured the “War Department” into the “Department of Defense.”

Headed by a civilian Secretary of Defense, there are three military departments: the Department of the Army, the Department of the Navy and the Department of the Air Force. Within these, there are five military branches: Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Coast Guard (the Coast Guard is under the Department of Homeland Security.)

In Hawaiʻi, on March 17, 1941, an act of Congress approved the purchase of a sugar cane field for a Navy hospital. Construction commenced in July. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, construction of the planned 1,650-bed facility was rushed to completion. The hospital was commissioned on November 11, 1942, but continued expansion was necessary due to the demands of the war.

Known as Aiea Naval Hospital, it was built to serve thousands of WWII wounded Sailors and Marines.  As for the capabilities of the hospital, they correlated directly with the war.

In 1943, the number of staff and facilities grew tremendously. New wards were constructed to better support the waves of casualties, numbering in the hundreds, arriving from the Solomon, Gilbert and Marshall Islands.

On January 1, 1944, Admiral Chester W Nimitz personally presented awards to the many combat-wounded service members at the hospital. Patients were assembled in front of the hospital where 632-men who fought during the Battle of Tarawa received awards.

The hospital expanded again in 1944, adding staff and temporary wards to hold up to 5,000-patients.  Of the 41,872-admissions in 1944, 39,006 patients were relocated to the mainland or returned to duty.

Aiea Naval Hospital had improved efficiency for admitting patients by the time casualties began arriving from Saipan, Guam and Tinian in the Mariana Islands.

February and March of 1945 was the hospital’s bloodiest months, when nearly 5,700-servicemen from the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa received medical care simultaneously.

Until the mid-1980s, there was a bowling alley there, used by Aiea Naval Hospital as therapy for patients injured during WWII and  was once the primary rear-area hospital for the Navy and Marine Corps during that war.

“Down where Bordelon Field is, a lot of the areas here on the camp were used as gardens. The patients would go work in the gardens. They’d use the food from the gardens to feed the patients, but that was more a rehabilitation-type activity.”  (Stubbs, marines-mil)

Decommissioned on May 31, 1949, four years after the end of WWII, the hospital was deactivated and the Army and Navy medical assets were moved to what is now Tripler Army Medical Center.

“It sat idle for a long time and they were in the process of selling all the property. General Smith came up and looked at it and decided this was what he wanted for the home of the (Fleet Marine Force Pacific) headquarters.”  (Stubbs, marines-mil)

A year later, the Territory of Hawaiʻi began plans to claim the old hospital for a tuberculosis sanitarium. However, in 1955 the Marine Corps purchased it for the future home of the Fleet Marine Forces Pacific.

On June 8, 1955, it was renamed Camp HM Smith (named for General Holland McTyeire (HM – nicknamed “Howlin’ Mad”) Smith, the first commanding general of Fleet Marine Force Pacific, it became a strategic command base for the largest field command in the Marine Corps, now known as US Marine Corps Forces, Pacific (MarForPac,) with an area of responsibility covering more than half the Earth’s surface.

After purchasing the land, the first Marines arrived in October 1955. The camp did not become fully operational until two weeks before its dedication, January 31, 1956.

Camp Smith today consists of 220-acres at Camp Smith proper, 137-acres at Puʻuloa Rifle Range in ʻEwa Beach and 62-acres in Mānana Housing. Camp Smith is unique in that it’s the only Marine Corps installation that supports a unified commander, Commander, Pacific Command (CDRUSPACOM.)

(A unified combatant command is a US joint military command composed of forces from two or more services, has a broad and continuing mission and is organized either on a geographical basis or on a functional basis.)

The new headquarters for the US Pacific Command (USPACOM) located on Camp Smith, accommodating more than 1,350-personnel for the US Pacific Command and the Special Operations Command, Pacific, was recently dedicated.

Named the Nimitz-MacArthur Pacific Command Center (NMPCC), the six-story, 274,500-square-foot facility overlooks Honolulu and replaces a nearly 60-year-old structure originally built as a hospital during WWII.

The NMPCC is one of the nation’s premier facilities for Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence (C4I) systems. C4I plans were developed around the “battle cell” concept for distributed command and control.  (Lots of information and images here from marines-mil.)

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Filed Under: Military Tagged With: Hawaii, Oahu, Aiea, Tripler Army Medical Center, Aiea Naval Hospital, Marine Corps, Camp Smith

April 10, 2020 by Peter T Young 5 Comments

Tripler Army Medical Center

Some suggest the Tripler building got its pink color because the color and other design elements were borrowed from the Royal Hawaiian Hotel down in Waikīkī.

However, an engineering booklet related to its design notes, “the layout of the buildings was planned to create an easy, informal environment, avoid an institutional atmosphere and create the impression of a residential community.” (army-mil)

“Therefore, the hospital building, nurses’ quarters, fire house, chapel, bachelor officers’ quarters and mess, theater and enlisted men’s barracks will be of pink stucco finish.” (army-mil)

Let’s step back a bit.

In 1898, the Spanish American war was going on, including in the Pacific (primarily in the Philippines) – Hawaiʻi became involved. The US Army set up Camp McKinley in Kapiʻolani Park and soon realized an urgent need for a hospital in Hawaiʻi.

The Army’s first medical facility in Hawaiian Islands opened in 1898; it was a 30-bed hospital for soldiers and sailors in transit to and from Manila located in the Independence Park Pavilion (an old dance pavilion at the intersection of King Street and Sheridan.) Field medical tents at Fort McKinley added support to the hospital.

Casualties were streaming into Hawaiʻi from the war in the Philippines. The hospital on King Street rapidly grew into a 100-bed operation and was visited by more than 21,000 troops during the Philippine Insurrection following the war with Spain.

Later, in 1907, Department Hospital, a wooden post hospital facility consisting of a single hospital building and mess hall, was constructed at Fort Shafter.

Department Hospital was re-designated “Tripler Army Hospital” on June 26, 1920, named after Brigadier General Charles Stuart Tripler (1806-1866) – in honor of his contributions to Army medicine during the Civil War (he authored of one of the most widely-read manuals in Army medical history, the “Manual of the Medical Officer of the Army of the United States.”)

Then, the US Army Health Clinic, Schofield Barracks, a 500-bed hospital, was completed in 1929. It was activated as the Station Hospital, Schofield Barracks, Territory of Hawaiʻi.

The attack on Pearl Harbor led to the construction of Tripler Army Medical Center. At the outbreak of World War II, the hospital at Fort Shafter had a 450-bed capacity which, over the years, expanded to 1,000 beds through the addition of one-story barracks-type buildings.

Plans for a new Tripler hospital atop Moanalua ridge were drawn in 1942, construction was authorized in June 1944; the ground was broken August 23, 1944; actual construction began in 1945: and construction was completed in 1948.

When it was completed, Tripler was the tallest building in the Pacific region. (Three additional wings to the hospital were completed in 1985 with other additions/renovations over the years.)

Tripler was dedicated on September 10, 1948 and has been a visible and valuable landmark in Hawaiʻi. It is the largest military medical treatment facility in the entire Pacific Basin.

In 1961, Tripler US Army Hospital became known as US Army Tripler General Hospital, and finally in 1964, the name changed to Tripler Army Medical Center.

In a cooperative agreement with the Department of Veterans Affairs in 1992, the Spark M Matsunaga Medical Center was added at Tripler.

Located on a 375-acre site, Tripler Army Medical Center’s geographic area of responsibility spans more than 52-percent of the earth’s surface, from the western coasts of the Americas to the eastern shores of Africa (encompassing three million square miles of ocean and more than 750,000-square miles of land mass.)

Nearly 800,000-beneficiaries in the Pacific Basin are eligible to receive care at Tripler; this includes active-duty service members of all branches of service, their eligible families, military-eligible retirees and their families, veterans, and many residents of Pacific Islands.

In a typical day, more than 2,000-patients are seen in outpatient clinic visits, more than 1,500-prescriptions are filled, more than 30-surgical procedures are performed, and more than 30 patients are admitted. There are more than 200-births each month. (In August 1955, 427-babies are born at Tripler, setting a record for one-month deliveries.)

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General_Charles_S_Tripler-(bobp31)
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Independence Park Hospital, Honolulu, late 1898, looking southeast (US Army Museum of Hawaii)
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Mountain_side_entrance_to_Tripler-(bobp31)
Tripler Army Hospital-(vic&becky)-1954
Tripler Army Hospital-(vic&becky)-1956
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Tripler_not_so_pink-(ilind-net)
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Tripler_under_construction_(army-mil)-1947
Tripler-farming_wetland_below-(bobp31)
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Tripler-under_construction-(army-mil)-1947
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Tripler-not_so_pink-(ilind-net)
Tripler_on_hilltop-(WC)
Tripler_sign-(army-mil)
Tripler_rainbow-(army-mil)
Tripler_Army_Medical_Center_(WC)
Tripler_layout_and_parking-(army-mil)

Filed Under: Military Tagged With: Oahu, Camp McKinley, Army, Tripler Army Medical Center, Fort Shafter, Moanalua, Hawaii

April 11, 2017 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Timeline Tuesday … 1940s

Today’s ‘Timeline Tuesday’ takes us through the 1940s – bombing of Pearl Harbor, Honolulu Marathon starts and Tripler Hospital is dedicated. We look at what was happening in Hawai‘i during this time period and what else was happening around the rest of the world.

A Comparative Timeline illustrates the events with images and short phrases. This helps us to get a better context on what was happening in Hawai‘i versus the rest of the world. I prepared these a few years ago for a planning project. (Ultimately, they never got used for the project, but I thought they might be on interest to others.)

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Timeline-1940s
Timeline-1940s

Filed Under: Prominent People, General, Economy, Buildings, Military, Place Names Tagged With: Hawaii, Pearl Harbor, National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, Hawaiian Airlines, Pan American, Tripler Army Medical Center, Honolulu Marathon, Timeline

Images of Old Hawaiʻi

People, places, and events in Hawaiʻi’s past come alive through text and media in “Images of Old Hawaiʻi.” These posts are informal historic summaries presented for personal, non-commercial, and educational purposes.

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