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Naval Station Pearl Harbor, Hawaii


Naval Station Pearl Harbor provides service comparable to a large city. Operating the Navy's busiest harbor, the Naval Station annually completes 65,000 boat runs and transports 2.4 million passengers and 200,000 vehicles to and from Ford Island and other harbor locations. Navy-manned USS ARIZONA tour boats transport nearly 2 million visitors to the memorial each year. The bachelor quarters house approximately 3,000 permanent party and transient personnel. The Naval Station's Family Service Center provides essential training, counseling, spouse employment and family enhancement programs for over 55,000 people each year. The Naval Station also owns and operates one of the Navy's largest recreation and special services programs, has its own police and security force and is responsible for DOD firefighters in 13 stations island-wide.


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History:

The Pearl Harbor Naval Station, across Quarry Loch, was authorized in 1908. Dredging of the Pearl Harbor channel entrance began in 1910 and, on December 14, 1911, USS CALIFORNIA (CA 6) became the first warship to pass through the new channel into Pearl Harbor. Today, the Naval complex at Pearl Harbor serves as a major homeport and "pit stop of the Pacific" for the submarines and surface ships of the U.S. and Allied Pacific fleets.

Naval Station Pearl Harbor had its beginning in 1912 as a receiving station located at Hospital Point. In 1940, the receiving station moved to the present Naval Station headquarters building. By 1954, ninety percent of the Navy’s enlisted personnel enroute to and from duty in the middle and western Pacific were processed through the receiving station. In 1955, Naval Station Pearl Harbor was established.

The first submarines arrived in Honolulu in August of 1914. Four F-class submarines operated from the old Naval Station, at Pier 5 in Honolulu Harbor. During World War II, the Pearl Harbor Submarine Base serviced submarines which made 488 war patrols from Hawaii sinking a total of 2,009,744 tons of enemy shipping. The expansion of the Submarine Base reached its peak in 1944 when there were 6,633 enlisted personnel serving on the base. Since World War II, many facilities have seen change with permanent buildings replacing the old temporary ones and new facilities have been constructed.


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December 7, 1941 - The Attack on Pearl Harbor:

The road to war between Japan and the United States began in the 1930s when differences over China drove the two nations apart. In 1931 Japan conquered Manchuria, which until then had been part of China. In 1937 Japan began a long and ultimately unsuccessful campaign to conquer the rest of China. In 1940, the Japanese government allied their country with Nazi Germany in the Axis Alliance, and, in the following year, occupied all of Indochina.

The United States, which had important political and economic interests in East Asia, was alarmed by these Japanese moves. The U.S. increased military and financial aid to China, embarked on a program of strengthening its military power in the Pacific, and cut off the shipment of oil and other raw materials to Japan.

Because Japan was poor in natural resources, its government viewed these steps, especially the embargo on oil as a threat to the nation's survival. Japan's leaders responded by resolving to seize the resource-rich territories of Southeast Asia, even though that move would certainly result in war with the United States.

The problem with the plan was the danger posed by the U.S. Pacific Fleet based at Pearl Harbor. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of the Japanese fleet, devised a plan to immobilize the U.S. fleet at the outset of the war with a surprise attack.

The key elements in Yamamoto's plans were meticulous preparation, the achievement of surprise, and the use of aircraft carriers and naval aviation on an unprecedented scale. In the spring of 1941, Japanese carrier pilots began training in the special tactics called for by the Pearl Harbor attack plan.

In October 1941 the naval general staff gave final approval to Yamamoto's plan, which called for the formation of an attack force commanded by Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo. It centered around six heavy aircraft carriers accompanied by 24 supporting vessels. A separate group of submarines was to sink any American warships which escaped the Japanese carrier force.

Nagumo's fleet assembled in the remote anchorage of Tankan Bay in the Kurile Islands and departed in strictest secrecy for Hawaii on 26 November 1941. The ships' route crossed the North Pacific and avoided normal shipping lanes. At dawn 7 December 1941, the task force had approached undetected to a point slightly more than 200 miles north of Oahu.

At 6:00 a.m., the six carriers launched a first wave of 181 planes composed of torpedo bombers, dive bombers, horizontal bombers and fighters. Even as they winged south, some elements of U.S. forces on Oahu realized there was something different about this Sunday morning.

In the hours before dawn, U.S. Navy vessels spotted an unidentified submarine periscope near the entrance to Pearl Harbor. It was attacked and reported sunk by the destroyer USS WARD (DD 139) and a patrol plane. At 7:00 a.m., an alert operator of an Army radar station at Opana spotted the approaching first wave of the attack force. The officers to whom those reports were relayed did not consider them significant enough to take action. The report of the submarine sinking was handled routinely, and the radar sighting was passed off as an approaching group of American planes due to arrive that morning.

The Japanese aircrews achieved complete surprise when they hit American ships and military installations on Oahu shortly before 8:00 a.m. They attacked military airfields at the same time they hit the fleet anchored in Pearl Harbor. The Navy air bases at Ford Island and Kaneohe Bay, the Marine airfield at Ewa and the Army Air Corps fields at Bellows, Wheeler and Hickam were all bombed and strafed as other elements of the attacking force began their assaults on the ships moored in Pearl Harbor. The purpose of the simultaneous attacks was to destroy the American planes before they could rise to intercept the Japanese.

Of the more than 90 ships at anchor in Pearl Harbor, the primary targets were the eight battleships anchored there. Seven were moored on Battleship Row along the southeast shore of Ford Island while the USS PENNSYLVANIA (BB 38) lay in drydock across the channel. Within the first minutes of the attack all the battleships adjacent to Ford Island had taken bomb and or torpedo hits. The USS WEST VIRGINIA (BB 48) sank quickly. The USS OKLAHOMA (BB 37) turned turtle and sank. At about 8:10 a.m., the USS ARIZONA (BB 39) was mortally wounded by an armorpiercing bomb which ignited the ship's forward ammunition magazine. The resulting explosion and fire killed 1,177 crewmen, the greatest loss of life on any ship that day and about half the total number of Americans killed. The USS CALIFORNIA (BB 44), USS MARYLAND (BB 46), USS TENNESSEE (BB 43) and USS NEVADA (BB 36) also suffered varying degrees of damage in the first half hour of the raid.

There was a short lull in the fury of the attack at about 8:30 a.m. At that time the USS NEVADA (BB 36), despite her wounds, managed to get underway and move down the channel toward the open sea. Before she could clear the harbor, a second wave of 170 Japanese planes, launched 30 minutes after the first, appeared over the harbor. They concentrated their attacks on the moving battleship, hoping to sink her in the channel and block the narrow entrance to Pearl Harbor. On orders from the harbor control tower, the USS NEVADA (BB 36) beached herself at Hospital Point and the channel remained clear.

When the attack ended shortly before 10:00 a.m., less than two hours after it began, the American forces has paid a fearful price. Twenty-one ships of the U.S. Pacific Fleet were sunk or damaged: the battleships USS ARIZONA (BB 39), USS CALIFORNIA (BB 44), USS MARYLAND (BB 46), USS NEVADA (BB 36), USS OKLAHOMA (BB 37), USS PENNSYLVANIA (BB 38), USS TENNESSEE (BB 43) and USS WEST VIRGINIA (BB 48); cruisers USS HELENA (CL 50), USS HONOLULU (CL 48) and USS RALEIGH (CL 7); the destroyers USS CASSIN (DD 372), USS DOWNES (DD 375), USS HELM (DD 388) and USS SHAW (DD 373); seaplane tender USS CURTISS (AV 4); target ship (ex-battleship) USS UTAH (AG 16); repair ship USS VESTAL (AR 4); minelayer USS OGLALA (CM 4); tug USS SOTOYOMO (YT 9); and Floating Drydock Number 2. Aircraft losses were 188 destroyed and 159 damaged, the majority hit before they had a chance to take off. American dead numbered 2,403. That figure included 68 civilians, most of them killed by improperly fused anti-aircraft shells landing in Honolulu. There were 1,178 military and civilian wounded.

Japanese losses were comparatively light. Twenty-nine planes, less than 10 percent of the attacking force, failed to return to their carriers.

The Japanese success was overwhelming, but it was not complete. They failed to damage any American aircraft carriers, which by a stroke of luck, had been absent from the harbor. They neglected to damage the shoreside facilities at the Pearl Harbor Naval Base, which played an important role in the Allied victory in World War II. American technological skill raised and repaired all but three of the ships sunk or damaged at Pearl Harbor (the USS ARIZONA (BB 39) considered too badly damaged to be salvaged, the USS OKLAHOMA (BB 37) raised and considered too old to be worth repairing, and the obsolete USS UTAH (AG 16) considered not worth the effort). Most importantly, the shock and anger caused by the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor united a divided nation and was translated into a wholehearted commitment to victory in World War II.


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Tourist Attractions:

The Pearl Harbor Naval Station offers three major tourist attractions: the USS ARIZONA memorial, the USS MISSOURI (BB 63) museum, and the USS BOWFIN (SS 287) museum. All three can easily be reached from the USS ARIZONA visitor center. Most tourists will have their hotels located in Waikiki and from there, it takes approx. 1 hour by public bus (bus #20 or #42) to get to the visitor center. The buses stop directly in front of the visitor center.

The visitor center opens at 7.30am and if you plan to visit the ARIZONA, make sure to be there as early as possible because there's just a limited number of tickets given out each day. If you are there at 9.30am for example you might have to wait until 3pm or later to get to the ARIZONA. A visit to the ARIZONA is free.

Visiting the BOWFIN and the MISSOURI is easier. BOWFIN opens at 8am and the MISSOURI at 9am. Tickets for the MISSOURI can be purchased at the BOWFIN visitor center and you are then taken by trolley to Ford Island to tour the battleship.


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The photos below were taken by me on July 19 and 29, 2006, and show the Pearl Harbor Naval Inactive Ships Maintenance Facility, located northeast of Ford Island.



The photos below were taken by me on July 27 and 29, 2006, and show the Pearl Harbor Naval Station with some of the participants of RIMPAC 2006, including the aircraft carrier ABRAHAM LINCOLN (CVN 72).



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