Sunrise at Bellows Traditional Geocache
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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Covered with sugar cane and guava bushes, Bellows Air Force Station had a simple beginning. In 1917, Waimanalo Military Reservation was established by Presidential Executive Order. The land was leased from Waimanalo Sugar Plantation. The only clearings were for training areas and tents where the men slept. In 1933 the land was renamed to Bellows Field. The name honors the memory of Lt Franklin Barney Bellows, a World War I hero. Bellows Field was a training area for the infantry, coast artillery, and Air Corps. There was a wooden traffic control tower. The single asphalt runway was originally 75 feet wide and only 983 feet long. On July 22, 1941, Bellows Field became a separate permanent military post under the jurisdiction of the Commanding General, Hawaiian Department. Overnight, an accelerated construction program began and Bellows began to grow. Two-story wooden barracks and a new and larger runway started filling the landscape. It was redesignated Bellows Air Force Base in 1948, and Bellows Air Force Station in 1958.
Shortly after sunrise, on the morning of December 7, 1941 Bellows Field was attacked by the Japanese Navy's 2nd wave of fighters enroute to Pearl Harbor. There were two fatalities that day; Mr. George Whiteman (Air Force Base in Missouri, named in his honor) and Mr. Hans Christensen. A third pilot, Mr. Samuel Bishop had his plane shot down by the Japanese pilots, his P-40 remains in several pieces on the ocean floor near the Mokulua Islands. Mr. Bishop, was able to swim to shore and survived.
Shortly after sunrise on November 24, 2012, Tipsie and I added our own personal piece of history to Bellows AFS by getting engaged during a walk along the beach. We can't commemorate this event or share our favorite beach with a cache on the Bellows beach so we decided to put one above it that offers great views of Bellows AFS as well as Lanikai and Kailua.
The cache: There are three trailheads that will get you up to this vista. The shortest hike is the hardest and straight up a steep hill to GZ whereas the longest is the most scenic and passes Lanikai's famous pill boxes, looping around the ridge to the cache.
Information for cache write-up copied from:
http://militaryliving.com/bellows-hawaii.html and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellows_Air_Force_Station
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
25 srrg znxnv bs gur uvyygbc naq oruvaq gur ovt ebpxf