Pearl Harbor Traditional Cache
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Part of the Port of Calls and Naval Bases around the world. Feel free to comment if you have visited one of these location.
Pearl Harbor, known to Hawaiians as Puʻuloa, is a lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu.
Pearl Harbor is more than a mere port or naval station. It is a workplace, a naval base, a home and a graveyard. To many Americans, Pearl Harbor is the ultimate symbol of treachery and our nation's official entry into World War II. The harbor's history is much longer and richer, however, stretching back several hundred years. Although recognized as a strategic port and surveyed by European explorers almost 200 years ago, it eventually took over a century to convert a native fishery on the island of Oahu into one of the most strategic naval ports in the world.
The 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 US 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. On 07 May 1940, the U.S. fleet moved its headquarters from San Pedro, California, to Pearl Harbor. The move was undertaken with great reluctance by Admiral James O. Richardson, Commander in Chief, U.S. Fleet. Richardson and most Navy officials who opposed the move thought a fleet anchored in Pearl Harbor would be unnecessarily exposed to Japanese naval strength. President Roosevelt, however, considered the move as a necessary countermeasure to growing Japanese bellicosity.
The 7 December 1941 Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor was one of the great defining moments in history. A single carefully-planned and well-executed stroke removed the United States Navy's battleship force as a possible threat to the Japanese Empire's southward expansion. America, unprepared and now considerably weakened, was abruptly brought into the Second World War as a full combatant.
The battle-scarred and submerged remains of the battleship USS Arizona (BB-39) are the focal point of a shrine erected by the people of the United States to honor and commemorate all American servicemen killed on December 7, 1941, particularly Arizona's crew, many of whom lost their lives during the Japanese attack on the United States Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Arizona's burning bridge and listing masts and superstructure, photographed in the aftermath of the attack and her sinking and emblazoned on the front pages of newspapers across the land, epitomized to the Nation the words "Pearl Harbor" and form one of the best known images of the Second World War in the Pacific. Arizona and the Arizona Memorial have become the major shrine and point of remembrance not only for the lost battleship but also for the entire attack. Indelibly impressed into the national memory, Arizona is visited by millions who quietly file through, toss flower wreaths and leis into the water, watch the irridescent slick of oil that leaks, a drop at a time, from Arizona's ruptured bunkers.
Naval Station Pearl Harbor supports 50 homeported fleet units and 24 submarines, since merging with SUBASE. Naval Station's fleet support mission is accomplished by a staff of nearly 2,000 military personnel and civilian employees. The station currently occupies and maintains 1,107 acres of land throughout the Pearl Harbor complex, ranging from Waipio Peninsula to Bishop Point and including Ford Island. The current plant value of the Naval Station is in excess of $1 billion.
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