Confusion sometimes reigns at WatDat Central. Camp site remains a
WatDat challengeLast week, we talked about the mysterious Camp Andrews in Nanakuli. By all indications, as we reported, it was an Army encampment that shut down at the end of World War II. The crude canec-and-frame "cabins" used by the soldiers were transferred to civilian use, where they promptly began to fall apart.
Here's a photo of a Camp Andrews cabin being used at Nanaikapono School in 1947. It's already becoming an open-air classroom as the walls fall off.
Ah, but now we get a note from National Guard retiree David Kaahaaina, who remembers Camp Andrews as a Navy facility. "It was built as a Navy recreation center before the war; I used to sell Star-Bulletins to the sailors there," says Kaahaaina. He also remembers a "Camp Beaumont" that was a Marine Corps camp on the makai side of the Nanakuli railroad tracks.
That was before the war; Kaahaaina says it's possible that the facility was transferred to the Army during the conflict.
We checked with the local Navy history office at Camp Smith; no records of Camp Andrews. And the Army Corps of Engineers, who are completing doing a FUDS (Formerly Used Defense Sites) survey of Hawaii, have no info either.
"All that means is that it probably wasn't important enough to keep records on," said Larry Hawthorne of the Corps. "That doesn't mean it didn't exist. It just means that it apparently ... wasn't worth the paperwork."
Anyone else have memories of this site?
Burl Burlingame, Star-Bulletin.