By Ken Sakamoto, Star-Bulletin
A turret in Campbell Industrial Park.
Below, the turret in front of the
Army Museum at Ft. DeRussy.
Beating swords into ploughshares is one thing, but it appears at Campbell Industrial Park mean business. The park's front lawn features a cast-steel machine-gun turret. Turns out
they’re turrets
The turret probably predates the industrial park, which is smack dab in a crucial coastal-defense area from World War II. There's an identical turret, showing the below-ground portion, in front of the U.S. Army Museum of Hawaii at Fort DeRussy. It is identified as a "prefabricated steel pillbox," part of a system that was joined together by buried culvert pipes. And that's all anyone knows.
We queried the ever-scholarly Coastal Defense Study Group and no one there thinks similar pillboxes were ever emplaced on the mainland. Only in Hawaii.
Tireless curator Judy Bowman of the army museum did unearth a document from 1939 in which a Brigadier General P.B. Leyton went on and on about the advantages of prefabricated steel pillboxes vs. poured-concrete fortifications -- the steel units were cheaper, quicker to install, more flexible, and made smaller targets. Leyton ended with a recommendation that sample pillboxes be funded, constructed and tested. Attached to the report are enthusiastic go-aheads on up the chain of command.
It looks like these pillboxes were designed and manufactured in Hawaii -- which makes them an important footnote in Hawaiian military history -- but we can't tell you if these are the only two, or just a couple of 600 turrets called for in Leyton's report. If you know, let us know.
Burl Burlingame, Star-Bulletin
Send WatDat? questions, stories
or any other story ideas or comments to:
Features, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, P.O. Box 3080,
Honolulu, HI 96802 or send a fax to 523-8509
or E-mail to features@starbulletin.com.
Please include your phone number.
