ABOVE: A bunker in Fort Barrette that once housed cannons designed to destroy battleships.
The work of protecting the best ports on the most isolated archipelago in the Pacific started long before World War II. Oahu's deepwater harbors were important to whalers and traders before President William McKinley annexed the Islands for the United States in 1898. The Russians and British built forts to stake claims on various islands. Most have succumbed to time and tide, but remnants remain, little more than ruins. Anyone exploring the Islands, even by car, is bound to come across enigmatic structures in out-of-the-way places: Concrete bunkers poking out of a hillside, graffitied "pillboxes" perched on ridgelines and, sometimes, an entry leading into a dark labyrinth of disused tunnels. As a history buff and former US Marine, I've always kept an eye out for signs of such places, some of them abandoned and neglected, others creatively repurposed and some requiring special permission to access. Why were they built? Why were they abandoned? Why are they still here? I've spent years delving deeply into these places and their stories, these bunkers of "Fortress Oahu."
Kapolei, the growing second city to Honolulu, lies in the shadow of a former military facility. City courts and healthcare facilities have popped up around the mostly intact remnants of Fort Barrette, overlooking Kapolei District Park. In ancient times this was called Puu o Kapolei, a heiau (temple) and landmark for travelers. Now covered in introduced kiawe (mesquite) trees, the concrete ramparts, barely visible from the city streets, are remnants of a fortress once housing two cannons that fired sixteen-inch explosive shells designed to destroy battleships.
The last piece of machinery in Battery Arizona.
The former mess hall at Fort Barrette.
Today, camouflaged men stalk this fortified hill, talking and joking. Camo aside, these are not the serious soldiers who once manned the complex. This is the archery range for the Bushwackers, who maintain and cherish this urban island of archery freedom, with a course of twenty-eight animal-shaped targets along a trail. If Ted Nugent built a theme park, it'd look like this.
of newbie archers practicing. I follow Ishimoto out for an early morning round; the course takes us around the old generator room, by the steel control tower and out to the now-roofless remains of the chow hall.thwack-thunkFort Barrette was completed in the early 1930s, with cannons larger than those installed on the battleships of the day. The cannons are long gone, but the concrete-and-steel armor that protected the ammunition, control rooms and support facilities still remains. The Bushwackers' sergeant-at-arms, Don Ishimoto, takes me to the former "powder room," where two-ton shells were once matched with the appropriate fuse-and-powder combination before firing. The room is now full of deer-shaped targets and archery gear. Outside, we hear the
Fort Barrette is probably the best example of how Oahu's wartime installations have been repurposed for (mostly) peaceful activities. Like a war veteran in the peacetime world, quite a few have found purpose in retirement.
The remains of hardware in Fort Barrette, used to communicate with spotters and other batteries.
Leslie Cerovich of the Bushwackers archery club sits in a former munitions building at Fort Barrette that's been repurposed as a target-making workshop.
The best swap meet in Kailua has an epic view. Perched on Puu Papaa (Fire Hill) is Battery 405, which housed twin eight-inch guns built in 1944. After the Pearl Harbor attack, the emplacements, disguised as two-story houses, were built into the Kailua hillside to defend Marine Corps Base Hawaii (MCBH), in nearby Kaneohe. Test firings of the guns, which were never used in combat, shattered windows in the surrounding neighborhood. The U-shaped tunnel connecting two concrete-and-steel doors, once meant to feed ammunition to the guns, was for a time a mushroom farm.
Now, Gary Weller leases this property from Kaneohe Ranch and founded Mana Ikaika ("sacred and strong"), a home for abandoned cats. The battery is now home not only to the cats but also the best, least known rummage sale on Oahu, with cars lining up before 7 a.m. to snag deals to benefit the hundred of cats cared for here while being rehomed. Most of the cats hang out on the hillside, all but invisible during the monthly sale day.
Past the steel doors, there's a spread of WWII memorabilia hiding a side passage that houses a little data center—Weller believes there's a market for computer servers stored deep underground. There's a lot of work to do to outfit the entire complex as a data center, so for now it's an impressive swap meet, with hints of more passages to elsewhere behind old steel doors.
A visitor admires the scenery from Battery Cooper, which is now a movie museum at Kualoa Ranch in Windward Oahu. Completed after World War II ended, Battery Cooper was never used and lay abandoned for fifty years.
. The second turret, Battery Arizona, was moved to Kahe Point (a.k.a. Electric Beach) on the Leeward side of Oahu. Battery Pennsylvania fired its guns once, on Victory in Japan Day 1945, before it was dismantled; nuclear weapons and aircraft carriers were the terrible new siege weapons to defend against. Battery Arizona was never completed and its remains are sealed tight. ArizonaThis is only one installation that once protected the Windward side from invasion. From Battery 405 one can easily see the white smudges in Ulupau Crater, the remnants of Battery Pennsylvania. It featured a turret of tandem fourteen-inch guns, one of two turrets salvaged from the destroyed USS
Such is the fate of much of the WWII heavy equipment. Tanks and landing craft were sunk as artificial reefs. The gun barrels were melted down to make commercial goods. But not all. I'm no archaeologist, but while spearfishing I saw a large, long barrel-like remnant in the shallows just downhill from where Battery Pennsylvania once stood. Further investigation is not a good idea—the fortress remnants are now part of the MCBH rifle and mortar range.
Curtis Colin of Nohokai Production Services has repurposed a former ammunition storage tunnel near Waikele into an office. The tunnel remains at a constant, comfortable temperature, no AC needed.
The most obvious fortifications are often the most accessible. Waikiki is flanked by two of them, Fort DeRussy and Diamond Head. Fort DeRussy (formerly Battery Randolph) is adjacent to the Hale Koa resort, a place for military personnel and their families to get some R&R. The fort itself is almost indestructible. Peacetime demolition attempts put companies out of business; local legend has it that the wrecking ball broke before the wall did. Today it's a free museum where you can lie on the grassy ramparts that once protected the two fourteen-inch cannons from enemy fire.
And then there's Diamond Head, a.k.a. Fort Ruger. It's in a volcanic crater overlooking the South Shore; Waikiki might be one of the most inviting surfing breaks in the world, but it's also the most inviting beach for an enemy invasion. The guns, twelve-inch mortars, were set within the crater, allowing long-range, arcing shots at battleships, which fire flatter, rifle-like shots. Shore batteries have the advantage (and disadvantage) of being stationary. Being a well-fortified sitting duck might sound bad, but accurately firing long-range artillery from a moving ship is difficult. Range, wind, target movement and even the rotation of the earth must be factored in; in fact, calculating such complex "firing solutions" was the task of the first electronic computers.
In those days humans did much of the computing and were equally well fortified but far away from the cannons and ammo. Spotters in hilltop observation towers communicated with the fire control center by wire or even sound tubes. In the Diamond Head gun emplacements, clocklike dials indicated firing solutions to the gunners. The dials are mechanically linked to the fire control center, says Jeff Hickman, the director of public affairs for the Hawaii Department of Defense. "I love standing in the firing position, where these huge mortars once stood," he says. "I imagine the sight and sound of them flinging shells miles out to sea." The fire control center is now an unused space next to storage areas for the Department of Emergency Management and Hawaii Emergency Management Agency.
In preparation for a prolonged siege, ammunition for these mighty guns was stockpiled in bunkers even farther away and deeper in rock. Waikele Valley cuts a deep canyon into the hills overlooking Pearl Harbor. A truck could carry materiel down to the ammunition loading area in West Loch, Fort Barrette or Ewa Field, remaining on secured military property the whole way. The Waikele Ammunition Storage Tunnels reach 250 feet into the valley wall, and portions of them have been converted to high-security storage. Many remain sealed and unused, but Waikele Self Storage now owns much of the facility, abandoned by the military long ago. Curtis Colin knew a good deal when he saw one and purchased nine of these four-thousand-square-foot bunkers for a quarter-million dollars a pop. Owner of Nohokai Production Services, he got his start in film production and now stores golf carts and other equipment from his many other enterprises. Other businesses store (legal) fireworks and stuff you'd want to keep extra secure and cool, such as antiques.
Not all bunkers were windowless, reinforced caves. The crater of Leahi (Diamond Head) provided enough natural protection that soldiers in Fort Ruger could get some fresh air and sunlight.
A manual dial at Fort Ruger communicated target coordinates to the gunners. The fire control station would sight ships at sea, triangulate their positions and radio data to the plotting room.
If you've driven up the Windward side, past Mokolii (a.k.a. Chinaman's Hat), you've probably seen the big bunker entrance set into the looming mountainside. It isn't well camouflaged; its equally conspicuous cousin on the Leeward side, on Dillingham Highway past Nanakuli, has led some to theorize that there's a tunnel connecting these two installations on opposite coasts. That's less than half right. The Waiahole Irrigation Tunnel complex stretches twenty-five miles through the Koolau Mountains to irrigate the fields of Kunia, another dozen miles away. I have to verify this, so Doug Sanchez, special events manager of Kualoa Ranch, meets me at the mouth of the Windward bunker, now on ranch property. Families on e-bikes whiz past, following their tour guide. We have the same panoramic view the personnel manning the six-inch cannons once installed here had. Inside is where the shells and powder were meant to be stacked up to the high, painted and brightly lit ceiling—but they never were.
still occupies one of the alcoves. We pass through a gloomy, closed-off passage to what was once the generator room. Sanchez points to a trench in the concrete floor with some sort of animal bones. A movie prop? No, Sanchez says. "A cow wandered in here, got stuck and couldn't get out." Ranchers tried to free it but the stubborn cow died there. Windtalkers. A set from the movie Jumanji, Jurassic Park, Lost"This bunker was abandoned almost as soon as it was completed in 1946," Sanchez tells me. "It wasn't open as a museum until the late 1990s, so it sat abandoned for fifty years." Sanchez waves me past the many posters and artifacts from the dozens of movies and television shows shot in the stunning, rainforested valley at Kualoa:
Historians estimate that about a third of the land on Oahu was occupied by the military during WWII for fortifications and training areas. In Kualoa's case the military simply annexed much of the coastal land that became a spare runway for the Marine Corps Air Station just across Kaneohe Bay. That area is now Kualoa Regional Park, just south of the highway, and rodeo grounds for the ranch. "It'd be great to have the military just build a runway and bunker on my land, then leave," I joke. "That's a great start toward being a Bond villain." "Yeah, and it was handy during the missile scare," Sanchez says, referring to the 2016 incident when an alert about incoming missiles was accidentally sent to cellphones all over Oahu, sparking panic. "There was a rodeo going on, and we loaded up the buses and brought everyone who wanted to come to the bunker. It was wild to see people on horseback galloping across the parking lot to the bunker."
The last remnant of artillery at Battery Harlow. While never used in war,the guns would echo in the valleys around Honolulu during live-fire training.
Located in Ewa Field, an important air base during WWII, hemispherical bunkers like the one seen above protected fighter jets and anti-aircraft cannon so that defenders could respond quickly after a bombardment.
A decaying spiral staircase inside Fort Ruger.
It's inspiring to see abandoned WWII and Cold War fortifications being repurposed creatively, but some are not worth the effort. So many fortifications I've wanted to visit are tucked away on private land or permanently sealed with concrete and steel. Battery Pennsylvania tempts me every time I'm on Kailua Beach, but it's just too dangerous to go wandering into a live shooting range. There's a farm in Punaluu that stores fertilizer and equipment in an old bunker. Deep in the mountains behind Kahuku, dirt bikers and hunters have stumbled upon the overgrown remains of remote army camps. In the 1960s the first anti-aircraft missiles, the Nike-Ajax, were installed in Kahuku, Makakilo, Dillingham Airfield on the North Shore and at Bellows Air Force Station in Waimanalo. These are less impressive installations, consisting of concrete missile pads and earthen berms surrounding them; you might find remnants of support facilities in the brush. Ewa Field, a crucial air base in WWII, now has weeds and full-grown trees pushing up through solid tarmac. The hemispherical hangars that once hid loaded fighter jets or an anti-aircraft cannon are now canvasses for crude graffiti.
The most numerous, visited and photographed of all the military remnants around Oahu are unremarkable in themselves: the small concrete bunkers and "pillboxes," many of which are easily accessible via hiking trails. Set on ridges and scenic promontories, these armored, prefabricated shacks were never dismantled after the war (not worth the effort), so they've been left to the hikers, photographers and graffiti artists. The best known of these are accessible by the Kaiwa Ridge Trail above Kailua's Lanikai area. Built in 1943, they're often misnamed the "Lanikai Pillboxes," but little-known fact: They're not technically pillboxes, which in military terms are defensive sites, usually shelters for gun emplacements. The two structures on Kaiwa Ridge were built as observation sites, housing (and camouflaging) sentinels on the lookout for invading forces. Equipped with telescopes, these soldiers would transmit information about suspicious vessels and planes to artillery batteries on MCBH in Kaneohe.
Whatever they're called, Kaiwa Ridge was already Oahu's most popular "pillbox" hike even before President Obama went there with his family. Ever since, most of my favorite "secret" pillbox hikes found mostly on obscure hiking blogs have become not so secret. Perhaps the fate of these old installations lies somewhere on a spectrum: from demolition to sealing them off to slow collapse to serving as a perch for Instagrammers documenting the beauty of these Islands from the structures that once protected them.
