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Naval Power in the Pacific JOHN WILLIS E The United States fleet was never based in Hawaii for sentimental reasons. When the new arrangement goes into effect, creating three fleets—Atlantic, Pacific, and Asiatic—the Pacific fleet will still be based here. The reasons have been told and retold: to guard the western ocean approaches to the United States. But recently President Roosevelt said that America does not propose to lose control of any ocean touching American shores. Finally, therefore, the Pacific fleet will be created to control the Pacific Ocean. Vast sums are to be expended on defense projects in this area, centering in Hawaii. That Uncle Sam proposes to control the waters from the Philippines to Panama and from Hawaii to Samoa, and perhaps farther south, is evident. The aggressor nations have brought about this decision. America must be protected. No aggressor will be permitted to get within an area of thousands of miles away, if the American navy is permitted to function properly. All the building, all the improvements at Pearl Harbor, and all the naval air bases and other defense points in Hawaii point to continued presence of a huge force of ships and men in these waters. Usually reliable sources have assembled impressive figures on proposed naval projects in Hawaii. Allotments for this district, available at the beginning of the New Year, show an unexpended balance of more than $60 million. The amount is more than double the $30 million unexpended appropriations at the end of 1939, the figures say. Appropriation bills passed by Congress for the fiscal years 1940 and 1941 included a total of more than $80 million for public works projects in the Hawaiian sector and Pacific waters. This sum has been broken down into the following items: the navy yard at Pearl Harbor, $19 million, with $10.5 million for dry-docks, $2.75 million for a power plant, more than $2 million for industrial shop buildings, and $1 million for storehouses. 29 First published February 1941. It is said that the fuel depot at Pearl Harbor will require expenditures of more than $7 million. There will be an outlay of nearly $300,000 on a medical supply depot.Various harbor improvements will run up to $12 million or more.The naval air station on Ford Island will be improved to the tune of $7.5 million. Barracks and administration buildings will demand nearly $5 million. The project at Kane‘ohe, say the same authorities, will entail expenditures of $12.5 million. On other Pacific island bases,$20.5 million.Incredible sums,had they been mentioned a few years ago.The projects under way are so vast and comprehensive that they seem almost fantastic and unbelievable. Five years hence, the United States will have a navy, doubled in power, and perhaps many times the strength of any other aggregation of fighting ships in the world. The present administration is out to make Uncle Sam’s defenses impregnable, and building the navy to double power is the first step in that direction. Figures on this effort are illuminating: The navy has now in service or is building 645 fighting ships, a figure that does not include old destroyers being reconditioned for this service or that. Of the 645 there are 32 capital ships, 15 in service; 18 aircraft carriers, 6 in service; 85 cruisers, 37 in service; and 325 destroyers, 159 in service. Back in 1873, or nearly seventy years ago, a board of army and navy officers came to Hawaii from the United States to obtain a cession at Pearl Harbor in exchange for admission into the United States of duty-free sugar from Hawaii. After looking over the Pearl Harbor area, the board made its recommendation, and in 1876 a treaty was concluded giving the United States certain rights there. It was in 1887 that this reciprocity agreement was extended to give the United States “exclusive rights to establish a coaling and repair station for vessels of the United States at Pearl Harbor, and to that end, improve the entrance of the said harbor.” All of which was a prelude to what was to come, for on August 12, 1898, annexation of the Hawaiian islands to the United States became a fact. Old-timers—and there are many—who recall the Pearl Harbor of forty years ago and compare it with the Pearl Harbor of today, can only express their amazement. What was once a lagoon, with many inlets and...

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