Army & Navy – Tropical Lagoon

The Pacific war flowed swiftly westward and a great naval supply system, from Pearl Harbor to Australia, was left behind. In its stead, another of the Navy’s imposing monuments to U.S. speed and ingenuity was built and implemented. By last week one of its secret-wrapped bases was far enough in the rear for the Navy to feel safe in unwrapping it. The base was Manus in the Admiralty Islands, more than 6,000 miles southwest of San Francisco, a key supply and repair point for the Philippine invasion.

Only a year ago the string of bases which formed the Navy’s vital pipeline still ran far to the south, as far removed as possible from the Japs’ reach. Supplies were piped to Nouméa in New Caledonia, base of the desperate drive to recover the Solomons. Extensions ran to Australia, base of the equally desperate drive to recover New Guinea.

Those improvised island bases, planned by burly Rear Admiral Ben Moreell and his Navy Bureau of Yards and Docks, and built by Seabees, were among the wonders of the war. Never-never towns like Pago Pago were transformed. Nouméa became a little Pearl Harbor, with shipping crowding its lovely harbor, sailors over running its narrow streets, installations mushrooming on its mountains.

But by last week Nouméa had gone back to sleep, Brisbane and Sydney had returned to normal life. New pipelines had been built far to the north and were gushing supplies across the Pacific.

Bulldozers to Beer. The story of Manus’ building was typical. Seabees, trained on the Pacific coast for this specific job, landed there six months ago on the heels of the invading Army. Their boss was Commodore James E. Boak, who built the Espiritu Santo cruiser base.

Manus was a red, shell-pocked beach, backed by impenetrable jungles and a shouldering mountain. The Seabees carried with them every item they needed—from aerial photographs and bulldozers to $15,000,000 in currency for the payroll and 50,000 cases of beer. On May 1 they went to work.

They threw together living quarters and mess halls. They ran out jetties for cargo ships, already on the way. They hacked roads through the jungles into the hills. Army troops had drawn water from shell holes, but the Seabees tapped a waterfall, installed chlorination and storage tanks and set up a system to produce 3,000,000 gallons of water a day.

Tropical diseases and heat took a heavy toll. Rain turned roads and storage dumps into bogs. But in five months, with 16,000 men working eight-hour shifts around the clock seven days a week, they built a base to supply, repair and maintain a naval fleet on the southern flank of the Japanese Empire.

Road to Tokyo. Today hundreds of vessels—boats, warships,’ cargo carriers, combat transports—crawl across the Manus lagoon, which is big enough to shelter all the navies of the world. A 300-ft. pier is constantly thronged with Navy personnel waiting water-taxi service to their ships. Trucks, jeeps, weapon carriers move from the docking area onto a three-lane road of coral rock, called “Victory Highway,” which invades the hills.

Along the highway are blocks of warehouses for storing spare parts; machine shops with facilities to repair or install medium-caliber guns ; an automotive over haul plant which recovers thousands of vehicles from the scrap heap; acres of tank farms (depots); acres of under ground ammunition storage depots; refrigerators for meat, vegetables, fruit to supply the fleet. Now abuilding is a bottling plant with a capacity of 500 cases of soft drinks an hour.

Among other uncensored items at Manus are a farm with 500 chickens, ducks, a technical library, an evening school where navigation, mathematics, mechanics, history, English and foreign languages are taught; baseball fields, basketball and handball courts ; a beer garden and a bandstand. On the brow of a hill overlooking the great installation is a desolate, wilting shack — the only visible reminder of Jap occupation.

Manus is still growing. Steam shovels and bulldozers are clearing the way for new docks. But, like the other improvised bases in the Pacific, Manus may never be quite finished. Said an admiral: “Our ambition is to leave unfinished bases all the way across the Pacific to Japan.” A signpost on Manus reads: “Tokyo, 2,000 miles; Manila, 1,670 miles.”