Posted on: Thursday, December 6, 2001

Island Voices
Historic heritage is being lost

By Douglas P. Luna
Honolulu architect and former full-time preservation consultant at Pearl Harbor

While we neared tomorrow's 60th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor and America's entry into World War II, the Navy was slowly destroying historic buildings and structures that are our physical reminder of Pearl Harbor's historic heritage.

By the 70th anniversary, absent a dramatic course change, most of this heritage will be lost.

What underlies this is the internal posture at Pearl Harbor that preservation of historic properties is inherently incompatible with the Navy's defense mission. In point of fact, almost any seeming conflict between that mission and preservation concerns could be reconciled if the Navy sincerely would work with preservation professionals, agencies and organizations rather than against them. Instead, the Navy goes to endless lengths to marginalize, mislead and ignore them and the public generally.

Under the National Historic Preservation Act:

• The Navy is mandated "to the maximum extent possible ... to minimize harm" to Pearl Harbor's historic properties. Instead, it destroys these properties, through unwarranted demolition, incompetent repair and alteration, and studied neglect.

• The Navy is mandated to consult under a governmental preservation review process before making decisions that may adversely affect historic properties. Instead, it makes decisions first and then goes through the motions of consulting after events are so far along that any meaningful alternatives have been foreclosed. Even then it fails to adhere to stipulations it agrees to in consultations.

• The Navy is mandated to reuse existing historic buildings "to the maximum extent feasible." Instead, it demolishes perfectly reusable, adaptable, historically significant buildings and builds new ones or brings in trailers. It strips historic buildings and interiors it does reuse of original materials and character to the point they often are nearly unrecognizable as historic.

• The Navy is mandated to ensure that staff, contractors and projects meet national preservation qualifications and standards. But those overseeing historic preservation at Pearl Harbor, and all but two staff working under them, have no preservation qualifications.

The Navy engages in "demolition by neglect" — failing even to patch leaky roofs or keep windows closed at presently unoccupied historic buildings — ostensibly because it has "no money for maintenance," but then spends millions of dollars to demolish the buildings in order "to save maintenance dollars" it doesn't spend on them. The Navy claims to "have no money for preservation" but then claims that it spends "15 times as much ... on preservation as demolition." In fact, it spends next to nothing on it.

Nothing better demonstrates the willfulness of the Navy's anti-preservation attitude than its obsession with demolishing Building 1C. Built in 1942 and connected by a bridge to Building 1, the original 1913 administration building, Building 1C now uniquely represents a "bookend" of the shipyard's entire period of historic significance.

It is a prime example of a building with individual and contextual importance, cost-effective reuse potential, and no objective need for demolition. It is the last major, intact World War II-era wooden structure in the shipyard. The National Trust for Historic Preservation — which earlier this year placed Ford Island on its list of the 11 Most Endangered Historic Places in America — and Historic Hawai'i Foundation both have urged the Navy not to go ahead with 1C's demolition.

All this notwithstanding, the Navy reportedly plans to go ahead with the demolition anyway. Barring a last-minute reprieve, Building 1C very soon will be destroyed.

This is wrong. The Navy must change course.