The nine-member panel voted 5-4 in favor of a recommendation to add the shipyard to a list of bases it will be considering for closure or restructuring but seven votes were needed for approval. The panel's recommendation called for moving the shipyard's overhaul operation to the Navy's other three shipyard in the United States while leaving the ship maintenance operation in Pearl Harbor.

"This is awesome," said Mayor Mufi Hannemann, who was at the meeting. "I'm very, very grateful and very, very happy that the Base Realignment and Closing Commission ... did what was right and is to preserve Pearl Harbor."

Gov. Linda Lingle said she was happy the shipyard is no longer under consideration to be closed.

"For the workers and their families, it was so important that we get this resolved now and not leave it on a list for future consideration," she said.

Four commissioners — former U.S. Reps. James V. Hansen of Utah and James H. Bilbray of Nevada, retires Army Gen. James T. Hill and Samuel K. Skinner — voted against putting the shipyard on the list.

Hill, a former commander of the 25th Infantry Division, said the military's combat commanders' view on the strategic location of Pearl Harbor in the Pacific is the overriding issue.

"It should not be closed in any way," he said.

Skinner said that stripping the overhaul work from Pearl Harbor but leaving the shipyard open for maintenance operations did not make economic sense.

"If it (the economics) are close, then the strategic value of being at Pearl Harbor appears to weigh in favor of Pearl Harbor as it's currently constituted," he said.

Retired Adm. Harold W. Gehman, a commissioner, argued in favored of adopting the recommendation so that the commission could study whether the Navy's four shipyards actually had enough excess capacity to close one of them.

But he added that even if there were excess, moving the overhaul function from Pearl Harbor would not produce any savings because the cost at Pearl Harbor would increase because the overhead would remain the same but be spread over less work. At the same time, the Navy would have to pay to move ships to the West Coast or elsewhere for overhauls, he said.

Commission votes to add two bases to list

The base-closing commission voted today to add two military facilities, in California and Maine, to the list of hundreds of domestic bases that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has proposed closing and shrinking.

The Navy Broadway Complex in San Diego and the Naval Air Station in Brunswick, Maine, were added to the list of facilities to be closed. The commission also was voting on whether to add bases in nine other states and Washington, D.C.

The San Diego facility has headquarters for Navy operations in the Southwest, while the Brunswick air base is the last active-duty Defense Department airfield in New England and one of Maine's largest employers, with nearly 4,900 military and civilian workers.

Before voting on additions, Chairman Anthony Principi cautioned that adding a base to the list "does not necessarily mean that the base will be realigned or closed" but will simply allow the panel to further analyze those bases' usefulness.

"Our deliberations today may add more bases for further consideration, not because we have determined that we need to close more bases than the secretary of defense has recommended, but because we want to make sure the best possible closure or realignment choices are made," Principi said.

In a reprieve for California, the commission voted against putting the Marine Corps Recruit Depot on the closure list even though several commissioners had wanted to consider merging it with the service's other recruiting facility in Parris Island, S.C.