William Cole’s story in the Advertiser a couple of days ago concerning the former nuclear weapons storage facility at Waikele brought back a lot of memories.
While a slightly later cohort of Marines like those interviewed by Cole were trying to keep prying eyes away from their classified bunkers, peace activists associated with the Quaker-based American Friends Service Committee and catholic Action of Hawaii were trying to generate public discussion and debate over the threat of the international nuclear arms race by openly calling attention to local nuke storage.
I have a few photos online now from the series of peaceful protests between 1975 and 1980, including this set featuring a mock nuclear weapons convoy from the lower end of Kipapa Gulch below the Waikele base to the front gates of the West Loch Naval Ammunition Depot.
One year we celebrated easter by climbing over a fence by the highway and walking down a winding road in Kipapa Gulch. Our destination–a small landing field where helicopters would pick up nukes from storage in Waikele and then fly them down to Pearl Harbor.
Photographs we took of one of those weapon movements made the Associated Press wire and appeared in the New York Times and elsewhere across the country in around 1978. I’ll have to track down some of those clips.
And I would have loved to read about the recollections of those Marine guards the next time they cordoned off that landing pad and found our plastic easter eggs with messages like “Hop right out of the arms race”.
Looking back from the vantage point of post 9-11 security attitudes, it’s amazing what we managed to do.
The military, of course, was at a political disadvantage. Publicly, the official line was that the U.S. “will neither confirm nor deny” the presence of nuclear weapons anywhere. But without reference to those nuclear arms, attempts to crack down on our open and peaceful public protests would have been difficult.
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was at waikele in 1958-59… was on convoys there were no heilo pads there then but then of course it was the beginning of the nuke era…
was Marine Guard …
I was a Marine Guard at Wiakele from 1976-78. This guy is full of crap. There were no easter eggs left on the LZ. There were four guard towers overlooking the LZ and I can guarantee you that if this jerk was walking around the LZ at night he would have been dealt with by a large group of dedicated Marines.
Sorry, Michael. We were not there on the LZ at night. It was broad daylight when our group was there, shared a picnic easter lunch, and left plastic easter eggs. The photos of that long ago day are online. There were no operations that day, but it was the same helicopter pad seen (and photographed) while active operations were underway on other occasions. We saw no Marines while there.
LMAO You were on the abandon portion of the base from your description of entry. Coming in from the highway over the fence is where the old LZ was and there were commercial mushroom growers using those tunnels. If you didn’t see any people, that’s where you were.
Same time period….
Mars i was there with you from 76-78.what i was called at waikele was big j.do you remember me.i surely remember you.mars you know dam well no one got to the lz day or night.we had it on lock down.if you get this get back to me
I’ll be damned. Of course I remember you. Yeah, this guy saying they were there in the daylight on the LZ. That’s ridiculous.
michaelmars@outlook.com
Man, get back to me.
You are certainly correct! I was at Waikele from 1960-1961 as a nuclear weapons technician (Navy). The “fly offs” were in the middle of the night, under heavy Marine guard. We loaded the weapons from the flight deck and personally delivered them to Waikele where we performed storage, maintenance and modification on the weapons. Not one damn thing was left behind on the landing. Anyone who says different was not there or is blowing smoke (aka BS).
I was stationed Marine Barracks from ’63 ’65
I was there 1975 to 1977 and that never happened at all. I do remember Mars and Johnson. I remember Mars running his dirt bike in the field out side of the main gate. I also remember a Johnson but don’t remember his first name.
It was Easter 1976 when we had that little “party” at the landing field in Kipapa Gulch near the Waikele base. Here a link to some photos taken that day. Those of you who were there will recognize the site.
https://www.ilind.net/oldkine_images/easter1976/index.htm