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Quonset Huts and Life as a Navy Brat [1]

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Date: 2023-07-02

My father, a Navy Chief Petty Officer, was transferred to Barber’s Point Naval Air Station (Oahu) in 1957. A few months later, the rest of the family flew out to join him, although not without a few mishaps along the way. This was the second time we were stationed in Hawaii, but I have no memories of the first time – we were stationed in Kaneohe, and lived in a place called Termite Village. My brother was born there, but I don’t think the termites had anything to do with that..

Because there was no base housing available, my father found a rental house in Nanakuli, which is north of Barber’s Point. I use the term “house” loosely. When my wife and I visited Hawaii on our 25th anniversary, we drove out to Nanakuli so she could see the neighborhood. Her immediate reaction was, “You lived HERE???” When it rained heavily, you had to be careful not to step on one of the hundreds of frogs in the front yard. The neighbors killed pigs in their yards. In other words, it was low income housing in rural Hawaii, which the tourists never saw.

I looked up the house on Google Street View, and it has been remodeled. It looks much better now. When I lived in that neighborhood 66 years ago, I learned for the first time what it felt like to be a minority. Most of the people were wonderful, but there were a few kids who did not like haoles at all, and I always had to be aware of my surroundings.

I attended Radford Middle/High School in Honolulu during this time, which was a bit of an ordeal. I rode with my father to the Air Station, where I caught a “bus” to Radford. The “bus” was actually a tractor/trailer, with the kids piled into the trailer on bench seats. The military spared no expense to take care of its dependents. Trivia: If you can believe Wikipedia, Bette Midler graduated from Radford four years later.

We moved onto the base in 1958, into a Quonset hut. A Quonset hut is a big corrugated steel can, cut in half, and placed on a foundation. It is low cost housing at its finest…easy to build, can be configured many ways, and it keeps the rain out. No insulation, no problem. It’s a mild climate, until it isn’t. And when it got warm outside, it was HOT inside.

Quonset (Nissen) Huts are very easy to assemble, and do not need interior load bearing walls, unless they have a second floor. Therefore, they can be configured inside very easily, and if needed, can be reconfigured without altering the main structure. Those benefits still apply, and there are some modern manufacturers of Quonset Huts for diverse uses (example only; no endorsement implied). It seems to me they could be a partial solution for housing the unhoused.

Our hut was configured like a European railway coach…open front to rear on one side, with bedrooms on the other. But the walls didn’t go up to the roof, which, of course, was curved. They went up about eight feet and then stopped. So there was open space above and between the bedrooms, and one could hear anything going on in the next bedroom. As a shy 12 year old, this was very awkward and occasionally embarrassing. No, I won’t provide details.

The lack of insulation also meant there was little soundproofing, which I found out after a screaming match with my brother. The neighbors, who endured the whole thing, read my mother the riot act, after which she read it to us. We became much more circumspect in our filial disputes after that.

The Navy also opened a new middle school on the base that year, which meant that we didn’t have to make the trip to Radford in the cattle trailer any more. In many ways, this was wonderful, but it came with its own downsides. The upsides were that I could now ride my bike to school, even if it involved crossing the very end of a runway to get there. And I didn’t have to depend on my parents to get me to the bus on time. But you know that old admonition to look both ways before crossing a street? Well, that really applies when F-8Us are involved.

The downsides? Well…..the new school was established in an Elephant Hut, which is what we called a two story Quonset hut. It was poorly maintained, and most of the second floor was condemned as unsafe, except for a small area that became the art center. I have fond memories of the art center, because I created a 3 foot long paper mache ant there. A purple ant, which I had to unfortunately leave in Hawaii when we returned to the States. I still miss that ant.

Then there were the teachers, and many of the students. I don’t know where they recruited the teachers, but many of them were…..interesting. Mr. Goto, for example, who was ostensibly a math teacher. spent an enormous amount of time shooting rubber bands at students, who then shot them back at him. And while this was happening, my seatmate in the class, a young lady who was quite personable, spent a lot of time drawing anatomically accurate nudes for my edification. To sum everything up, I got quite an education there and very poor grades.

Which my mother had to explain to the counselor at Cupertino High School when we returned to the mainland. He felt that college prep was not for me, but she insisted otherwise. She was right.

Quonset hut summary: They were very easy to construct, simple structures that could be configured many different ways. Perhaps we could build a few fields of these structures to shelter the homeless. It would be far better than what we have now, and having lived in one, I can assure you that it would do the job. Quonset huts don’t require framing…they are the frame and the structure at the same time.

Postscript: The naval air station doesn’t exist any more, but I Iooked at Google Earth to see if any remnants are left. The housing Quonset Huts are gone, but a number of structures still exist, including a lot of ammunition bunkers I used to ride by on my bike.

I’m pretty sure this is the same size as the Elephant Hut school. It had six rooms on the first floor, as I recall. And how do I know it’s a big Quonset Hut? Look at the shadow.

Good times.

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