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Among his papers were several references
to a "Red Hill Project" in Hawaii
and some Red Hill magazines with stories
about camp life, but nothing gave any information
about what that project was. Even in the
letters to his wife Myrle Breck back in Lead,
there was no clue about what he was actually
doing in Hawaii. The sisters' search on the
internet this year turned up the reason for
the secrecy: the Red Hill Project that he
had worked for was a Top Secret war-time
project that remained Top Secret until it
was finally declassified in 1995, more than
fifty years after its completion.
The Red Hill Project was undertaken in 1940
to solve a
severe problem facing the military
in the Pacific:
how to store and protect
the huge amounts
of fuel needed to move troops
and supplies
over long distances. Fuel tanks
above ground
were vulnerable to enemy attack.
As Admiral
Chester Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief,
U.S. Navy Pacific
Fleet said later, "We
had about 4.5
million barrels of oil out
there and all
of it was vulnerable to .50-caliber
bullets. Had
the Japanese destroyed the oil,
it would have
prolonged the war another two
years..."
The plan was
to carve out huge underground
fuel storage
tanks in the volcanic rock outside
Honolulu, in
the Red Hill region. The original
plan called
for four large horizontal tanks
underground,
but this was clearly inadequate.
So the Army
Corps of Engineers came up with
the idea to
create twenty vertical cylindrical
tanks each
measuring 250 feet tall by 100
feet in diameter,
and 100 feet underground,
each one large
enough to hold a twenty story
building. The
tanks were carved out of the
volcanic rock
200 feet apart in two straight
rows of ten,
with each tank surrounded by
concrete walls
three to eight feet thick
and lined with
steel walls. These were connected
by pipes and
tunnels to navy piers and shore
facilities
more than two and a half miles
away. Red Hill
construction began the day
after Christmas,
1940. The attack on Pearl
Harbor on December
7, 1941 had little effect
on the work
site itself, which was mainly
underground.
Work on the first tank was completed
in September
1942, and the entire project
was finished
in September 1943, nine months
ahead of schedule.
Nothing had
ever been done like this before
on such a huge
scale. The need for skilled
miners who
could do the underground drilling,
blasting and
shaping was of utmost importance,
and a labor
force of about 3900 miners and
skilled workers
was recruited. To maintain
secrecy the
men working on the project were
required to
live in a camp at the job site,
and were not
allowed to even venture into
Honolulu for
fear that news of the project
would leak
out. Elaborate meals and extensive
entertainment
were provided right at the
camp to make
confined life more enjoyable
there.
The project
remained top secret until 1995,
when the American
Society of Civil Engineers
designated
the Red Hill facility a National
Historic Civil
Engineering Landmark, an accomplishment
on a par with
the Brooklyn Bridge, the Washington
Monument, the
Hoover Dam and other feats
of American
civil engineering. It has been
called the
"Eighth Wonder of the Modern
World".
It is still in use today, storing
more than 250
million gallons of fuel for
the US Navy,
Air Force and Marine Corps sea
and air fleets
stationed in the Pacific.
It is thought
that in 1941 and 1942 the military
set out to
secretly recruit skilled miners
from the Homestake
Gold Mine in Lead, SD
for this immense
undertaking, and that Albert
Breck was one
of them. The Breck sisters
would like
to hear from other families whose
fathers or
brothers may have been recruited
from the Homestake
for the project. Emails
can be sent
to them at bettybreck@yahoo.com.
A plaque marks
the site now, dedicating it
to the "Red
Hillers", the miners
and laborers
who constructed it. It reads:
"To the thousands of loyal "Red Hillers"
who participated in the construction of this
mighty wartime project from August 1940 to
September 1943, this effort stands as one
of the proudest of American achievements.
On the far-flung outpost of the Pacific theatre
of War, this great army of defense workers
labored day and night on the home front,
in the pursuit of a gigantic War effort,
fusing their behind-the-scenes strength in
the great united struggle for Liberty, Freedom,
the Principles of Democracy and the Right
to enjoy the American Way of Life."
Albert Breck's wartime service didn't end
with the Red
Hill Project, and his story
on the Dakota
War Stories website continues.
When the Red
Hill Project was finished, Albert
returned home
briefly, then joined the Merchant
Marines for
the duration of the war. He served
as a cook aboard
two vessels. One of the
items posted
in his story on the website
is a neatly
hand-written menu for a traditional
Thanksgiving
dinner Al helped prepare aboard
the SS Wahoo
Swamp.
Other items
in the Brecks' submission to
the SDPB Dakota
Stories website include poignant
photos of the
family saying goodbye at the
train station
and of his children writing
"Letters
to Daddy" in the sunny
kitchen of
their Nevada Gulch home near Lead,
SD. The posting
also includes Al's Merchant
Marine service
records and his honorable
discharge from
the Coast Guard after the
Merchant Marines
were retroactively made
part of the
Coast Guard in 1988.
A highlight of the submission is Al's poem,
"Alone", which he wrote on the
back of a brown paper bag and dedicated to
his faraway family.
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Albert Breck's story and the stories of other
WW II and other veterans can be viewed at
the South Dakota Public Braodcasting's Dakota
Stories website. SDPB created the Dakota
Stories site to preserve the personal heritage
of our region through submitted stories that
tell of personal experiences in significant
times. A large section is devoted to War
Stories.
Anyone interested in honoring a Veteran or
posting their own story will find further
information at http://www.dakotastories.org/.
Although this is an Internet archive, many
of these stories are also told and shared
through South Dakota Public Broadcasting
Television and Radio channels and through
Educational and Outreach to classrooms and
learners. |
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