GUADALCANAL: "If they had been visitors from Mars, the men of the 63rd NCB could scarcely have been more out of their element. That was the case when they arrived on Guadalcanal in June 1943."
Towering trees, dense vegetation, a fantasy land of "lizards as large as small crocodiles, snakes that fly, toads that eat flesh and fish that climb trees." And, the scattered remnants of a Japanese military force, although defeated, refusing to surrender.
Guadalcanal, its name equated with a hard-fought campaign that began on Aug. 7, 1942, was now the main route on the highway across the Pacific's island-hopping campaign to victory. A route marked by the skills, labor, sweat and determination of the Seabees who scratch-built airfields, harbor facilities and piers, and constructed roads, barracks, hospitals, fuel depots and massive supply dumps. Seabees were the workforce of the Pacific.
Unglamorous and backbreaking, the 63rd's initial major project on "the Canal" was an 80-square-mile program to destroy the breeding grounds of malaria-carrying insects "by swamp and lagoon draining, stream clearance and depression filling." Work started on June 24. When completed, more than 20 miles of roads, "16.5 miles, as a last resort, by hand labor," had been constructed by the 664 officers and men assigned. Some 100 miles of stream ran free to the sea. The Seabees moved 400,000 cubic yards of earth to level and fill water-filled depressions.
"Lagoons, land-locked by sand-bars, were fitted with oil-drum culverts to permit excess tidal fluctuations to vary the lagoon level. The inflow of salt water at high tide rendered lagoon water sufficiently alkaline to inhibit mosquito breeding."
The 63rd's history notes, "there was little fun on these jobs," but as footnote, "there were some thrills." Massive, more than 60, air raids by Japanese bombers. An encounter with Japanese troops on a tropical trail. And "it's no fish story," the 10-foot crocodile that chased a work party out of the Tenaru River.
There was also the trial of a 63rd Seabee.
He was charged with leaving his shipmates without permission and striking out with the 1st Marine Raider Battalion when that unit assaulted Japanese forces near Bairoka Harbor, at Munda. He was exonerated when the Marine officer in charge of the operation initiated a Silver Star recommendation, the nation's third highest honor for heroism. The man "attached himself to a machine gun crew, serviced and manned the gun with devastating effect upon the enemy when all other members of the crew had been killed or disabled by mortar fire."
There were other commendations and citations as the 63rd moved across the Pacific during 1944 and 1945. Journeys by convoys to Auckland, New Zealand, and Noumea, New Caledonia; return to Guadalcanal; and transit to the island of Emirau, "a tiny dot in the vast expanse of the Pacific."
Emirau, in the St. Matthias group of the Bismarck Archipelago, was transformed from raw jungle, coral and sand by the 63rd and three other Seabee battalions [27th, 61st and 88th Seabees, commanded by the 18th Regiment--SCK]. It became a massive advance naval base with all the functions of a harbor port military city, including an airfield.
Six months of two, six-hour shifts per man, per day, and the job was completed. Board ships again, to the Admiralty Islands, and construct another massive base at Manus, recently secured from the Japanese.
Work at Manus progressed into 1945, and the 63rd followed the news of U.S. ground and naval forces, which had begun the liberation of the Philippines. Rumor spread the Seabees would be sent back to the states by April for deactivation. Rumor proved wrong.
"It was on a bright and sunny Sunday, 25 March, that troops boarded the SS Mexico with full infantry gear for the voyage to Manila. . . . Slow progress was made in the South China Sea, but Luzon loomed on the northeastern horizon in the early afternoon of Friday, 6 April."
The 63rd Seabees newest camp was in the Manila suburb of Pasay. The unit's major assignment was the construction of 7th Fleet headquarters, a massive 40-acre project of buildings and facilities on the war-ruined site of the former Manila Polo Club. Work on that project ended for these Seabees on Sunday, July 22, a day described in their history as "drizzling." But, a day with a brighter tomorrow. There was an announcement, and it was official. The 63rd was heading stateside.
July 24, 1945, more than two years since they had departed for "Island X," the Seabees of the 63rd sailed for an unnoticed and unheralded 3:45 a.m. arrival in San Francisco on Aug. 15, 1945.