Punchbowl monument
will honor Seabees --
builders in war and peace

One of their own will dedicate
the granite memorial stone

Star-Bulletin staff

A new monument to honor the Navy's Seabees -- construction battalions famous for building air fields and other facilities during wartime -- will be dedicated at 11 a.m. Saturday at Punchbowl.

The National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific addition is a two-foot, sloping black granite memorial stone to fete both the Seabees as well as the Navy's civil engineer corps.

As of February, there were said to be 143 Seabees from World War II, Korea and Vietnam buried at Punchbowl.

Their new memorial, along the walk that leads to the Punchbowl Lookout, owes its existence to a volunteer group of about 100 Seabees and Seabee veterans.

One of those expected to speak at the Saturday ceremony is retired Rear Adm. Spencer Smith, former commander, Pacific Division, Naval Facilities Engineering Command. Smith, 86, also commanded naval construction battalions of the Pacific Fleet.

Additionally, his career of more than 30 years included command of naval construction battalions in the Atlantic and other units.

He was officer in charge of construction in South Vietnam in 1966-68. Smith's Navy career began in 1941, in time for him to experience the Pearl Harbor attack. He was then the resident officer in charge of construction at Barbers Point Naval Air Station. He became a public works officer in various wartime capacities.

"The Seabees were really started here in the Pacific at the beginning of World War II," Smith recalled. "They went all the way through the Pacific."

Seabees also are peacetime builders.

Smith, who retired in 1972, was the commander of a Seabee battalion of 1,200 men that built a helicopter base on Okinawa in the 1950s.

"It was a double-strength battalion because it was a big job," Smith said. "Most of their projects are smaller than that."

"They're trained to build anything," he said referring to the Seabees.

Their units include carpenters, electricians, water treatment specialists and other journeymen of the trades, he said. Seabees numbered 275,000 in World War II, mostly men in construction before their Navy service, Smith said. "The Navy was smart enough to get them in the Navy. The average age of a Seabee then was 33."