History more important than condos

Erik Skindrud

The oil field at Bolsa Chica was a busy spot 64 summers ago. It was a

more innocent time, when the biggest threat to local peace was tipsy

oil workers on a Saturday night. Everything changed in December, of

course, when the attack on Pearl Harbor forced dozens of local men

into uniform.

Rosemary Robinson remembers. She graduated from Huntington Beach

High School in 1945, and still owns the wood-sided house at 7th

Street and Pecan Avenue where she grew up. When war hit, Rosemary’s

parents opened the doors to Ralph Nielson of Mississippi and Genar

Byrd of New Mexico, two soldiers assigned to new coastal defenses

under construction at Bolsa Chica. Robinson still recalls their big

boots clomping on the wood floor when the soldiers returned from duty

at Bolsa Chica. There, on the bluff, artillery pieces bristled and

lookouts scanned the horizon for invading Japanese.

Unmarked, ignored and little-known, a large portion of the

steel-reinforced concrete defenses remain there today.

Battery 128 was the U.S. Army’s name for the underground command

center that is still hidden under the Bolsa Chica mesa. An

above-ground fortification for a pair of 16-inch artillery pieces was

demolished in 1995 to make way for 3,000 homes (a plan since scaled

back). But the underground bunker is facing imminent destruction from

a threat more grave than the once-feared Japanese.

The bunker sits on a 6.5-acre site at the south end of Bolsa Chica

Street. It is owned by 87-year-old Huntington Beach resident Donald

E. Goodell, who plans to destroy the structure and put 36

densely-packed condominiums in its place.

“We’re going to demolish it as soon as we get permission,” Goodell

told me last year. “There’s nothing to restore, there’s nothing to

see. It’s just a bunch of junk.”

As of last month, Goodell had submitted no plans for the project,

a California Coastal Commission spokesman said.

While buried, the bunker is intact, and by exploring it, one can

sense the anxious months following Pearl Harbor, when invasion seemed

a very real possibility.

The steel doors are sealed with tons of earth now, but until 2001,

the bunker sat open, and several generations of kids enjoyed

exploring it with flashlights. The complex has the square footage of

a large tract home, and sits across from one of the city’s last

vegetable fields at Graham Street and Slater Avenue.

The site is accessible to the public, and with a short walk you

can reach two 300-foot-long concrete walls that disappear into the

hillside. The viewer can see where the walls take a 45-degree turn --

an angle to prevent attackers from getting a clear shot at the steel

blast doors.

Goodell has not named a price, but hints he is willing to sell if

the amount is right. With a limited amount of funding (on top of the

purchase price) an effort could illuminate the now-dark rooms and

give the community an interpretive exhibit.

During the war, defensive guns and bunkers dotted the coast.

Almost all the sites have been plowed under, but at San Pedro, the

Fort MacArthur Military Museum preserves a big gun site and is one of

a handful of spots in Southern California where World War II history

is recalled.

Stephen Nelson, the museum’s president, was not encouraging when

asked his opinion about preserving the Bolsa Chica site. Last year,

he almost lost half of his museum to a dog park.

“People don’t care about the history,” he said when asked about

the Bolsa Chica site. “And World War II is recent history. You’d

think with the new ‘war on terror’ people would step back and take

more of an interest in what happened here -- and happened here a

relatively short time ago.”

A more encouraging sign appeared last month in Tustin, where

volunteers raised $5 million to help turn one of the city’s World War

II blimp hangers into the county’s first military museum.

Now Huntington Beach will decide if its residents want to preserve

the bunker -- or go the way of condominiums.

The Bolsa Chica Bunker Project is the first group to educate the

public about the bunker. It’s aim is to purchase, using federal

grants and private donations, the 6.5-acre parcel. A website includes

bunker photos and additional information.

The project offers tours and presentations and welcomes public

input.

* Erik Skindrud is a Huntington Beach resident and an editor at

Landscape Architect and Specifier News magazine. The project’s

website is at o7https://bunkerproject.

blogspot.comf7. To contribute to “Sounding Off” e-mail us at

o7hbindependent@latimes.com f7or fax us at (714) 966-4667.