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History

ALOHA AND WELCOME!

Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam (JBPHH) combines two historic bases into a single joint installation to support both Air Force and Navy missions, along with our tenant commands, service members and their families.  By capitalizing on best practices of both services, we will continue to improve and increase our warfighting readiness, maximize delivery of installation support services throughout the joint base, and capture efficiencies as opportunities arise.

BRIEF HISTORY

Pearl Harbor Naval Station and Hickam Air Force Base have grown up together around what the native Hawaiians called Wai’momi on Oahu’s south shore. 

The early naval station, consisting of a shipyard, coaling station, naval magazine, hospital and Marine barracks was established in 1919 as the United States began to take an active interest in Pacific affairs.  Hawaii’s central Pacific location made it an ideal base by which to promote America’s interests in the Far East and to protect the vital shipping lanes from the Panama Canal to the U.S. west coast and beyond to the western Pacific. The base would eventually grow to include a submarine base and an air base. 

The advent of aviation drew the first connection between these two historic bases. In 1917 the War Department purchased land on Ford Island for the construction of an Army air facility which would eventually be named Luke Field. In 1923 the Navy acquired the opposite side of the island and established a naval air station. The two fledgling air bases would operate side by side until it was recognized that the Army and Navy air arms had grown sufficiently to warrant larger and independent facilities. 

In 1934, the Army Air Corps oversaw the construction of a new air base on 2,200 acres of land adjacent to Pearl Harbor. Hickam Field was completed and activated in 1938, becoming the principal airfield in Hawaii.

DAY OF INFAMY

In the 1930s, the military presence on Oahu grew as the U.S. began to prepare for the eventuality of a confrontation with the ascending Japanese empire to the west. Hickam Field and Pearl Harbor’s naval station each played important roles in that preparation. 

In 1940. the Pacific Fleet was ordered to remain in Pearl Harbor to act as a deterrent to the expansionist desires of the Japanese military. The air field at Hickam saw a steadily increasing stream of aircraft shuttling to America’s forward-most presence in the Philippines. These strategic moves by the Americans were not lost on the Japanese, and as early as December of 1940, a bold plan was initiated: strike Pearl Harbor and deal a crippling blow to American forces which would allow the Japanese Empire to occupy and exploit resources in Southeast Asia, Indonesia and Malaysia and establish a bulwark of defensive bases in the islands of the Western Pacific.

On the morning of Sunday December 7, 1941 the plan was unleashed as two waves of 350 aircraft from the Japanese combined fleet, positioned 230 miles north of Oahu attacked the ships of the Pacific Fleet berthed in the harbor and Army and Navy aircraft parked at various installations around the island, including Hickam Field and Ford Island. 

America’s military forces were caught completely off guard as plane after plane descended on their unsuspecting targets. In the end, the U.S. would suffer the loss of 2,403 Sailors, Airmen, Marines, Soldiers and civilians, and the battleships of America’s Pacific Fleet would lie at the bottom of Pearl Harbor. America’s air power lay in scattered ruins on Oahu’s airfields. 

The story doesn’t end there, however, as America quickly mobilized for the long war ahead. Due to the incredible tenacity of the military and civilian workforce, 19 of the 21 ships that had been damaged or sunk in the attack would be salvaged and take their place with the victorious naval forces that fought their way to victory in 1945. At Hickam, the base would recover from extensive damage and serve the important role as the hub of the Pacific aerial network.

Following the war, the combined functions of the naval station and airbase would secure their place as important forward bases for the defense of the U.S. security in the Pacific. During the Cold War the presence of America’s Pacific Fleet based in Pearl Harbor proved to be an invaluable asset in confronting the Soviet threat to America’s national security in the Pacific region. Between 1948 and 2010 the Air Force operated from Hickam Air Force Base as the primary U.S. mobility hub in the Pacific. The Air Force supported U.S. operations by servicing transient aircraft and facilitating the deployment, return, and supply of service members in Korea, Vietnam, the Middle East, and on humanitarian missions.

The 2005 Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission (BRAC) Report to the President required the relocation of installation management functions and the establishment of JBPHH. 

The combination of the two bases brings together the “best practices” of both the Air Force and the Navy to realize true efficiencies in providing enhanced support of operational capabilities.

On Oct. 1, 2010, NAVSTA Pearl Harbor joined with Hickam Air Force Base to become Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, combining the two historic bases into a single joint installation to support both Air Force and Navy missions in the Pacific.

RELATED LINKS:

JBPHH Fact Sheet

(Last Updated: 5/16/23)

 

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