By utilizing battle-damaged reservoirs and water lines and by salvaging additional materials, from both pre-war American installations and captured Jap construction dumps, the 25th, 53rd, and 59th Naval Construction Battalions under the Fifth Naval Construction Brigade on Guam rebuilt in record time a large municipal-type water system to supply a daily two- to four-million gallons of treated fresh water to strategic shore-based activities and to large water tankers serving fleet units in the far western Pacific.
Take Guam two days after the Marine and Army assault troops smashed Jap beach defenses and poured ashore by the thousands. Add the Guamanian rainy season at its peak, with tropical downpours and bottomless mud. Add rough country and tangled jungles, with a liberal sprinkling of prowling Jap snipers. Subtract all new materials normally used in building water systems— items such as cast-iron pipe, oakum, lead, and cement. Also deduct practically all essential tools, like plumbers’ lead pots and pipe handling gear. Then superimpose upon this situation the urgent need for potable fresh water, not only for Guam’s tens of thousands of garrison troops but also for the big fleet-support water tankers hovering offshore. And there you have the task set before the men of the 25th, 53rd, and 59th Naval Construction Battalions early ashore on the shell-cratered beaches of Guam.
Water was needed critically. A certain amount of water had been brought in with the assault forces—enough to give each man a meager two-gallon ration per day for his first five days on the island. The water wasn’t easy to swallow, either; it had come all the way from Guadalcanal to Guam in little five-gallon Jerry cans and en route had acquired the odor and taste of an old paint locker. But the thirsty troops were glad to drink it. At least it was preferable to the fresh water streams ashore, in which there might lurk anything from dysentery to Jap-planted poison.
It wasn’t many days until the fast moving Marines and assault-echelon Seabees had established a number of small water points on the island, taking water from pre-tested fresh-water springs and dosing it with copious if somewhat unpalatable quantities of chlorine. They also set up several small distillation units—little oil-fired stills that sucked up ocean salt water and discharged a slow stream of fresh water at the trickling rate of only 80 gallons an hour, and this at the high cost of a gallon of precious fuel for every 18 gallons of drinking water. So, on the whole, the troops were getting along with just about enough water to keep their canteens filled but none for anything else. Nor were the big fleet water tankers serving the many troop transports and auxiliary small craft receiving their much-needed issues of fresh water from Guam’s ample but out-of- reach supply.
Fresh water in the forward Pacific areas has long been a serious problem, primarily because the tiny atolls captured along the road to Tokyo (like Tarawa, Kwajalein, and Einiwetok) yield insufficient fresh water for their own garrisons with no possibility of supplying the needs of the forces afloat. Before Guam’s more generous water supply became available, much of the water for replenishing the thirsty troopships and small craft had to come by tanker the thousands of miles from Pearl Harbor or Guadalcanal. It was to alleviate these long, costly hauls that the work was pushed on the dock-side water-issuing facilities on the island. And it was to give Guam's water-hungry garrison troops more than a daily gallon or two of fresh water that the work was rushed on the entire island water system.
Contrary to popular conception, Guam is not the “tiny coral island” which many people picture it to be. Instead it is a rather large rugged area of volcanic and limestone rock, its roughly oblong shape bearing generally north and south with a length of about 30 miles, a width ranging from 6 to 12 miles, and a 225-square-mile area almost a quarter as large as the State of Rhode Island. Terrain includes hills, valleys, high steep limestone bluffs and wide sloping plateaus, covered over for the most part by a luxuriant blanket of tropical jungle and sword grass. Native population numbers about 23,000; military population has already reached a figure of many times that number. Principal island activity centers about strategic Apra Harbor, the main port situated on the west central side of the island, and around Agana, which before the war was the leading town of 12,000 people located a few miles east of Apra Harbor.
Like everything else on the bitterly contested island of Guam, the widespread water facilities suffered their full share of general destruction. Built by Navy Public Works construction men back in the easy pre-war days, Guam’s water system had consisted of some half-dozen spring-fed reservoirs spotted throughout the west central hills, from which cast-iron water lines had extended down to serve the several towns and villages fringing Apra Harbor and Agana Bay. Though originally installed as a single interconnected utility, the water system functioned as two distinct units serving the two principal island areas. In the south the Almagosa facilities included the Almagosa Springs, the catch basin, and the Maanot Reservoir, all located high up on Almagosa Mountain, and serving the important Orote Peninsula and the surrounding Apra Harbor areas. Located downhill to the west was the smaller Agat reservoir serving the little village of Agat—scene of principal Marine landings and smashed into rubble by the initial fighting. In the north were the Agafia facilities, including the Maina Spring Reservoir and the Agana Reservoir situated on Agana Heights. Westward was the Asan Reservoir located above Asan. All these facilities served the city of Agana’s pre-war population of 12,000 inhabitants. The reservoirs had been sturdily built, reinforced concrete structures, rectangular in shape, with the usual dividing wall to permit cleaning, all in accordance with good Bureau of Yards and Docks design. The water lines, too, had been well built, albeit a large portion of the cast-iron pipe had been laid in concrete anchor blocks along the surface of the ground instead of in trenches as is normally done. All in all, the pre-war water system of Guam had been a good serviceable public utility, far superior to most similar island installations.
It was rather ironical that most of the damage inflicted on the system was done by our own assault forces rather than by the Japanese. Our heavy pre-assault bombing and short-range naval gun fire, followed later by our land-based artillery and mortar fire and still later by our intense automatic weapon and rifle fire, left deep scars on the defenseless reservoirs and water pipes. The hard-pressed retreating Japs apparently lacked either the time or the explosives to set off major demolitions on any parts of the system. But our own efforts along these lines should have more than satisfied the Nipponese love for destruction. When the Seabees took over, the water system was not only damaged but parts of it were almost obliterated.
The Almagosa installations, while not as seriously crippled as those of Agana, were still badly broken up. The million-gallon Maanot Reservoir, principal storage point for this part of the system, received its worst damage from light artillery and small arms fire. Equally bad were the numerous dead Japs which were found in and around the reservoir in all the unsavory stages of decomposition. The Japanese had evidently used the entire area as a camp site, as it was contaminated not only with their ill-smelling dead but also with their equally undesirable waste products. The main cast- iron 3-mile influent line from springs to reservoir and the effluent line leading downhill through 4 miles of rough country and jungle to Orote Peninsula had not fared so well either. Cast iron is at best a relatively fragile material, not at all adapted to withstanding heavy concussions, bomb fragments, shrapnel, steel-jacketed rifle bullets, and the crushing weight of heavy crawling tanks and bulldozers. Much of the pipe lay along Orote Peninsula, which was taken by Marine troops against fanatical Jap resistance in a ruthless eight-day battle that chewed up almost every foot of ground in the area. It chewed up the exposed pipe, too. And as if the normal forces of destruction were not enough, the hot and thirsty advancing Marines shot innumerable holes in the surface-laid pipe in the vain hope that some cool, fresh, drinkable water might spurt forth. As a result, one out of every three lengths of this 8- and 10-inch pipe was damaged beyond any hope of salvage. Over to the east on Agana Heights, the other half of the island’s water system had fared little better.
The urgent work of restoration started almost as soon as the beachheads were established. Of first-order importance was the problem of getting water to the incoming troops at Agat Beach, a task assigned on D plus One to the 53rd Battalion. Next day an inspection was made of damage to the Agat Reservoir and lines, which had just been captured by the Fourth Marines. Returning with salvaged pipe and captured Jap tools, the inspection party repaired the broken line and calked the joints with their torn- up socks and undershirts. These makeshift repairs made it possible to send water down to the first system-fed waterpoint established next day on Harmon Road above Agat. Fearful lest the Japanese still active in the higher hills might poison the springs which fed this reservoir, a detail from the repair force pushed far up beyond Agat reservoir to examine the headwaters. Several times the sharp-eyed patrol leader was obliged to halt the men while he carefully removed a taut wire or string from across the pipeline right of way—trigger lines leading to booby traps placed there by clever Jap sappers. On returning, the men learned that the area was still hotly disputed territory. Not until later that afternoon when the Army counterattacked throughout that region were the headwater springs secured against possible enemy sabotage. One of the men said: “Why the Japs didn’t poison those springs, we’ll never understand.”
Following a hurried examination of the over-all damage to the Almagosa system, it was decided to put men from the 59th Battalion to salvaging as much cast-iron pipe as possible from branch lines and to use these salvaged lengths to construct one usable run of pipe from Almagosa Springs, through the repairable Maanot Reservoir on Almagosa Mountain and thence down onto the heavily populated Orote Peninsula and out to the water-tanker dock site at Sumay near the outer end of the peninsula. This 7-mile line would bring fresh water to Orote’s thousands of encamped troops, and also to the big fleet-support water tankers. At the same time, orders were issued to the 25th Battalion to start reconstruction of the Agana system’s battered reservoirs and pump house. The city of Agafia had been taken from the Japs only a day or two earlier, so the entire Agafta area was still somewhat in dispute when the 25th Seabees went to work.
There followed the slow, hard work of gathering enough usable pipe for the long 7-mile trans-jungle run down Almagosa Mountain. At first the pipe lengths with bullet holes in them were rejected as useless. It soon became evident, however, that some means of repairing these sections would have to be found if the line was to be completed. There was no new pipe of any kind or size. All the usual Seabee materials had been left behind by these assault troops, to be brought in on later echelons—too much later to be of any use on the immediate job before them.
Numerous proposals were offered on how to repair bullet holes in cast-iron pipe; but none met with less enthusiasm than the suggestion made by the 5th Brigade officer charged with over-all supervision of the work. He calmly proposed that they plug the holes with ordinary soft brazing rod brazed in with a gas torch. He knew full well that under normal conditions no pipe-fitter in his right mind would try to braze over holes in a cast-iron pipe and then expect the plugs to hold under hundred-pound pressures. But conditions were far from normal. So they tried it—and it worked. Not in one but in hundreds of holes, the welder flowed in his little bronze plugs and useless lengths of pipe became usable. One of the 25th Seabees became quite expert at bullet- hole brazing, so much so that he finally tackled a seemingly impossible job and here, too, did the impossible. The task involved repairing a complete break in a piece of 8- inch cast-iron pipe, each section of which was firmly embedded in a large concrete anchor block which made removal of either piece virtually impossible. The pipe had ruptured in two, probably as a result of a heavy bomb or shell concussion. The faces of the clean break were still in perfect alignment; all that was needed was union of the two parts. This, Seabee Lane accomplished with his little rods and brazing torch, laying a neat bead all the way around the break. And to everyone’s surprise, the remarkable repair job held up and is still holding up under stresses well in excess of 125 pounds of pressure.
New calking lead, like new pipe, was another critical item made all the more conspicuous by its absence. In order to get any lead to repour the joints on the first 7 miles of rebuilt line, the Seabees were obliged to recover the lead from the old joints, prying the cold metal out of the broken pipe bells. Wherever the position of the pipe made it impossible to cold-break the joints, the lead- salvaging crew had to resort to a more primitive but equally effective method—that of simply building a small wood fire around each joint until the lead melted and ran out.
New oakum was another missing necessity on this “bricks-without-straw” project. Unlike the lead, the salvaged oakum wasn’t very satisfactory, so Seabee search parties set out to find a suitable substitute. Their efforts yielded results, too, when they combed over old Jap material dumps and came up with quantities of usable Jap calking yarn. Practically every joint on the long water lines now in service owes its yarn- calked watertightness to Hirohito.
But calking and lead are still useless without a container in which to melt the lead for pouring joints, and here, too, the assault-echelon Seabees found themselves badly under-equipped. They had a furnace but no lead pot or anything resembling one, so the Seabees visited the site of the old pre-war navy yard at Agafia where, according to Navy records, there had been a fairly well-equipped plumbing shop. They found the site all right and poked around in the tangle of wreckage which was all that remained of the shop building—but no lead pot. Finally someone suggested a G.I. helmet, again not because he thought it would work but just for the sheer lack of a better proposal. And oddly enough, it did the job, withstood the terrific furnace heat, and proved to be just the proper size to accommodate the pouring ladle. (Add one more use for the helmet-of-a-thousand-uses.)
Pipe-handling gear was another sorely needed item not brought ashore in the hectic early phases of operation. Lacking tripods and tackle and side-boom tractors, the Seabees moved a large part of the back-breaking 8- and 10-inch pipe by sheer man power and determination. It was pouring rain much of the time, too—rain that chilled the melting lead and quenched the little lead-melting fires around the pipe joints and filled the open trenches with a flood of water and knee- deep mud and turned the whole job site into a slippery quagmire. Guam takes seriously its reputation for 80 inches of rainfall in the four-month rainy season, and this was the rainy season. It was not uncommon to have more than an inch of rain in an hour and several inches in a day.
One of the natives working with the Seabees on the pipeline, Jose Quenza, was of considerable help on the pipe-handling work when he brought in his big slow-footed but powerful water buffalo, common beast of all island burdens. Together they dragged the unwieldy lengths of pipe in and out of the muddy trenches. Old Jose’s work was not unusual, however. There were many, many cases of similar co-operation between Seabees and loyal Guam natives, working hand in hand toward the defeat of a common enemy.
Toiling long hours in mud and jungle, under alternate blistering sun and drowning rain, the hard-working men of the 59th Battalion rebuilt those 7 miles of 8- and 10-inch pipeline in something like 40 days using nothing but salvaged pipe, reclaimed lead, captured Jap calking yarn, and generous quantities of inherent patchwork ingenuity. During that time, they picked up more than 3 miles of damaged surface-laid pipe, directly replaced more than 2 miles, and buried practically all of the line. In addition, they extended the line far out on to Orote Peninsula to serve more garrison forces and to reach the tanker mooring in outer Apra Harbor.
Other men of the 59th Battalion had been busy cleaning and repairing Almagosa catch basin and Maanot Reservoir. Here again the critical lack of materials was felt, this time in the form of cement. And here again the unwitting generosity of the Japs, who left large stores of their very fine cement behind them, provided the needed material. Concrete for patching the battered reservoir was mixed on the site from materials at hand, which were mostly coral limestone and coral sand. Lacking waterproofing compound, the men dumped liberal quantities of Hirohito cement into the mix. So the rehabilitated reservoirs, like the water lines, owe their impervious qualities to the reluctant generosity of the Japanese.
While 59th Seabees were sweating along the muddy slopes of Almagosa Mountain, 25th Seabees were exerting similar efforts in the heights behind the ruins of Agana. Lacking sufficient man power for water-line reconstruction, the 25th Seabees recruited a crew of some 12 or 15 native workers, mostly former employees of the Navy’s Public Works Department of Guam. The natives, working at traditional island speed, were rather slow-moving but their labor contribution was still of great value to the hard- pressed Seabees. And of even greater value was their rich stock of information about the island.
As with the Maanot Reservoir, captured Jap cement was used throughout the extensive repairs made on the shell-torn Agana and Asan Reservoirs. Here again coral stone and sand with copious quantities of good Jap cement made a fine impervious concrete that is holding up very well indeed.
Repairs to the highly important Agana pumping station called for a special kind of patchwork technique. Initially the station had housed four large electric-drive centrifugal pumps for lifting water from nearby Agana Springs 200 feet up into Agana Reservoir. When first viewed by Seabee repair crews, the station was something of a shambles, having been hit by numerous pieces of flying ordnance ranging from large shells to small rifle bullets. A number of the latter had penetrated the pump casings on the high-pressure or discharge side, and thus had created a ticklish problem in welding or brazing. Luckily none of the bullets had hit the impellers. Of the four pumps, two were repaired by brazing over the bullet holes, and a third was stripped for parts to repair the fourth, thus salvaging three pumps out of the lot. One of the electric motors had suffered from a different but even more effective type of damage—that of Jap curiosity. The motor, a big 75-hp. salient-poled synchronous machine, had been torn apart so effectively as to make reassembly a hopeless task. Evidently the patient little Japs who performed this mechanical dissection were not bent on sabotage but were interested only in how we Americans build electric motors. However, the end result was the same as deliberate destruction, for by the time the inquisitive Nips had removed rotor, poles, coils, insulation, and laminations, the poor motor was beyond any possible field repairs. Loss of this electrical equipment was not too important, though, as electric drive was out of the question. Sole source of electric power in large quantities had been the Agana Power Plant, which had been smashed to junk by pre-invasion naval gunfire. So the 25th Seabees turned to their old beach-head friends, the “amp-tracks.” They salvaged the 130-hp. six-cylinder gasoline engines from three of these reef-crawling tractors, set the engines up on improvised foundations placed right over the old motor bases, and proceeded to pump water at rates from 250 to 700 gallons per minute. From the standpoint of safe operation, it was fortunate that the pumps could push water up into Agana Reservoir at such high rates, for the Agana pumping station could only be operated in the daylight. Situated as it was near the dense tangle of Agafia swamp, the pumphouse was a favorite target for lurking Jap snipers whose harassing night-time firing during the early weeks of the occupation made it too risky to maintain a night watch in the pumphouse. So active was this enemy remnant that the Marines found it necessary to post a six-man detail on the spot.
Below Agana pumphouse lay the city of Agafia with its miles of cracked and broken water mains. Repairing these shattered arteries was a long and weary search for ruptured joints and open service connections. Agafia, located as it was along the curving shore line of Agafia Bay, received one of the greatest concentrations of short-range naval gunfire ever delivered in this or any war. Practically everything in the town (including the water pipes) was either demolished or so damaged as to make repairs almost impossible. When the pressure was first placed on the system, water spurted from a hundred different outlets—from open corporation cocks and cracked joints. Keeping pressure on the lines was virtually impossible until at least a part of the many leaks and breaks were patched. In this work, the Seabees owe a debt of gratitude to one of the natives, also a former Navy Public Works Department employee and pre-war keeper of the pipes of Agafia—one V. L. “Ben” San Nicolas. Ben and a lieutenant of the Fifth Brigade, patiently walked the blasted city streets, one with a head full of memories and the other with a more tangible hand full of maps, upon which he marked down Old Ben’s best guesses as to where the underground pipes, valves, and connections were located. Finally, by a slow process of elimination, the repair crews of the 25th Battalion were able to ferret out enough leaks to get at least a portion of the old pre-war city piping back into operation, thus providing water points at three locations on the outskirts of the town and so eliminating the necessity of the water trucks and trailers from camps north, south, and east of Agafia plowing through the rubble of the town in search of water.
Progress of the 25th Seabees on the battered Agafia facilities kept pace with those of the 59th Seabees in the Almagosa region, so that on or about September 18, some 59 days after the first assault wave hit the beach and 39 days after organized resistance had been officially terminated on the island, pipe lines and repair crews from these two battalions aided by survey crews from the 53rd Battalion had reconstructed the major portion of a large utility-type water system, working with practically nothing but salvaged materials and the few tools which they were able to carry ashore on their trip in with the assault troops.
Through all these grinding weeks, the men lived under what amounted to almost combat conditions. For the first week or two, “K” rations were the order of the day; later the menu included the almost equally unsavory “C” rations with their two-way gamut of “meat and vegetable stew” and “meat and vegetable hash.” During much of the time, hot chow was the exception rather than the rule. Working conditions were not pleasant, either. Out on the pipe lines, deep in jungles where lurked suicidal banzai- minded enemy snipers, the men never attempted to work unless they had as many more men surrounding them as an armed guard. By good luck and sharp eyes, there were only a few casualties and no deaths. There was enough excitement to keep the guards on their toes, though. For the first week or two, the men slept in foxholes, enduring the drowning mud and discomfort rather than risk being shot by a Jap sniper or a “trigger-happy” sentry. Later they pitched little pup tents that left much to be desired by way of shelter. Not until the battalion housekeeping gear came ashore weeks later were the men able to get out of the mud and into something resembling adequate quarters. Meanwhile they built water lines.
As Guam’s water system stands today, it would be a credit to any thriving municipality, and it’s still growing and improving. Present scope includes four spring-fed rehabilitated reservoirs serving two densely populated areas totaling some 20 to 30 square miles, and more than 15 miles of 6-, 8-, and 10-inch cast-iron lines rebuilt to deliver a daily output of treated water in excess of two million gallons with a peak system capacity of more than four million gallons per day, enough treated fresh water for a metropolis of fifty to seventy-five thousand inhabitants. Facilities also include a dock- side tanker line capable of delivering water just as fast as the big fleet tankers can take it aboard. Included also are three pumphouses, five chlorination stations, and six or eight well pumps serving outlying areas.
Water treatment on the system follows the standard municipal practice of using both pre- and post-chlorination. All water is pre-chlorinated by the barrel method, wherein the clear liquor from a barrel of saturated HTH solution is drained off and fed through a float-controlled orifice into the influent line leading to the reservoir. Influent is dosed to approximately seven parts per million. Post-chlorination injects approximately two parts per million to make nine parts per million total chlorination. After the first month of system operation, it was possible to carry residuals in excess of one part per million throughout the entire line without creating excessive taste in the water. All residuals were of the “flash” type, which indicated that chlorination was being carried in the desirable “break point” range. After several months of operation, during which the system has served thousands of troops, there has still not been a single case of illness traceable to the water supply.
In devising chlorination equipment, the 59th Battalion followed best Seabee traditions for making something out of practically nothing, the “something” being a small water wheel to drive a post-chlorinator located at the Maanot Reservoir. The chlorinator itself had been taken from a portable water treatment unit and had originally been powered by a small gasoline engine. Under the grueling 24-hour operating conditions, however, the little gas engine soon grew tired, leaving the chlorinator without power. So the clever Seabee improvisers went to work on an old HTH (high test hypochlorite) can with tin snips and soldering iron and came up with a neat little water wheel. This they drove from a stream of water piped down from above the reservoir, and coupled its shaft to the hypo-chlorinator. And unlike its gas-eating predecessor, the little fractional-horsepower wheel has been spinning ever since with practically no care or attention.
Full credit for the outstanding job of rebuilding Guam’s water system goes to officers and men of the 25th, 53th, and 59th Construction Battalions. To all officers and men contributing their courage and skill on this major reconstruction job goes the commendation “well done.” Without their contribution, the growth of Guam as an important major base in support of our fleet and ground forces would have been a slower and a less valuable development.
Discipline means subjection; but not subjection to officers. It means subjection of the body to the mind; it means the superiority of the human spirit to the last efforts of wind and weather, and the demons of fear, pain and fatigue. It is the element of Stoicism without which no man can do his living well.—Hocking, Morale and its Enemies.