OT Fort Stevens Historical Site

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SlyPokerDog

SlyPokerDog

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As I mentioned in the eclipse thread Mrs PokerDog and I went camping at Fort Stevens State Park. I haven't been there in 20 years but we wanted to go someplace out of town to see the sun show and figured the closeness to I-5 would reduce the traffic problems.

Fort Stevens is a really nice and well run state camping site.

But what was really fun and interesting considering recent events was the Fort Stevens Historical Site just north of the campground.

Fort Stevens was a coastal defense fort and saw active service from the Civil War days to the end of World War II. Fort Stevens State Park, in addition to excellent camping and RV facilities, has many interesting artifacts from its fort days that continue to intrigue visitors. Examples are the reconstruction of the Civil War earthworks – still in progress: Battery Russell, the gun battery in the line of fire from a Japanese submarine during World War II, and the near-by Pacific Rim Peace Memorial: Battery Mishler, a one of a kind battery and the underground command post for the Columbia River forts.

The historical site has only gotten better with time, I loved it as a kid, running around WWI and WWII military batteries and it's only gotten better with time. There are a ton of volunteers who give some amazing tours of the military base. The underground tour of the Mishler Battery has amazing. So was the army truck of the entire base. If you love military history this is a great trip!

But what was really interesting is that there is a very active civil war club that has put a ton of time, money and love into the military base.

Battery Russell was Oregon's only civil war military base, constructed to protect the Columbia in case the British entered the war on the side of the Confederacy. While the original civil war battery was torn down before the construction of the WWI batteries the civil war group has paid for archaeological excavations of the grounds of the original battery and the recreation of it. They've paid for the construction and installation of the only working cannon on the base. In addition they've paid for the construction and installation of bleachers next to the parade grounds where they hold annual civil war battle reenactments.

Now the Civil War battle reenactments aren't until Labor Day weekends but there was a nice gentleman there with an information table explaining and inviting people to come and watch.

Pictures here if you want to see past battle reenactments, I'll post just a few. - http://visitftstevens.com/civil-war-reenactment/

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Now these are "fine people". They have donated time, money, and love in preserving the history of our state and the Civil War. No matter what our president says this is not what was happening in Charlottesville. The Nazi's and KKK were not there to promote and protect history. There was no information tables, no restaurations, education, donation of time and money. What happened at Charlottesville was just an excuse to spread hate.

I've read many posts in many threads recently about how tearing down statues destroys history, well last weekend I got to see first hand the preservation and recreation of civil war history and it was pretty awesome. I invite all of to take a weekend and go support Oregon military history by visiting Fort Stevens.


http://visitftstevens.com/
 
Also the story of the Japanese sub that fired on the fort during WWII was fascinating.
 
A recreation of one of the rifles at the fort. It's pretty impressive. A retired machinists in Astoria made it by hand but died before it was finished.

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The merits of real historical preservation aside (and it is a fine pursuit):

SlyPokerDog said:
As I mentioned in the eclipse thread Mrs PokerDog and I went camping at Fort Stevens State Park.
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Have you ever told your wife that you call her "Mrs. Poker Dog" to other people? I wonder if that's what she signed up for when she married you.
 
Some pictures from the underground tour of Battery Mishler. Built in WWI it was an experiment by the army to create a battery that could fire 360 degrees. Very cool, little spooky, a must see.

A retired couple from Arizona does the tour. They spend summers here at Fort Stevens in their RV and conduct 2 tours a day, 7 days a week.

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Minstrel said:
The merits of real historical preservation aside (and it is a fine pursuit):



Have you ever told your wife that you call her "Mrs. Poker Dog" to other people? I wonder if that's what she signed up for when she married you.
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1. We're not married, lol.

2. She knows I call her Mrs PokerDog on here. She even has an account here and has posted a handful of times.
 
Let's review: Marching around with torches yelling hateful shit about blacks and jews.

vs

WHO WE ARE
The Northwest Civil War Council (NCWC) is a non-profit living history organization dedicated to educating the public and our members about the American Civil War. Through membership in the NCWC one has the opportunity to recreate portions of the past in educational drama at reenactments, through which the spectator, as well as the participant, discover and learn more about their history and the people who lived during the Civil War.

Living history is our hobby and is one of the most dynamic mediums available to those in pursuit of the past. A reenactment is a gathering of period personalities living and working within the event portraying their particular impression. Our members wear authentically reproduced clothing, utilize black powder weapons, cook over open fires and sleep in canvas tents while they participate in battle reenactments and military or civilian life. Many speak in the manner and use the etiquette of the mid-19th century, they write in journals of their experiences and work in 1st person at events -- all in the name of "living history".

The NCWC is an umbrella organization that represents the reenacting units making up its membership. Our active membership is primarily made up of people from all over Oregon and the northwest. The organization sponsors events throughout Oregon and supports events by participation in adjoining states. Those events include four battle events open to the public, 2 'non-public' events including winter quarters and our tactical. Members also participate in school presentations. The Club also marches in several parades and provides honor guards and salutes at funerals and memorial services. Members also research, locate and document unmarked Civil War veterans grave sites, then acquire period head stones from the Federal Government, prepare the foundation for the headstones and have a period memorial service while marking those grave sites in cooperation with the Sons of Union Veterans.

We also have been supporting the restoration of Ft. Hoskins in Benton County. Events sponsored by the NCWC are organized by reenactor coordinators and approved by its board of directors and planning committee for its yearly reenactment calendar.

If you have the urge to step back in time for that split second when you really feel like you are there, or if you want to recognize the sacrifice our ancestors made by following in their footsteps in this way, or if you are interested in learning about the intricacies of the mid-19th century by utilizing the knowledge of others as well as your own research to portray a character of the Civil War explore our pages and get involved in this most unusual hobby by joining a unit today!

https://www.nwcwc.net/who-we-are.html

​

One is about preserving history, the other is about spewing racist shit.
 
I-25 was the culprit the night Fort Stevens was fired on. Although I never thought they were firing on the fort.

I remember that night very well, hiding under the kitchen table with my momma. She was scared out of her wits. I remember thinking, What is wrong with momma? Well the next day we found a desturbed sand dune a few hundred yard away from our house, where one of the shells hit. I dug into it and Viola! I found a big hunk of brass. It looks like a chunk of a 5.5" projectile! A farm not very far from us also found some of the shell fragments, Hitchman was their name. Years later the guy became my wifes step father, err married to her mother anyway.

I still have the shell fragment. Wonder if it has any value? I think those and few lobbed at Goleta on the Santa Barbra Channel, were the only shots fired at the US mainland.

So I don't think the sub was firing on the Fort, just scaring the shit out us that lived in the area. I don't think they put a round anywhere near the Fort.

http://www.beachconnection.net/news/battruss061912_510.php
 
MarAzul said:
I-25 was the culprit the night Fort Stevens was fired on. Although I never thought they were firing on the fort.

I remember that night very well, hiding under the kitchen table with my momma. She was scared out of her wits. I remember thinking, What is wrong with momma? Well the next day we found a desturbed sand dune a few hundred yard away from our house, where one of the shells hit. I dug into it and Viola! I found a big hunk of brass. It looks like a chunk of a 5.5" projectile! A farm not very far from us also found some of the shell fragments, Hitchman was their name. Years later the guy became my wifes step father, err married to her mother anyway.

I still have the shell fragment. Wonder if it has any value? I think those and few lobbed at Goleta on the Santa Barbra Channel, were the only shots fired at the US mainland.

So I don't think the sub was firing on the Fort, just scaring the shit out us that lived in the area. I don't think they put a round anywhere near the Fort.

http://www.beachconnection.net/news/battruss061912_510.php
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You should donate that to the Fort Stevens museum.
 
MarAzul said:
Well, you never know when a relic of history will become offensive to someone. As you can see, you can not trust anything to public keeping.
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Samurai Sword of Pilot Who Bombed Oregon

Brookings, Oregon



If a bomb falls in a forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

ORBRObomb_nobuofujita_pd.jpg

Nobuo Fujita, warrant officer in the Japanese Imperial Navy.

During World War II, Japan attacked Oregon. It may have made a sound, but nobody in America heard it.

Wars are affected by perceived threat as much as direct combat action. Civil War Confederate cavalry noisily rode back and forth through the woods, mimicking a larger force, and fooling observing Union troops to delay attacks. Modern fears of terrorism freak out Americans and consume resources, even though actual fatalities are rare (like the meme says, TODDLERS WITH GUNS TAKE MORE LIVES).

Misdirect the enemy, erode homeland confidence. Let them think your army of toddlers is at the gates.

World War II was full of such feints and psych-outs. The Oregon mission of the Japanese Imperial Navy was designed to shatter assumptions of U.S. mainland invulnerability (six months earlier, America punctured Japan's mainland invulnerability with Doolittle's long-range, one-time bomber raid).

On September 9, 1942, a Japanese sub stealthily surfaced off the coast of southern Oregon, and launched its small E14Y floatplane with a crew of two, carrying a pair of 170 lb. thermite bombs. Target: the highly combustible forests just east of Brookings, Oregon.

The pilot, Nobuo Fujita, flew inland several miles, let loose an incendiary bomb, saw an explosion, dropped a second bomb, and returned to the sub. Twenty days later, the sub returned to America with Fujita and his plane, and dropped two more bombs in the Grassy Knob Wilderness near Port Orford (These failed to detonate, and the site has never been found).

ORBROsamurai_dk6899.jpg

Model of the E14Y floatplane that bombed Oregon.

Fujita was hailed as a hero in Japan. But in a time before the Weather Channel, Japan was unaware of how wet that season had been on the Oregon coast. The bombs didn't ignite much of anything in the damp woods, and the attack was a failure. Local spotters found the first bomb site that day -- a crater with smashed, smoldering trees in a 75-foot-wide circle. The U.S. government and military kept it out of the newspapers, and Americans were unaware they had been bombed.

Japan never mounted another U.S. mainland bomber mission (although it did launch balloons with incendiaries in 1944 and 1945, some drifting as far as Nebraska and Texas, and killing a group of picnickers in Oregon).

Twenty years after the Brookings bombing attempts, the failed mission was no longer secret. The Brookings Junior Chamber of Commerce, planning the town's annual Azalea Festival, thought it would be really neat to find the unknown pilot and invite him as an honored guest. Townspeople initially were split, either angry about paying tribute to a former enemy, or proud of this step towards international goodwill. The Junior Chamber prevailed, ID'd the pilot, and sent the invitation.

ORBROsamurai_dk6898.jpg

Samurai sword display at the library.

Fujita and his family traveled to Brookings for a ceremony on September 9, 1962, anniversary of the attack. Fujita presented the city with his ancestral 400-year-old Samurai sword (he carried it with him in the plane on the original mission). It turned out that after the war, the man had become a pacifist, and hoped giving this valuable gift to a former enemy, "in the finest of Samurai traditions," would serve to "pledge peace and friendship."

He was not mistaken. Fujita was made an honorary citizen of Brookings, and the sword was proudly put on display in City Hall. Fujita and his family members returned several more times to his adoptive (bombed-but-not-burned) city. In 1974, Fujita's son viewed the recently rediscovered bomb site from the air. In 1992, Mr. Fujita planted a coastal redwood at the bomb site, as his apology to the forest.

ORBRObombed_dk6104.jpg

Japaneses Bombing Site Trail.

In 1995 Fujita again attended the Azalea Festival, and transferred the sword to the public library, its current home. The sword is mounted in a glass case in the main room. There are small models of his plane and the submarine. The library maintains a clippings notebook you can ask to see. A plaque accompanying the sword describes Fujita as "the only enemy to bomb the U.S. from the air."

When Nobuo Fujita died in 1997, his obituary in the New York Times noted that in 1962 he'd brought the sword to Brookings for another reason. He planned to kill himself with it if the townspeople were still mad at him (most weren't). In 1998 his daughter and son-in-law traveled to the first bombing site to scatter some of his ashes.

Today, the bombing site is a point of interest, marked on maps. To get there visitors need a vehicle with high clearance and patience to navigate 12 miles of unpaved, winding National Forest roads -- called the Japanese Bombing Site Trail. The site features interpretive signs, and the planted trees. The remote location, with its steep, uninhabited mountains and bubbling streams, feels like the last place you'd find a war landmark.

http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/22450
 
I was just there on Saturday. It is a fascinating place. I went there as a kid, and forgot...and thought that Battery Russell was the only one.
 
julius said:
I was just there on Saturday. It is a fascinating place. I went there as a kid, and forgot...and thought that Battery Russell was the only one.
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The old military vehicles on display was really interesting. They did a parade through the campsite each night.
 
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