Initials Annex Made Easy

Initials annex

[Music] welcome all of you to the Hingham Heritage Museum the home of the Hingham Historical Society I see some new faces here and that's terrific this has become quite a lively place lots going on whether you want to do personal research or come to events like this you know visit the the store there's many things going on and so we welcome all of you to become members if you want to learn more about the museum any of us with with these badges on can help you out or anyone at the door but welcome so happy to see you all here this is the third in a seven part series or 2019 2020 lecture series waves of change and we have had another sellout crowd today so that's terrific my name is Eileen McIntyre and I am honored to serve on the board of the Hagin Historical Society and to co-chair with Elizabeth Janus who's standing at the door there the Society's Education Committee the committee chose the period between the middle of the nineteenth century and the middle of the 20th century to focus on for our lecture series over the course of this next year because it represents a period of such extraordinary change in our town much of this change is reflected in the people and places that are such an important part of our town today and our topic this afternoon is a really terrific example of that our two speakers today will share a fascinating and sometimes surprising array of photos maps and stories about an important part of our towns 20th century history that has left a lasting imprint in the form of bear Cove park and wampa Tuck State Park today's program also will provide insights on lesser-known aspects of u.s. naval history in the first half of the 20th century and I'll now introduce both of our speakers they will speak one after the other but I'll introduce them both now first Scot McMillan who you see there on the left Scott's father Carlisle McMillan who was known as Mac was stationed at the Hingham Naval ammunition depot then situated along the back River as a staff sergeant with the US Marine Corps detachment after he returned from World War two service in the Pacific the family lived nearby on Fort Hill Street as a child Scott rode his bike to the gatehouse often to get permission to enter the Depot and once inside he could play with the children of the commander of the base who lived at what is now the home of the South Shore conservatory Scott graduated from Hingham High School in 1968 and served in the Marines before joining the Hingham fire department in 1973 as a firefighter Scott served as the superintendent of the fire alarm using the electrical training he acquired while in the service Scott and his wife Cheryl raised two sons in Hingham he retired in 2003 from the fire department and was presented with the Robert B Olsen award for outstanding service today Scott is a part-time park ranger at the air Cove Park serves on the Hingham Veterans Council and as commander of the Hingham American Legion Post 120 he also as a member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars and chair of the trustees of Hingham G AR Hall among Scott's honors are his selection in 2009 as veteran of the year for Hingham and in 2015 as citizen of the year selected by the Hingham Journal most importantly though for the topic of today's program is Scott's role in 2009 in co-founding the green dock museum at bear Cove Park a fascinating place to visit if you want to learn about the rich history of Camp Hingham and the US Navy ammunition depot and annex about which we'll hear quite a bit today our second speaker will be Jim Rose who co-founded the green dock museum with Scott Jim was born in 1946 but his parents James and Dorner Rose met at the Hingham Naval ammunition depot where they both work during World War two his father was an ordnance leading man from 1941 1962 he's work at the Depot included top-secret projects such as the VT fuse and guided missile assembly both of which we'll hear about today his mother worked in the rocket plant assembly line Jim was raised in Rockland and Quincy he received his BA in geography from Boston University in 1970 and then served during the Vietnam War as a cartographer for the US Corps of Engineers in 1973 he transferred to the Air Force Reserve and became a public affairs officer he retired from his military service at Hanscom Air Force Base in 1996 and Jim then worked as a graphic designer for several local ad agencies and high-tech firms before retiring in 2001 Jim and his wife Cheryl live in Hopkinton he has published several papers on military history such as Hingham at war oral history of new england combat veterans and surviving new new england's u-boat war Jim currently serves as the Friends of wampa Tuck news editor and wampa Tuck Park historian we thank both Scott and Jim for their service to our country and to our community their formal remarks today will run about an hour or so leaving some time for questions so now let's welcome Scott Macmillan Thank You Eileen well as we can see John Davis Governor John Davis from Hingham also was the Secretary of the Navy from 1897 to 1902 and he he was a secretary of the Navy and at a time when things were starting to go build up around here and he and Teddy Roosevelt who was the it really didn't get along with Teddy Roosevelt and when Teddy Roosevelt became the president in 1901 they kind of had an old falling and it caused governor long to resign his post as Secretary of the Navy but we think that he may have already got started and getting this show on the road with the hang of mission depot they were looking for a place up and down the East Coast - to build a naval ammunition depot this is how it happens to be John Long's house on Cottage Street there's a bird sanctuary across the street from number 48 Cottage Street you can still go there today it's one of Inghams parks so is the origin of the park you can see they they went up and down the East Coast and in 1903 they decided to on Hingham as a space because of the rolling hills and a lot of its closeness to the water the rail lines and all the kinds of things that would make it a nice spot for a Navy base these are some of the newspaper articles back in that back in the day it explains some of the properties you can't really read that it gives the acreage and the and the amount of money that the people were paid when the Navy took up by eminent domain some of the acreages were over a hundred acres at the time so they were pretty sad to see that the people had owned it were pretty sad to see it go but as it is today it's kind of a nice spot to to walk and visit and otherwise it would have been all built up with with houses and stuff along the river this is some of the property the different properties in the green is the Hingham side the blue is obviously the river and on the Weymouth side the great ESCA Park and you can see the different plots of land some of them are pretty large one of them was owned by Reuben Hersey I believe that was close to a hundred acres or a little over and that was taken and I believe 1906 we have a list of all of the two Hingham names of the people who owned property there and what the Navy paid them at the park in the in the museum there you go some of the work okay Reuben Hearst he had over 180 there's a group over a hundred pieces of property in Hingham were taken by the Navy and the world like I said fishing lodges there were all kinds of farms everything else along the river's edge hunting hunting lodges a camp Ingham now is another part of the park in in 1909 camping opened up they were kind of figuring out what was going to be done down the road they new york was getting ready for battle and you know unrest over there so they built camp a.m. which trained about 600 men at a time in the Navy and they also took on in 1917 they they took bumpkin Island they was a hospital for children a children's hospital and they took bumped in Island and they made that into another camp and it was a hospital for any any infectious diseases if any other soldiers caught infectious diseases they could put them out there which didn't happen so they made it another training station that took about seventeen hundred and fifty sold sailors at a time over there this is the site of the World War one pier 1914 you can see the the bridge in the background is the back of a bridge that bridge was a pivot bridge it did it turned and would let the barges come in and and out the building that you see on the far left that is the is the dock house for that particular pier so they were leveling the land you can see there's a little bit of water on the right make they filled in and leveled it all up this is a picture of the barracks at the camp Ingham and these are all wooden barracks is I think the next slide actually shows a little bit better that's basically the same picture with walkways around and they had each each group of baricza's would hold about 200 sailors and they had three different groups of building so they could put all about 600 sailors at a time and as the war got started they actually brought in tents and they added to that so it held quite a few more than the 600 that it was originally built for this is the parade deck you can see the barracks is on the left this is the mess hall in the middle on the right side the YMCA is off further to the right was connected to the EMS hall and that's where the gentlemen could go and and write letters and they could buy postcards and all kinds of stuff and send them home so you see the YMCA is there's the mess hall again the YMCA is just tucked down to the rights of all right in the middle of that photograph these these pictures were all black and white and they've been colorized to kind of make it stand out a little bit better these are two pictures from 1918 the top picture is the call to ship's company those would have been the sailors that would have worked at the base you see the ones in the white on the right there they would have been the cooks and the ones in the middle you can see the the dixie caps they would have been the workers then you've got the middle pot with just a sail as they were probably the the training training staff on the Left you've got the the band and I believe the fire department was in there somewhere that that picture is actually much longer than what you see there the bottom picture is one of the graduating classes that would have gone through there about 1918 this is a bunch of the civilian workers that the base hired there was about 2,000 civilian workers that worked in the air at the maximum now that was right around World War 2 1944 so in between the wars they had the WPA which is the the work Progress Administration our aim back to World War one no that was the there's a better picture of the YMCA tucked in at that fire end of the building with some of the some of the sailors and some of the civilian probably teachers and stuff this is inside the mess hall in the in the kitchen this is the main gate at the hang of Naval ammunition people probably on Fort Hill Street by Thomas Autobody where it is now it's a little different look than what it is you can see the little guard shack in the back there was where the where the marine would have stood in inclement weather we actually have that building in the entrance to bear called Park now I did a little restoration on that a few years ago and found on the inside of that door the gentleman's initials carved in the in the door well with 1918 as a date you're all familiar with that that is the commander of the basis House quarters a which is now the Conservatory of Music that was taken in 1922 they have since has obviously added on to that the conservatory has done a fantastic job up there restoring that building and keeping it up Herbert L Foss is the Medal of Honor recipient from the spanish-american war he he is not originally from Maine but I mean from Hingham but he grew up in Maine and moved to hang him and and settled in Hingham after he came back from the spanish-american war and um he actually he worked in the depot as a civilian he had the largest funeral procession and hang them at the time with military honors he was buried as the Fort Hill Cemetery this is that same pier that we saw in the previous photograph that showed the bridge in the background this is the pier that was in dire need of some work this is some of the WPA workers that in the 1930s and stuff they they were really everyone was looking for a job after the oppression so everyone was was happy and thrilled to get a job and it was good wages and they did a great job over there building some of the house that they read they removed a lot of the houses and the buildings of magazines and all of the different filling houses and stuff that you'll see further on this is them decking the reed ekang the pier down it by the back were of a bridge that's a better picture of the bridge the pilings a lot of the pilings that are there you can still see those today and there is an existing road that right across from the 99 restaurant is an existing road that still goes to the old the old bridge and there it is completed after a couple of years of work and that wooden section is completely gone now there is a we do have a fence up back where the grass line is and there's a couple of picnic picnic tables on that foundational with that building buildings stood there's an aerial view from 1940 of the whole Depot you can see Beale Street coming down cutting that top corner off Fort Hill Street is along the bottom edge and all of those large rectangular buildings are what they call magazines that's where they would have stored all of the munitions that worse was made and they you really can't see see it here but they're uh what they call barricades there were three barricades that will built big cement abutments on the side and it would back the the trains in that will load it with munitions in case anything happened an accident or anything that would blow straight up in the air wouldn't wouldn't hit anything else so the three barricades probably about nine o'clock on the on that map and you can see the river and then the Weymouth side you can still see one of the right under the word Reddy under the E you can see the drive-in movie theater so a lot of the sailors would go at night they would go up to that and they could watch the movie from on this side of the river this is the marine detachment from 1941 you can see some of the Marine Barracks on the back and this would have been up in the hill with the DPW stands now this is the VT fuse line that they were talking about earlier it was a top-secret thing for World War two what it was it sent a radio wave they had a little tiny fuse in the the V T stands for vacuum tube and it had a little tiny fuse inside the cartridge and when they fired it up in the air it sent a radio wave out around the projectile and anything that came within that radio wave the projectile would blow up was it proximity feels and it cut down the amount of rounds that it took around is one bullet originally it took twenty four hundred rounds to shoot down an enemy plane when they they came up with this invention it cut that down to four hundred so it it really was a top-secret thing and they didn't want that to fall in the enemy hands this is a letter I don't know if you can read the letter on the side here by General Patton he said that that was one of the most devastating things in World War two next to the atomic bomb this is a obviously super me a magazine from 46 and on the back cover of it is a picture of the radio brain PT fuse this gentleman here Norman Connors was stationed at the Depot and he actually invented the full way palette which made it so much easier for the gentlemen to pick these these items up and placed them down on the on the on the deck of a ship or anything else because before that you could only pick them up from front and back and it was you know when they were piling them in there it made it difficult to to raise and lower the pallets and go pick them up so he came up with a full way pallet and it revolutionized the whole basically the industry and he he went ahead and became a magazine he the he he had all kinds of inventions after that and he just he made it big this is them preparing some of the projectiles to be shipped off this is one of the filling houses the F house they had a number of filling houses in there the fire museum is actually in one of the filling houses that used to be in the depot next slide I think there's another so what they would do is they would most of them were painting you know they painted them up but they loaded these up and they placed them on the palace there's a full way palette that you can see right there you could run the forks from the fork truck truck in from either direction all four ways and that's at the D house or the G filling house gives me explosive D was a orange powder and when they were doing the filling and the people that would come home my grandfather worked in there he was actually in that picture of the VT fuse also and they would come home and they would be covered with this orange tint you know from the from the explosive D there's an aerial view of port is a the conservatory again a pretty nice little place to hang your hat I guess if you were a commanding officer with your family now the railroad in there went to every building every building had a railway and a dock in front of it so that they could deliver the munitions store them and then when they needed to go pick them up they would everything was all numbered and lettered if they were in a building say this was the inside the magazine they would have they would have the letters coming down the side ABCD efg and then in the girders up above they would have one two three four five six or if you needed to go to to a two it was basically just you know they would know exactly where to go and pick the stuff up and they would wheel it out and every every magazine had a loading dock right outside with a train would pull up right in front of it and he could just load it right into the into the train they would drive it down to the to the pier which had its own loading dock they would drive it right up they would offload the munitions onto the onto the pier itself they had elevators in the pier built right into the pier where they could raise and lower it to the height of the barge loaded in the barge and that's what the green dock house was it was a records keeping building they would keep track of what went came and went so the the railroad tracks it was a number of miles of railroad tracks in there these are some of the other these are civilian workers and you can see they were the emergency electrical workers they worked on the telephone system kept all of the power up and running there was a number of workers in there that the whole place was a city it had its own telephone exchange it had its own electrical system it had its own water system it had three huge water towers and it also had two underground water tanks of about 250 million gallons each so they were built up in the highest part of the depot and so if they you know if they lost the towers you know the water would be still you still had pressure in the in the fire hydrants and everything else so they had their own fire department they had their own electrical like I say telephone workers electrical workers water department everything this is the Navy band from World War two you can see most of them are black and these are some of the names some of the big name jazz plays were actually stationed at the depot and they would go around to the different bases and into Boston and they would go over to the shipyard and every time they launched the ship they would they would play you know play song but I don't know if any of you recognize any other names up there but some of them were pretty well pretty well-known now I don't know if you know that building in the background but this is a either 4th of July parade possibly or Memorial Day I don't know exactly which but all of the troops participated I can remember growing up as a kid on Fort Hill Street every Memorial Day they would send a group of Marines over and they would fire a salute at each of the cemeteries for Memorial Day and that's another feeling familiar picture Talbot's and that was the servicemen's recreation center and also I believe at the the behind where the post offices now there was another famous meeting place for the young ladies and the sailors follow Rathskeller I believe it was also the community center was another rum was another service men's hangout now with the this is it at the peak of all activity this is the personnel that were there there were about 3,000 civilians like I say they a lot of them women at the time because all the men were obviously away or they were deemed unfit for service but they could still do loading of ammunition and stuff so all the world 375 Marines there at this particular time at the peak 721 Navy and plus-or-minus it went up and down all all over the place so this was at the peak now I mean in in between wars it would drop off sometimes going down to like 50 people just to keep it up and you know keep everything moving this is the 50 year plaque the 1904 was the date when the Navy put feet on the ground the frit the first opening of the whole thing and so 1954 would have been the 50th year anniversary this plaque was in front of the administration building the that is over on Beale Street or was Beale Street where they built those five or six houses along the left side just recently it was just tucked in behind there and the storm that the plaque was on is actually still there somebody stole the plaque long ago because it was bronze and this is the entrance to the depot obviously back in the 40s and 50s somewhere around and they had this one you really can't tell too much because it's no vehicles in sight but that was the original Navy sign the the two posts that you sign used to sit on are still there as is the lamp post you don't know if you can really see it that well there there's a lamp post right in front of the number of the with a credit union used to be that's the gatehouse the credit credit union there's a square box up between the peak of that house with a number in it so this is back in like I say 1940 50 assault and so this was the gatehouse my grandfather actually does supposedly he was a Mason and he did a lot of work in the air and supposedly he built that that gatehouse did some work on that the credit union started out as a small little section and the section in the back they actually had three or four overhead garage doors and they parked the MPS jeeps inside and now that is the school department uses that building for there they're the bus drivers and stuff they come in and and do all the paperwork and stuff in them that's another picture of the gate house now this is a little later this is probably in the 50s you can see the those the blinds the shutters that are on the building with the little anchor cut into them it's still still there I believe and you can see some of the old pickup trucks in the background there they look like they're in the 50s and this is a hanging Patriot a Quincy Patriot Ledger article from 1962 you can't really read that but this is the the closing of the base this one gentleman is doing an inventory on the 16 inch 50 caliber projectile and those things are as you can see they're all the 5 feet tall and they weigh about 2200 pounds and those the those a fired from the battleships and they can they can shoot those or all those things out about 20 miles and pretty accurately to over the horizon so if you're in the in a battleship it makes quite a noise and if you come to the museum which is opened on the 24th of this month in the in the park from 10:00 to noon we have videos of the battleships firing the 16-inch guns and it's quite a quite a sight this is the entrance to back off park now and in by the Model Railroad Club off of Fort Hill Street this is the main gate and this was given to the given to the town by the federal government as used for a park to be used by the general public this is a map from John Richardson who who's the first chairman of the vehicle park committee and I don't know if you can see it or not but he when he did the map he put on and on putting all these little intricate things of where he found different things like he found the there's a barge like a 1,700 barge from the 1700s any of the animals that he saw at the time he would would write down he saw an eagle at a certain time and in a certain place and uh it's pretty it's pretty neat the way he kind of like everything is there little little squirrel hill you know different different things these are some of the pictures of the buildings later later on after they were decaying before they actually got taken down and this is inside the ice house which is close to the conservatory the ice house there was a pawn right there and they used to harvest the ice and they would store it in this building and the ceiling was stuffed full between the rafters with with sawdust to keeping it use it as an insulation so it was about I want to say the roof was probably a good two feet thick and it was all full of sawdust and the walls were all insulated so they could cut that ice put that ice in there in the winter and still have ice going in the middle of summer this is another picture of the Marine barracks which is up on top of the hill with the DPW is now that's the original flagpole which is long gone the dog graveyard is up on that hill - there's two Marine Corps mascot dogs buried up on that hill and when they passed away they were given full military honors with finding a 21-gun salute in the whole bit pretty impressive and there's pictures of those those at the Museum - this is inside one of the old barracks is that as it was getting decayed and you know people would break in and smash things and and it was getting to be a real nuisance so they started tearing them down and about this in the 70s and 80s this is one from the 80s obviously you can see the William importantly in the background you see the the shipyard the smokestack over there the the pier that's the old world war one pier down by 3ei you can see the building in the back of that is one of the buildings that was torn down by the state actually that little area was owned by the state we had a couple of murders take place in that state on that state property of a number of years ago and so they came in and they tore everything down and and cleaned all that stuff up there's another picture of the same you can still see the pier which was this is actually the World War 2 pier and you can see the building in the back in the background just beyond back and up here is my the doc house Museum you have a little small one down right that's a shadow but you can see the little bit to the right right there right there is the dark House Museum and you can see that's the the pier is still standing at that time and that was like I say four feet off the ground the railroad the railroad track went to every one of the magazines and you can still see the remnants of the right railroad track some places there's the the dock house Museum this is inside there's a ton a ton of pictures this is this is fairly old now this picture it's really old but that uniform that was like father's uniform he was like I say stationed here in 1944 he met my mother was from Hingham and it was originally from Georgia they hit it off and ended up marrying my mother and the rest is as we say history this is one of the events that takes place over in the by the museum in the river they the Hingham high school regatta team rolls up and down the river and they they were over there in the spring and I usually practicing and matter of fact they just they just cleaned all the boats up last week and got them out of there so they they practice in the river and they have a couple of meats every once in a while where they'll have five or six high schools all compete in the river this is an up-to-date map of the vehicle park as you can see the green section is is bare golf park the white that you see is mostly the private homes and uh Hingham Woods fields called the conservatory park but that was all included in the base at one time you can see the outline is the Beale Street Fort Hill Street area so it was close to a thousand acres in there the park itself is about close to 500 now we just received a few more acres from the state not too laughter we had the little incident that took place in there there's a couple of gates is a the the roadway that comes in off of Fort Hill Street across from the railway station is the main entrance to the park so that's the main entrance of the park there's also another entrance over on Beale Street by Lynch field and the green block house museum is you can see that one next to the K and back right just to the right of the K and back down a little right right there as a dark house museum right all right I guess I can give it to Jim thank you very much well the military history of the annex actually begins with chief wampa talk he was killed in a raid by the Mohawk Indians in 1669 and they were aided by the French militia and womper Tuck means white deer and he's he was born in 1627 his father was Chicka tobot and he died 1633 and checker topic means house of fire and they were from the Massachusetts tribe and that means said dwellers of the hills so apparently they made two big deeds and one was 1655 and 1665 where most of the South Shore was transferred transferred to the early settlers so early in July the United States felt that they were eventually going to get into the World War two because they're aiding the British over in the Battle of the Atlantic and so they decided to take over some properties over there and there are 60 homes were taken and they needed about just 3,700 acres for their operation and the towns were hanging class at situate Norwell and so this is one of the homes that that was over there and there's three still left in fact if you go through the front gate to whap it like State Park and take a left there's three still left these are the barricaded sliding sidings being constructed there are 20 put in and they'd use those to park trains in overnight near 300 feet long and they were constructed in such a way to send the blasts up okay and this is what it looks like now some of them are totally filled up okay so this is the u-87 and it was in Boston Harvard 19 let's see 1942 and it's some two ships of mine Boston Harbor and 92 people died and that was at the beginning of the Battle of the Atlantic and it was such a horrific experience in the beginning that throughout the war I think that within the torn-up mile limit the Germans sunk 20 of our ships causing 303 deaths and 819 survivors and as far as ships sunk and lives lost the first six months of the war were DeLeon in Pearl Harbor so in the beginning of the war one ship was sunk every four hours but eventually that was turned around in 1943 when they had more anti-submarine measures and they broke the code - okay this is some from a coal ship that was sunk by the u85 3 and it was off for rhode island it was about five miles from shore and on these freighters sometimes they beyond and this one was a 5-inch shell and it's an inspection slip and you can see on the lower half the the initials of the people that worked on it or inspected it from the depot so the ship was sunk and twelve people died and eventually that was summoned 45 and may 5th they caught the you with eight five three the day later and they sunk that but that you would also sunk the USS Eagle off of Cape Elizabeth Maine and forty nine sailors were killed on that so and this is one of the explosive magazines there's still there's still something there there's about six left but they're about half as big as this but there are constructed in such a way that if they did have an explosion they would be sent up the power of the explosion would go up there one hundred and eighty eight of them at the time now six left so this is a classification yard so when the trains came in the first thing they do is they decide what goes where within they Depot and they come here and there be two tracks on one side well actually four and the same thing on the other side and then they'd be set up according to what goes where fuses or rockets so and these are three engineers that work there or con Wayne school and her goes from Hingham Herick Henningsen and you'll see in the next slide that inscriptions still there if some yeah the transfer building it's only about a part of a mile away that says Friday the 13th 1956 they put it on there and here's the transfer of building so in the the trains would come down and they transfer their load from the Train to the trucks they were parked along they're kind of like a loading zone to the right and that's what's going on there and sometimes the trucks have come to the transferor building and they would take warheads to New London Connecticut okay that's my father the VT fuses and that that's where the VG fuse operation occurred and the VT fuses there are five different types radio acoustic optical pressure and magnetic and this is the boiler house there were two of them there and they were a Coal Fired a rocket motor building and attached this on the left they had like a a walkway that was covered and all the lockers were there and on the other side was this overhead conveyor belt that led to the powder house and went over the street you know also the railroad tracks and down from that walkway that was covered the lockers went to the lunchroom that's it there these pictures were taken I'd say about maybe a little over ten years ago and they took all these buildings down about eight years ago six to eight years ago this is the inhibited building and this is where they applied inhibitors on the rockets and what that did is there are plastic strips and it would cut the burn down so it's a steady flow otherwise you'd have an explosion or burn off too quick so you'll see in the next slide what the inhibitor is it's like a cruciform with a propellant and there are the plastic inhibitors that would control the burn so and then that's what the people would do mainly woman worked here and they were applied in these booths here and they had these ducts above and take all the fumes out supposedly to go and back and there was a fan house and back of this building but the problem was the fumes of silver whelming that--do when my mother worked there they had to open all the windows and doors even in the winter and they had to operate this whole thing where there weren't too close on big coats because the fumes are so intense and a lot of them got from what I heard from a an inspector TNT heart which is um I looked it up and the TNT heart is like a troponin protein given off by the heart when it's under stress so a lot of them had that particular problem and this is the administration building that was as he come through the main gate it was on the left and it started out as a construction building just for the construction work is but they turned it into an ad building had been building and this started off it's got a missile service unit two one five headquarters and they'd service three different well actually two different types of missiles there and after that closed down this this is built in the late 50s and then in the the 60s it became a production for the land mines the XM 47 land mines from Vietnam and then after that it was the headquarters for the hundred and eighty fourth infantry brigade and they took that down 2005 this is George you need he was one of the guided-missile officers that worked at that gumshoe plant he died too last February and this is one of the missiles that was serviced there the Taira missile it's about 15 feet long 13.5 inches wide and the other one is the terrier and the terrier the thuria missile actually shot down a Meghan a couple of MiG's in Vietnam from the USS Biddle in the USS stirrup there's one there and what they do at the goddess missus got a missile service unit they would test the missiles they dumb test them here and then they bring them out to the ships out in the Boston Harbor and load them there through a barge and there's George neaten 2014 and the guy on the left is gamin he was a park director at the time there's a shelter on the right and that was found in the back river by a friend of ours he was a finisher petaa anyways he was clam digging and used to be a crane operator at full river okay this is the burning area was cleanup about eight years ago but they burnt off a lot of the powder there cordite know that deep powder which is ammonium perchlorate and I looked that up as far as some hazardous material and deep powder causes kidney cancer and that's what my father died of and when he was 65 years old so we think it might have been to this place we're not sure of course but that was a speculation and they had a lot of fires here fires and explosions and sometimes the local fire departments were brought in to put them out okay so here the contaminants being removed so that was about eight years ago and this is a ship that was sunk on May 11th 1944 and it was sunk off of Boston Harbor about fourteen miles they were burning off rockets and they had a fire and then a big explosion and it's sunken of a crew of 30 117 died and the whole Hingham contingent 11 guys crewmen sailors they're all killed and they're all blacks and at that time a lot of the black servicemen were given menial jobs like stewards handling ammunition and there was another explosion and port Chicago in California were over 200 of them were were killed to an explosion and a lot of them refused to go back to work after that explosion and they put them in prison eventually they were released after about a month but that was the 1944 okay and Stanford Seneca was a full-blooded chief from the Seneca tribe from New York and he died at the ammunition depot because he inhaled fumes when he was cleaning shells and Frank cross he owned bills outboard on 3a and he was working at the mine anchor building and he screwed down the I guess it's an ox tattoo tight in a blue up in his chest and when I went to talk to him over there he he said he kept on getting the fragments of that shell out of his chest every now and then they'd surface on his skin and take him out so that was in 1953 and there's Stanford tzedakah he's next to my father my father's on the Stanford news I filed on the right okay these mixing buildings that's during the Vietnam War from 1967 to 68 the manufactured mines for the war there was the XM 47 gravel alignment project and those four buildings on the Left were mixing buildings and they use freon with alcohol and the idea of the mine was to if it was soaked and freon it was an herb so once it dried out it became armed and they would assemble him in the building on the right but that they had a lot of explosions there and I guess on the conveyor belt or the mines where they'd explode and sometimes if employees would have to go home with Erics so eventually they had a big accident and Hanover and oh there's the mind itself how it operated it they'd be packed in these big pods and the helicopter would be Lord of with them with a pause and it's take-off and over the area of the drop zone he would pitch up and they'd all fall out and the theory behind this is they wanted to create a perimeter around a downed pilot cell the Vietcong and VA would be able to pick them up and they'd also use it in case son and also the Demilitarized Zone in Vietnam so it was three to eight minutes they'd become armed so this is another mixing building here still there you can see the blast walls so they had a big explosion here Hanover and King Street and I remember my father saying that that place is fireworks they call it was very unsafe and he said someday they're gonna have an explosion and lo and behold they did and one man was killed and 15 were injured and I said see I told you of me but the Hingham guys were supposed to go over on that day but uh luckily he lucky for them they bus broke down because it was so cold it was in December of 1967 so after the explosion they were brought in to defuse the mines and shipped to mountain the other accommodations from the army for doing it so this is bunker nine is still over there and that's where they had a nuclear depth charge it was an as Rock missile and the way it worked is that fire him out of a from a destroyer and you come down on a parachute and then go in the water and travel around and seek out its prey and explode but they just continued using this 1989 they don't carry them anymore and this is the guy that was in charge of it one of them bisa called a snapper that was one of the classifications and he was the next guy was of our neighbor Rockland he was a leading man and he was also in charge of that bunker a great neighbor and this person here on the right he's still alive Rahn me he brought the difficulty depth charges up from Quonset point Rhode Island and one time he was caught for uh almost given a ticket for driving too slow because he couldn't go over 35 miles per hour Sammy Ahmadi everyone knows him but Sammy's nephew Tony Aman to you I don't know whether you remember him or not he was a famous hockey player for that Blackhawks and Tony amantes cousin is Charlie Coyle plays for the Bruins now and it turns out charlie coils grandmother was was in the same wedding party as Ron Meads wife she was the best maid so anyways there's a connection there that was you know a small world story George Bartlett witnessed the explosion at the mine anchor building that injured four Annie Krause and he was also in the coastal guard before the war and he remembers over and um I think Hog Island spinnaker Island now they had two 16-inch guns and he said the only fire then once it broke all the windows in that part of hull Leo Parente was a former supervisor and he was full of a lot of funny stories he was a world war two veteran and when he was over in Europe he captured a an SS major and he was wanted for war crimes and they eventually hung him and this Peter stone as he would say the crane operator over at the depot and he was the one that took out a lot of the ordnance from the back river with a clam shell and he also operated a train he was a Guadalcanal veteran too this is Ruth Bates some of her family came to hang I'm in 1635 they're buried right behind here Caleb and Clement her claim to fame was she worked for Captain Bates and commander Dunning and after Hingham she went to Washington and she dated this German general his name was Gustav and she also had another boyfriend at the same time Tom and cursed was famous for trying to be made an attempt on Hitler's life but he survived because the theory was he was going to tie fuses on his body grabbed Hitler and explode himself and killed the Fuhrer that was in 43 but Hitler came in and went so quickly wasn't able to catch up with him so he survived a war and she kind of fell in love with him but then her boyfriend at the time said you're not going to date any damn German and this is Admiral Jim Gorman he remembers when he was over Korea using a rocket would they hang him stamp on it as Fred said Baylin he was over station here 1943 he remembers the time when the cruiser Risha loo got torpedoed and they put the crew over at the annex and he alternated a French sailor with a marine and they communicate with sign language and all the girls and hang him were in love with the Frenchman because they had these colorful uniforms that red pom-pom on top and he also told me that the Frenchman would carry cheese in the belts and use a paring knife to whenever they got hungry there's even some cheese and also he pulled guard duty over there in 43 and he had a horse named Tony and sometimes Fred would fall asleep going back to the stable but their door was too low and when he go through the door you would knock him off a saddle so Fred was a he went to Saipan and he earned the Purple Heart the only survivor out of a patrol of eight and this is the park as it is today let's see it in 1967 it was created with 2,800 acres today it's 3750 thank you and I think our speakers would be happy to take questions there are a lot of terms and people and places mentioned so if you want to direct your question to Scott Jim or either of them they are tested twice but they never use them no probably probably in the Pacific well the bass closed its doors since 1962 the Navy held it in reserve for ten years so in 1972 the gum federal government started selling off different portions of land they you know Beals called Hingham woods conservatory to individual contractors they wanted to build you know build homes and you know like I said Bill's call was all condos and conserving it was given to the town it was given to the town with his stipulation that it be used for a park in perpetuity for recreational and educational use that's why you had you had a lot of the buildings in there were educational along Beale Street there were some buildings that were for like a 20 year 20 or 30 year lease they had they were given the buildings for 20 years and then after 20 years 30 years whatever it was they could sell whatever it is and that's why you've got these other new new places cropping up all of a sudden you know 30 years is up there was a project turnabout was one of them after the 20 years was up that the Hastings you know bought the property and turned that into a you know back where the townhomes and yes yes the annex which is wampa tuck the annex was added on in world war ii the deep ball was started in 1904 from World War one and it was not big enough when World War two came about it wasn't big enough to hold everything here I'm not exactly sure I think it was all run by the same person and not but they went back and forth Sandra Rowland's - actually grew up in in the depot my father actually came here in 1918 as a Navy man so he was here during World War one and his position during World War Two was he was in charge of making sure the munitions were available at 24 hours a day seven days a week so that's what brought my family to him and we lived a quarter zel which is now adjacent to where Lynch field is and it's where those new apartments or condominiums or whatever they are that have gone up there and I'll just say personally they remind me of military barracks that were there at the time when I lived there that's all I'll say about that but as a child growing up I started first grade here in Hingham and lived there until I graduated from high school in 1957 as Scott said it was as little self-contained community there was a swimming pool where the barracks were so we had swimming in the summertime there were movies there was a different movie every night if I wanted to go to the movies I had to have my homework done that was when I got into high school the war I remember most was the Korean War and by that time I was a young teenager the Marines that were stationed there were not much older than I was my girlfriend and I was just talking about this the other day I remember most of the Marines that got stationed there who came from Camp Pendleton or Camp Lejeune they then were being shipped out to Korea so my girlfriend and I would no Marines that were only three or four years older than we were and I can remember talking to them and sending some of them off to go to war and at the post exchange that was at the Depot at the time we would go over maybe twice a month and they would have the killed wounded and missing in action posted there in many not many but some of the names that were there were men that had been stationed in Hingham and went off to Korea I just say we also had on on Forces Day they would have a big ceremony over at Lynch field but is now Lynch field and they would have fire when they call those fools flamethrowers they would demonstrate flamethrowers they would demonstrate other kinds of ammunition so rifles they would have a big parade the Navy and the Marine Corps together would have a parade also behind my house which was quarters L up on a hill there was a fitness area and my girlfriend and I used to like to go up there and see whether we could do what the military was doing and they had the barbed wire that was low to the ground and you'd have to get on your belly and go under the barbed wire they had the rope poles we have to pull ourselves up over the barrier they had the tires that you would have to go through so my girlfriend and I would go there and see whether we could do what the Marines were doing and I it was a wonderful place for me to grow up I had a thousand acres to explore and when I was old enough to ride my bike I explored that land all the time it was just a wonderful thing there were at times there were times when parents did not want their children to come to the depot because they were afraid I mean there was always this feeling that it could be a target so during World War two away they were not too many children there would come to the Depot because their parents were afraid of what could happen and during the Korean War fortunately for me I had friends that lived off the base so that's where I would go but I have just fabulous memories of living on that land and exploring it and I'm so happy there quarter se is a conservatory that was the best thing that ever happened to that building I played in that building with two of the children that lived there and I just gave Scott some pictures today I recently connected up with two gals both of them had their fathers were the captains on the ammunition depot they both went to Hingham high school they graduated in 1959 and they just had their 60th class reunion up at the Country Club about two weeks ago and I hadn't seen them in 65 years so and we were our pictures were as babysitter's at the Naval a munition depot and we were all teenagers so Scott now has the pictures and they'll he'll put a museum yeah in the museum that was the other thing I was so happy about we finally made a museum because Hingham has a rich military history but not too many people know about it and now with Scott between the Gir Hall in the dark house we have a good assortment of military memorabilia that really does do tribute to what happened here in Hingham during well World War one when my dad came here and then world war ii and korea so that's my story I should mention that also a Town Hall now we have a wonderful exhibit about the shipyard so there's a number of places in town you can visit yes there was it was built in 1944 and on opening day it serves 1400 people it was built for the civilian workers the Navy and Marine Corps personnel had the mess hall that they could eat at and the other civilian work is he had to brown-bag it or bring a lunch box or whatever so they talked the Navy into putting in that restaurant 2:28 so wouldn't have been the depot sure I'm sure it was womp it uh because it was after the yeah warm protected yeah they they and the army was up there for a while afterwards doing they had helicopters and stuff coming in on some of the roadways and stuff uh they had yeah I think what's from 71 82 they were there okay so and they had guards and I went through a gate one time they caught me well they used a lot of the same equipment they had actually root 3a there was a there was an overpass that the trains and the cars could go underneath the overpass where the route 3a was remained open so they did use the same trains they used the same some of the same vehicles and maybe the same guards while they had civilian police also but the Marines pretty much handled the security end of it and the Navy handled kept-kept of the the base up and running the Navy was the security they had Marines on horseback patrolling the perimeter of the fence and later on I can remember as a child growing up on Foothill Street the fence was in my backyard and the marine guards would actually walk the perimeter you know every 15 minutes another guy would go by she also cut the top of Fort Hill down if you go over Fort Hill Street where the cemetery is you can see there's a there's a there's a right at the top of the hill there's a it's been cut down about 20 feet so that the trucks could make it up and over the hill yeah make Sun in the 50s and they said they did the new bridge Street just to cut down on the time that it would take to go around like through Weymouth right they did they did do the new bridge and they did cut that hill down to to make transportation so they didn't have to go through a new square for one thing with trucks Scott did Captain Delory ever tell you the story of the fire there there they had enough ice there off well for those of you that know Bob the lorry was very well known citizen being a mr. captain in the fire department for years and he related a story to me I'm not sure if he was directly involved with it or not the right work house and fields I was the fire station there were two fire stations wanted in it main site Park and one a--they annexed manned by civilians and the day war 24 hour to us a duty which is uncommon in those days but and they change shifts at six o'clock in the morning his blob related the story to week and one morning at 6 a.m. the oncoming shift over and main side back the fire station was right where cows and fields was came in and said what time did the fire come in and said what are you talking about I says look out the window there was a building directly across the street from the fire station and that relationship would be for like from being a Whitney guns direct line of sight the building was like 40 by 62 stories that burn flat with the firefighters in the bill and sleeping and they never knew it and just for the record that did not happen on my watch but another thing is I believe today's the birthday of the US Marine Corps yes happy birthday Semper Fi [Applause] fred has a question and thank you for your service sir hi Jim I was one of those Marines designing about down there the pool genin soon as the war started I joined it hi Jonah marine : well war was declared December 7th 1941 I joined December 15th something like that 1941 some occasion say well that's a long time how old would she be I'm 94 now so I did it and I went to boot camp and I'm a first guard her station Duty was here in the Heyman able Imogen Heap oh and I must have pulled in here somewhere at the very end of February [Music] 1942 I was here 242 and up to the latter part of maybe 43 and I had some nice and experiences here and so forth you know I was one of those I was one of those guys that was only a horse you're talking about running around and so forth and how I got onto the horse have to only come into that place into the first time was that I have all posts when they first got here when we first got here we didn't have rifles or anything we we had 45 pistols and a sheepskin coat and I was out on post the first night and I wasn't quite used to all this cold weather and they found me laying on the ground shivering and a fetal position so they said well he's no good for walking post avoid flying something else for well I will put them on mountains which is horse Patrol for recalls or not and I said the horse will keep him one well amounted you lived in the you lived in the stables with the horses up there but he's up on an old somewhere I look for tonight I don't recognize it anymore you know but I drove these horses and I was the guy Jim was talking about said I was on this twelve to four watch and getting back in the four o'clock in the morning I was getting a little drowsy and so I was on his saddle he went up a little a little ramp and it was the door that I ready-to-use get off and put your horse inside well I was drowsy and I kind of missed that and there's Tim's old I was on it when he went through the door and it caught me right in his chest and knocked me right over the horse his name was Tony you know I went in and I spoke to him in its stable and he didn't even give me a new yeah yeah you know I I was there well we opened the annex as we call it a wall protects a part and when they open the annex and we pulled him men from the main depot which is where I was and one of my one over and we live in a city and house for a while and there was three gates as I recall there that one was an 11th Street yeah well it was a beechwood straight you know there was the main gate for the administration telling us oh we lived for the first two or three weeks in civilian house over there and our first duty was to make sure all the civilians got out of their house before they start locking it up and we were doing fine with that everybody was leaving everything was good except this one old couple at the end near the beach would say beechwood there's a big ramp there now now onto something you can't get through but it used to be a gate you go right in the beach was you know section of Coe hasn't and these people lived in a little bungalow almost to that gate and they were all government and they wouldn't move so they told us to go down there and give tell these people that got to get out you know so at the time for a weapon peace at the time that they issued us was a rising submachine gun and there was eight of us and each of us had a machine gun and so we come as the for show the force knocked on another one said look folks you know you gotta leave you gotta go yeah and he closed the door came back out with a shotgun and we said now wait a minute so you know we don't want to get rid of you if you get off my property so we turn around which of this sergeant was in charge of a group of what do we do races back off back off we backed off and so here we are eight Marines with machine guns in this poor old man with a shotgun and what are we supposed to shoot if no wait sorry we don't have any authority they're going do anything physical toll so we reported to the commanding officer to command anyhow I called the chief police chief police had to go down and get rid of them that was the funny thing we [Applause] well I want to thank our speakers for all the time they took going through their really extensive collection of photos and maps and stories and encourage you to go to the green dock museum also the Friends of womp duck has a wonderful newsletter that that Jim puts out that has also really terrific history of the time that we talked about today and I have something to give each of you just like to say we have Loosli folders full everything now when you walk around the parks you can be adorned with a cap that says hang and historical societies [Applause] you