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National Archives #80-G-10979. Via wwiiarchives.net
Oakland (122.322W 37.801N) was founded in 1852 on the east coast of San Francisco Bay. By 1917 it was an important industrial center, with a Chevrolet automobile plant. Much of the growth was attributed to persons fleeing San Francisco after the great earthquake of 1906. In 1927, rapid development of the Port of Oakland commenced with the opening of the Municipal Airport.
With the outbreak of war, the city offered any facilities that might prove useful to the war effort. The offer was accepted and extensive Army and Navy facilities were established. This required the filling of large areas of tidal marshland, using soil from the nearby hills. (The pit from which most of the soil was taken is still visible from miles away today.) The city also produced 60% of all canned foodstuffs in the United States in 1943.
Naval Supply Depot Oakland was already nearly complete when war broke out in the Pacific, and it was commissioned a week after the Pearl Harbor attack.
Along with Naval Supply Depot San Diego, this was one of two major
supply depots on the West Coast. It was constructed primarily to
relieve the shortage of storage space at nearby Mare Island and the site was selected for its location on undeveloped land in a great bay
near a major fleet anchorage.
The site was acquired in 1936 but construction did not begin until
January 1940. Facilities included massive reinforced concrete
warehouses as large as 200' by 600' (60m by 180m) and five stories
high. By August 1945 the depot had almost 10,000,000 square feet
(930,000 square meters) of floor area, including the annex at Stockton. Much
of the area was tidal flat requiring hydraulic fill, and the fill
material proved unsatisfactory, with poor drainage. As a result, the
site remained damp and equipment continually bogged down and wore out.
A medical supply depot was also built in late 1943 near the naval supply depot.
Moore Dry Dock Co. was a small shipyard mostly organized for repair, but with four ways capable of constructing C3 transports.
References
"Building the Navy's Bases in World War II" (1947; accessed 2012-6-30)
GlobalSecurity.org (accessed 2012-6-30)
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