Back when Fort Ward was a fort, the parade grounds were used for parades, and servicemen lived in the now slowly decomposing barracks there, in the second decade of the last century, the brick bakery on Evergreen was used for making bread for the enlisted men. Since the decommissioning of the fort, the building has taken a long, slow dive into disrepair and now is a mere 1960s remodel of its former self.
But a gang of four young people—Eric Appleberry, Aila Ikuse, Mark Dettman, and Kate Merifield—and their fearless adult leader, Sarah Lee, are spearheading the huge undertaking of restoring the building and repurposing it. The gang is actually a committee, the Fort Ward Youth Advisory Committee, with Ikuse as President, Merifield VP, Dettman Treasurer, and Appleberry Secretary, and they are well along the path toward achieving their goal. They’ve registered the building on National and State Historic Registries, raised over $8,000, commissioned the pro bono help of architect Don Ashton to draw up plans, and applied for a Rotary Youth Grant to fund signage.
Early Years
The remodel sketch, showing the Bakery restored to its original look.
To understand the scope of their project, you first have to understand the impressive history, which the teens eagerly explained to me in the frigid interior temperatures of the unheated space, referencing poster displays they’ve made and set up there. The history began during the 1890s Spanish American War when Fort Ward was established by the U.S. Coast Artillery 150th Mine Company to help defend the Bremerton Naval Shipyard. Fort Ward was one of three forts comprising the Triangle of Fire, the main defense at the entrance to Puget Sound.
The main defense strategy was an electronic mine field set up in Rich Passage. Mines were identified on a grid and could be discharged individually with the press of the right button. The fort was also armed with cannons to destroy anti-mine vessels. Battery Nash, which overlooks the southern tip of the Island, was fortified with a 8-inch diameter “disappearing” gun, meaning that it was on a platform that lowered after firing, concealing the gun from water view. The four teens told me that, at the time, this was considered high-tech weaponry.
Disappearing gun at Battery Nash
During the First World War, the Navy took over the fort from the control of the Coast Guard. After the war, the fort went dormant, the guns and mines were removed, and the space was used as a fresh-air camp for Seattle kids.
World War II
The most impressive history comes from the war years when Fort Ward was revived, disguised as a military Code School. In fact, however, the residents were not learning coding but instead applying their already developed skills to intercepting and decoding Japanese radio messages. The Bakery was converted to a transformer building to power the radio station, Station S, located across the parade grounds on what is now Parkview.
The teens excitedly told me about the early morning hours of December 7, 1941, when Station S intercepted a Morse code message from the Japanese government to the Japanese embassy in Washington D.C. The message was encrypted by the so-called “Purple” coding machine used by the Japanese Foreign Office. Station S lacked the ability to decode these transmissions. The intercepted message was quickly sent to the Code and Signal section located on the top floor of the Navy Building in D.C. There the messages were decrypted by an analogue machine and then sent to the U.S. Army Signals Intelligence Service for translation from Japanese.
The message was ominous, asking the ambassador to break off relations with Washington and to destroy the embassy’s cipher machines. Army Colonel Rufus S. Bratton and Navy Lieutenant Commander Alvin Kramer tried to get in touch with Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall. Marshall eventually got the message and then took time to pore over it. He eventually sent a warning to field commanders, including the Army commander in Hawaii. But because he was worried about security, he failed to simply use the telephone, and the commander received the message hours after Pearl Harbor was attacked and the Navy fleet destroyed.
Dettman, Ikuse, Appleberry, and Merifield
Post-War Years
Fort Ward was decommissioned in 1958. Part of it was dedicated for a state park and part sold to a developer who cut it into lots and built and sold thirty-eight vacation homes. But a run-down sewer system—consisting of clay pipes dumping raw sewage into Puget Sound—delayed development of the area. The developer was required to form a sewer district to manage the system in the meantime.
In 1985, a court order required that the treatment plant be built. Residents knew then the 400 lots would then be buildable and the area was going to change drastically. As Lee put it, “That mean the community was going to lose all the good stuff.” So the Fort Ward community took steps to preserve some of the area’s history and character. They preserved the Parade Grounds as a park after some residents donated lots and the City bought others. The park was dedicated in 2002 at a ceremony honoring World War II veterans from Station S.
The Plan for the Future
In 2007, the Sewer District purchased the old Bakery building, which had served as a rental home, for $300,000. The roof, gutters, and cupola were replaced to ensure the stability of the structure.
The meeting room. The left-side short wall and fireplace will be removed to expand the space. This is where the Bakery ovens were located.
The community’s goal is for the Bakery building to be restored to its architecturally historic origins and then used as a community center, emergency center, and Sewer District offices. Currently on the south side of the Island there is no community center such as Seabold Hall, the Filipino American Hall, Island Center Hall, the Grange, or Waterfront Community Center, which serve other areas as concert venues and event centers.
In an emergency such as an earthquake, the Fort Ward area is likely to be cut off from the rest of the Island. In such an eventuality, the Bakery building could serve as a warming house, an information center, a medical center, and/or a dispensary for emergency supplies.
At a meeting in January of last year, members of the community elected to go forward with the plan. That’s when, Lee said, she thought it would be a good idea to encourage the kids who had grown up in the neighborhood—playing in the Parade Grounds, surrounded by the area’s history—to lead the effort. So the Youth Advisory Committee was formed. The YAC led an August 17 community meeting to introduce the plan to the neighbors. They have also given presentations to the Rotary, the City’s Historic Preservation Commission, and the Parks District.
Floorplan
The Sewer District and Youth Advisory Committee are partnering with the Bainbridge Parks Foundation on this venture. Before the partnership can be activated, they have been directed to show community interest by raising $30,000, or ten percent of the estimated cost for the entire project. The kids have raised $8,000 so far by going door to door in the Fort Ward neighborhood. Once the partnership is activated, they can seek larger grants under the 501(c)(3) umbrella of the Parks Foundation.
The plan is for the Sewer District to continue to own the building, which will be managed by the Parks District. The remodel will remove the added-on entrance, open up bricked-over buildings, remove shrubs concealing the entrance, add parking, and lower the floor to its original level (it was raised to accommodate a heating system). The current kitchen wing will be subdivided to include bathrooms and will get a kitchen remodel. The bedrooms will be used for storage and Sewer District office space. And the large central room will be a community gathering area.
Lee lives in the old Station S building where the fateful code was intercepted on that infamous day in 1941. She found out about the history behind her home after puzzling over all the older people who would stop and take photos of it. Finally one day she ran out of her house and asked the photographer why her home was being photographed so frequently. She got her answer but even it was in a code of sorts. Lee found out that the former Fort Ward Army staffers had been instructed not to tell about their mission. They were told if they did, they would be shot. Lee said that even thought the war had ended some 60 years earlier, these “loyal and patriotic” men were still reticent about discussing their mission.
Exterior plan. Enstone is a right of way currently unused and covered in blackberries.
A self-described history buff, Lee gets animated when talking about the past of her neighborhood. Eventually, she was able to piece together a large part of what happened there, relying in part on The Codebreakers by David Kahn. She said, about learning of her home’s history, “It was unbelievable.”
The teens too get animated when talking about the past of their neighborhood. Dettman said with excitement that, at a historical reenactment at Fort Ward Park when it was turned over to the BIMPRD, he got to wear a doughboy dishpan hat and carry an M1903 Springfield. Merifield laughed that she had been asked to play a real estate agent for that part of the history.
Appleberry said they like to think of themselves as a reincarnation of sorts of the On the Roof Gang, the name given to the pioneering WW II coders who had to study Japanese Morse code on the roofs of D.C. buildings and the top floor of the Navy Building because there was no office space for them. Ikuse said they don’t believe in ghosts but there is “something left of the soldiers who served here. It feels right to honor their presence and help preserve the history they helped create.”
Interested in supporting this project? Visit the project’s website. To pledge, click here.
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Nonhistoric photos by Sarah Lane.