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Oahu Military & Naval Railways |
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Hawaii-Railways.Com |
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After the Pearl Harbor attack, Military Marshal Law was declared in Hawaii, and everything in the islands came under the rule of a military governor. In cases where the military needed to use the plantation railways to deploy defensive troops around the islands this immediately happened without question. The military did not actually take over any railways because they needed the plantations to continue producing sugar for the war effort. In fact, railway workers were encouraged to NOT join the military as their work was more important in the national logistical effort. But the Army and Navy did need to have railway trained soldiers and sailors so many were brought into the military to operate military railways. This also later became very important when U.S. military Pacific Island invasions landed troops on islands where basically the ONLY means of island transportation was often just a narrow gauge railway. Maybe hard to imagine today, but railways were often the primary means of ground transport throughout the Pacific and South East Asia and railways were most often better than existing roads. |
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Plantation Railways often supplemented Army and Navy Railways because they had tracks that went all over the island, where there were often no roads. These railway lines were sometimes used to carry troops to training areas or ammunition out to remote posts. Most big items were carried by O.R. & L. In fact plantation railways, were so wide spread in the islands that the Army and Navy adopted Narrow Gauge track (36" wide) as their standard, rather than U.S. Mainland American Gauge. Also, O.R. & L. was already Narrow Gauge as well. |