Long Beach Naval Shipyard
Closed in 1997, the Long Beach Naval Shipyard was a shipbuilding facility operated for many years by the Navy and strategically located nearby the concentrated bulk of the Navy's fleet of ships. This site for much of the Navy's shipbuilding activities during World War II was officially taken off of the list of active Navy shipbuilding facilities in 1950, shortly before the Korean War, the inception of which led to the facility's replacement on the active roster in 1951. The Long Beach Naval Shipyard was considered by many to be the most efficient and cost effective of all shipyards operated by the Navy.
The Long Beach Naval Shipyard was officially established in 1943, as the US Naval Dry Docks at Roosevelt Base in California, the site of which, today, is located approximately 20 miles south of the Los Angeles International Airport. Two years after its inception as a Naval shipbuilding facility, the Naval Dry Docks were renamed Terminal Island Naval Facility - this, in 1945. Three years later, in 1948, the facility was designated with the name with which we are familiar today, Long Beach Naval Shipyard.
According to government authorities, Long Beach Naval Shipyard was vital to the Navy's military's to repair and build Naval ships. The shipbuilding facility was equipped with the space and technology necessary to perform all of the functions necessary to build and repair non-nuclear ships, including rigging, electrical work, insulating, lagging, sandblasting, welding, woodworking, pipe fitting, and other work pertaining to the repair of Navy ships. With these capabilities, the workers at Long Beach Naval Shipyard were able to perform the repairs necessary to a number of important Navy ships like cargo ships, tankers, destoyers, and many others.
In addition to these vital functions, the Long Beach Naval Shipyard was unique for its capacity to perform important repair work on nuclear machines and ships at one of its dry docks, designated as the single West Coast location for emergency docking of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers.
During the height of its usage, the Long Beach Naval Shipyard encompassed more than 200 Navy-owned acres and employed more than 17,000 thousand workers in its 17 variously equipped workstations and zones. While this eminent facility represented the apex of Navy shipdbuilding industry, a far more ignominious history lurks beneath the storied legends surrounding its success in the years of the second world war.
The United States' commencement of action in the early years of World War II brougth with them a dire need for ships, resulting in a huge boom for the shipbuilding industry and shipbuilding facilities like the Long Beach Naval Shipyard. At this time, with such a great need for quick manufacture, asbestos became a popular material for use in the production and repair of these ships built at Long Beach Naval Shipyard and similar facilities. Asbestos was a highly sought-after material, because it was easily acquired, very cheap and was extremely fire-resistment, rending it a seemingly ideal material for use on ships that were prone to fires, explosions and other disasters associated with naval warfare.
Sadly, the popularity of the fibrous mineral asbestos would mean terrible suffering, illness and death for many thousands of workers occupied in the shipbuilding industry at shipyards and facilties like Long Beach Naval Shipyard. As scientists and reseachers later discovered, asbestos is a carcinogen, causing the development of mesothelioma, lung cancer, and many other conditions and cancers when workers are exposed to its friable fibers, which can be aspirated, at which point they adhere to the surface tissues of organs like the lungs, wrecking utter havoc upon the body.
These diaseases meant awful misfortune for the workers at the Long Beach Naval Shipyard and other facilities in the shipbuilding industry during and following World War II. It is estimated that more than 100,000 shipyard workers - employed during the World War II years - died as the result of being exposed to asbestos, which was used in rope, gloves, welding materials, insulation and caulking, and many other products used in the shipbuilding industry. These 100,000 innocent men and women represent the majority of the Americans killed as a result of America's engagement in the war. More men and women died in the shipbuilding industry than soldiers at the battlefront.
If you have ever worked at Long Beach Naval Shipyard or at any other shipbuilding facility, you may have been exposed to asbestos. This exposure puts you at a greater risk for developing life-threatening illnesses like mesothelioma and lung cancer. If you are at an elevated risk as the result of your work at a shipbuilding facility, please take action imediately. Contact an asbestos lawyer who can fight for your side, and who will make sure that justice is served for you and all the other innocent shipbuilders struck down while serving their country.
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