During WW II a number of shipyards were built along the San Francisco Bay waterfront. Victory Ships, Liberty Ships, Submarines, Tankers and all manner of auxilary ships were built. Night and day these yards rumbled with activity. A trolley line was dismantled from some city back east and re-installed on the East Side of the Bay just to transport the workers from yard to home and back.

After the war, most but not all were torn down or converted to other uses.    Several were just locked up and forgotten until the great 1960's re-vitalization or urban renewal campaign got into swing.  Here were these big hastily constructed buildings sitting on perfectly good  (tidelands!) develop able for condo's or shopping centers. They must go, cried the developers and the politicos! Tear them down and throw out the junk still inside, was the cry from these rabid do-gooders and profiteers

Upon unlocking the doors to a particular facility in Alameda CA., it was found to be complete with 'all' machinery!  First floor was machine shop, second floor was pattern shop.

Bigge Crane and Rigging was called in. A lusty Link-Belt 40 tonner was sited outside the structure and chains and chokers were passed through the semi-demolished side of the building and with a mighty wrench out came an Oliver dual arbor table saw. The slip ring was pulled and that beautiful piece of first class American big iron slowly tumbled end for end down onto the concrete. With a shriek and crump heard in every woodworking shop around the Bay that iron hit the concrete and just broke into an unrecognizable mass of junk and dust. That machine had 2 arbors, one for a rip blade and one for a crosscut blade a full cast iron sliding table probably swung 16" blades with dual 5 HP motors. Then followed an Orton 30" wedge bed planer, Oliver16" pattern makers joiner with a big destroyer type wheel for adjusting the infeed table, Oliver pattern makers wood lathe, Tannwitz 30"  band saw, drill presses, 20" disk sanders, Oliver oscillating spindle sander, Oliver sharpening machines, workbenches with the Emmert style vices still attached. On and on went this rape and pillage until there was a small mountain of shattered cast iron and crumpled sheet metal piled upon the concrete.

We were working right next door and watched the whole thing. All work had stopped to watch impotently as this pillage went on.

There were a few tears in the eyes of the old timers as they watched and remembered all the work for the Great Crusade that those machines and the people who operated them had done to help end WW II.