What are your thoughts on "From here to Eternity" (Honolulu: how much, hotels)

[yinduffy]

I just read the very long book From Here To Eternity" by James Jones. The book was published in 1951 after three years of work and does not give a flattering view of the pre-war U.S. Army men stationed at Schofield Barracks or the civilians they interacted with. However, it seems very detailed regarding towns and roads. Has anyone read the book and/or tried to connect the locations mentioned with places described in the book?
The Motion Picture was of course a very much abbreviated and sanitized version of the basic story which revolved around an infantry company stationed there. I would imagine the book caused a scandal at the time.

[ScottStielow]

I was just up at Schofield Barracks in December for the first time in about five years. All the housing, is new and the old Barracks in the movie from Here to Eternity, is fenced of with construction going on either remodeling or building new barracks. I believe they are remodeling becasue i believe Schofield Barracks, the old Barracks, is considered historic buildings, might be wrong about that? I do know Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard has some historic buildings being restored.

Yes that period of time was a different time of History. Hawaii at the time was still a territory.
A lot of the regulars, soldiers before the war. The army was their home of record. The Army was still small, everyone new a lot of other soldiers by name. They stayed with the same unit for years. It all changed with the Pearl Harbor Attack.
The area, when i watch the movie on TV. I do look for locations in and around Wahiawa, and Honolulu.
Around Hotel Street, where the fight took place between Sgt. Fatso (Ernest Borgnine) Pvt. Robert E. Lee Prewitt (Montgomery Clift) in the alley. The beaches at Waikiki, how Diamond Head has no hotels around?

The boxing teams were big events in the 40's. In all the branches of the military. A lot of contests between the different braches of the military.

I just call the book, From Here To Eternity, and the follow on movie a classic old movie and book. I do not know if the book caused scandals, personally. But maybe some one who was born here on Oahu. And maybe a mother or father who were children at the time can relate. What they heard at the time the book came out?
Good post!

[eureka1]

One of the greatest movies ever made.

[yinduffy]

Yes, the film was good. In my high school they showed it as part of English. Kind of a film as literature thing. That kept me from reading the book because I thought I knew the story. Once I started actually reading the book I realized how much was lost in the filming.
Schofield Barracks was the largest Army post outside the Continental U.S. at the time and for years afterwards. With all those men,(and the men from the other Forts) it must have dominated the Island. Navy men came and went with the ships, but the Army men were there year 'round. I wonder how that affected the culture of the island?

[ScottStielow]

There are more army Forts on Oahu:

Fort Shafter is the oldest military base on Oahu and celebrated its 100th birthday on June 22, 2007.

Fort Shafter has been home to the senior Army headquarters in Hawaii for a century. Construction began in 1905 on the ahupua'a of Kahauiki, former Hawaiian crown lands that were ceded to the United States government after annexation. When the post opened in 1907, it was named for Major General William Rufus Shafter (1835–1906), who led the United States expedition to Cuba in 1898.

Palm Circle (which is a National Historic Landmark) was laid out as a cantonment for an infantry battalion. The barracks and officers' quarters were arranged around a parade field ringed by Royal Palms. The 2d Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment was the first unit stationed at the new post.

Fort Shafter gradually spread out from Palm Circle. Tripler General Hospital once stood where the highway intersection is today (the hospital moved to its present location in 1948). In 1914, a regimental-sized cantonment area was constructed (near Richardson Theater). The Hawaiian Ordnance Depot was built in 1917 as a separate post (near today's post exchange). In 1921, the Hawaiian Department moved to Fort Shafter from downtown Honolulu. Finally, a new area was constructed in 1940 for Signal Corps elements.

Schofield Barracks, talking about it now.
Home to the 25th Infantry Division, Schofield Barracks is nestled at the foot of the Waianae mountain range on the island of Oahu in Hawaii.

The installation is located a few miles from the towns of Wahiawa and Mililani and is 17 miles from Honolulu.

The 17,725-acre Schofield Barracks site was established in 1908 to provide a base for the Army's mobile defense of Pearl Harbor and the entire island.

Fort Shafter is the headquarters of the United States Army Pacific Command, the MACOM of U.S. Army forces in Asia and the Pacific Basin


Fort DeRussy in Honolulu is one of five Forts DeRussy in the United States. The two in Louisiana, one in Kentucky, and one in Washington, D.C., were all built during the American Civil War. This one was named for General René Edward De Russy (1789–1865). Rene and his brother Lewis were both graduates of the United States Military Academy at West Point. Lewis was the oldest West Point graduate to serve in the Confederate Army, while older brother Rene served on the Union side.

Located on Waikiki Beach, very near Oahu's historic hotels the Royal Hawaiian Hotel and the Moana Hotel, the former Shore Battery Randolph was used as site for servicemen on Rest and Recuperation (R&R) during the Vietnam War. Fort DeRussy was one of a number of shore batterys on the island of Oahu designed to provide coastal defense. Most of the guns on these sites were retired during the early 1950s. The Fourteen inch guns of Shore Battery Randolph were fired once in a practice shortly after the Attack on Pearl Harbor, shattering many of the windows in the Royal Hawaiian and Moana, and were not fired again.[2]

Fort Ruger is a fort on the island of Oahu that served as the first military reservation in the Territory of Hawaii. Named after Civil War General Thomas H. Ruger and built in and around Diamond Head Crater, the fort was established by the United States for the purpose of defending the harbor of its newly annexed territory. The fort was established in 1906 as Diamond Head Reservation and renamed Fort Ruger in 1909.
Fort Ruger was the site of Battery Harlow, armed with eight 12-inch mortars. The fort's prominent location on Diamond Head made it a natural fire control station, with several posts built into Leahi Peak.
Despite being listed on the National Register of Historic Places, portions of the site are still used for training by the Hawaii National Guard.
Few of the original buildings survive. The most striking are three sets of stone structures that mark former gates to the fort. On the Waikiki side, there is a pair of gateposts on either side of the sidewalk and a square stone bunker across the street with a gun slit in the outside wall and with crenels and merlons along the top, as if it were a battlement in a European castle. On the Kahala side is a larger stone gatehouse with rounded edges of the kind popular in the 1930s. Between them, on the Kaimuki side, is a purely decorative structure, a circular stonewalled planter with two jagged stone arches intersecting at 90-degree angles. It now stands at the edge of the Kapiolani Community College parking lot, but was once flanked by two large gun barrels.

A lot of other posts and bases around not metioned.