[Milsurplus] Camp Adair, Oregon talk by John H. Baker 11 July 2019

[Hubert Miller]

So on Thursday this week, July 11 2019, I attended at the Newport Senior Center a talk by John H. Baker on the once "Camp Adair" just north of Corvallis.
Mr. Baker was I think, seven to ten years old during the war and let me tell you, this gentleman is sharp. Healthy, vigorous, engaging, and with a keen
memory. He also admitted, as others have commented, "It was an exciting time to live".

Mr. Baker has written a book on Camp Adair and also narrated a video on the subject. Camp Adair was built by the War Department as a training ground
for Army infantry, a training ground that would simulate well the European battlefield. Baker stated that Adair was at one time, altho unincorporated as a
city, was effectively the second largest city in Oregon - considering  Vanport as an entity not really separate from Portland. ( However I note that Wikipedia
in its entry for 'Camp White', White City, central Oregon, makes the same claim for that base, so this still needs to be straightened out. )

Mr. Baker and others in the audience recounted blackouts, movie shows with a third the content being war newsreels, watching Navy fighter planes making
practice bombing and strafing runs just south of Florence, Oregon, and picking row crops near Salem together with German POWs. Baker says the Germans
were in high spirits - understandably. He says a couple thousand were housed at Adair, where they also worked in the base mess halls. ( Wikipedia needs w
work here also, as it only identifies Camp White in Oregon as a POW holding. )

The base at one time had numerous churches, base exchanges, a large hospital, and so on. Mr. Baker answered a question of mine by saying he had been
unable to find evidence there had been any kind of broadcast station there. He did play a few minutes of "The Jack Benny Program" recorded before the
troops at Camp Adair and Jack clearly addresses Camp Adair.

After the war the base was sold off, most buildings demolished for scrap. In the mid 1950s the Air Force built a BOMARC radar station there. That's the
huge windowless blockhouse building in the center of the town that grew around it. I'm told it is now some kind of trade school, altho I seem to recall a 'For
Rent' sign on it last time I was by there. I was surprised when my friend Kent Stevens told me that in his youngster days, his family shopped at the  Air Force
Adair base commissary - his father was Marine Corps, retired.

Mr. Baker displayed some items from WWII, including a local newspaper from the eve of war, and this ordnance found in sand dunes near Florence. I asked
if he had used a metal detector and he replied that you just went out there after a big windstorm and looked for things uncovered. This ordnance I think was
found within a few years after WWII. The machine gun clips he said were ejected and were misfires, were still live. He carefully disassembled these to remove
the powder, which was still viable. The larger item is a white phosphorus bomb used to mark bombing accuracy. This one was expended already. The canteen
was overgrown with sea growths and is cleaned up. A fellow in the audience said within the last few years he had found a 250 lb. practice bomb in the dunes;
after so many years it was much more corroded.

Adair, now 'Adair Village', was on my route when I worked for the local wireline phone company. It's a quiet place, very green and clean, and I always liked
seeing the two remaining wooden 'barracks type' buildings that reminded me of Army bases, with their long rows of one and two story, long wooden buildings
that I'd seen as a youngster.
-Hue

[A picture containing indoor, floor, table, sitting  Description automatically generated]




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