Long Beach Wages ‘War’ to Keep 2 Battleships

As if the bombshell announcement that the Navy is considering closing the Long Beach Naval Shipyard wasn’t enough to throw the city into a tizzy, it looks like two battleships may be on the way out, too.

The Missouri and the New Jersey, all that’s left of the Navy’s handsome World War II Pacific fleet, have been home-ported in Long Beach for years, pumping millions of dollars into the local economy, generating jobs and distinguishing the port city as the only one in the nation with two such glorious tenants.

But a shrewd political maneuver made by the state of Hawaii last fall is about to send the battleship Missouri to Pearl Harbor. And now, the winds of reform sweeping Eastern Europe are threatening to blow the New Jersey right into mothballs.

Long Beach, the city that for years refused to settle for anything less than two battleships in its port, is struggling to hold on to even one.

“We are in for a heck of a fight if we are to keep even one battleship,” predicted Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Lomita). “You can’t tell the Navy how many weapons it needs.”

The Pentagon already has put the Long Beach Naval Shipyard, where 4,100 civilians are employed, on a list for possible closure, it was revealed last week.

Making the city all the more miserable are expectations that the defense budget, scheduled to be presented today, calls for the retirement of the New Jersey, one of four World War II battleships recommissioned by Congress in the mid-1980s at a cost of $1.7 billion.

The New Jersey may be as good as gone if the Navy so deems it. But Long Beach leaders are plotting to undo an act of Congress to win back the Missouri, whose decks were the site of the Japanese surrender during World War II (not to mention Cher’s latest rock video.)

Mighty Mo, as the ship is widely known, first came to the Long Beach Naval Shipyard in 1984 for what was supposed to be a temporary stay. It never left. City officials were delighted to host the prestigious ship and spent years trying to make the arrangement permanent.

Then last October, the Missouri slipped through the city’s fingers in an innocuous-looking military construction bill that appeared to do little more than build a causeway to the middle of Pearl Harbor. Long Beach learned to its dismay that one purpose of the causeway was to build a new home for the Missouri.

Local lawmakers squawked that Hawaii’s Democratic Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, who orchestrated the deal, had “stolen” the ship with a bill that never even mentioned her name. The bill was signed into law anyway and the Missouri’s days in Long Beach appeared to be numbered. Only an act of God, city officials conceded, could keep Mighty Mo in port.

Then, Eastern Europe revolted. The Pentagon decided to slash billions from the defense budget and Long Beach pressed its congressmen to renew the war to keep the Missouri.

If the Navy can’t afford $37 million a year to keep a battleship deployed, the city reasons, how can it afford to build facilities to move one to Pearl Harbor?

“That would be an even bigger crime against the taxpayers,” Rohrabacher agreed.

“If there was any rationale to move the Missouri to Hawaii before, it is all gone now,” said Rohrabacher aide Gary Curran. “It doesn’t make much sense to build a brand new facility when you have just reduced your firepower to save money.”

While Navy engineers continue to assess the price of building in Pearl Harbor, Rohrabacher has asked the U.S. General Accounting Office to analyze how much money might be saved by leaving the Missouri in Long Beach.

Clearly the community benefits if it stays: One battleship pours an estimated $60 million into the Southland economy, most of it in Long Beach, where the 1,500 crew members spend their paychecks.

“If two battleships go, that’s 3,000 paychecks that aren’t cashed in Long Beach,” said Laurie Hunter, vice president of the Long Beach Area Chamber of Commerce. “The city is being held hostage by the entire defense budget.”

Rohrabacher and other lawmakers said they are arranging to meet with top Navy officials in an attempt to stave off not only the Missouri’s transfer, but the more devastating possibility of a shipyard closure.