Supporting the community of neighborhoods along THIRD STREET
Welcome to this edition of the T-Line on-line magazine, a project of BHPflex, a non-commercial, non-governmental, community-based effort in San Francisco.
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Note: T-Line is not part of San Francisco MTA/Muni or K/T-Train, yet we fully support public transportation.
IN THIS ISSUE_FALL 2025
II BUSINESS NEWS
WHAT's UP on THIRD ?
The Bayview Merchant's Association celebrates 100 years!
Read in II the BUSINESS section What's up on Third ?
III HISTORY
III HISTORY
Preservation of Place
IN THIS ISSUE:
HUNTERS-POINT NAVAL SHIPYARD
and the BOMB !
Components of the first Atomic Bomb, used during wartime, were shipped from Hunters-Point Naval Shipyard on July 16, 1945. This story provides a backdrop to the tragedy, and the aftermath including the sinking of the USS Indianapolis, a rescue in the sea, and related stories that continue to this day.
Read in III HISTORY
Lead Story by Jamie C. Lyons
Notes and added text by Bayview Historical Society
IV ARTS
III HISTORY
Artist Profiles
Artist Communities and Resources
Creative Actions
IN THIS ISSUE:
Bayview-based Stacey M. Carter, working from her studio in Hunters Point Shipyard, is featured in this issue. Her latest art installation , DECOMMISSIONED, was attended by over 1500 visitors. The T-Line celebrates the evolving work of our local artist.
Read in IV ARTS
V PEOPLE and PURPOSE
Neighborhood Stories of
Local People doing good work.
IN THIS ISSUE:
Sue Brown is a Bayview resident, homeowner and the volunteer director for NERT. We can all benefit from her expertise and guidance for emergency planning.
Read in V PEOPLE AND PURPOSE
VI FOOD
WHAT's on your PLATE ?
Recipes
Links
IN THIS ISSUE:
'Talk about Good', first published in 1967 in Lafayette, Louisiana, celebrates the home cooking and family recipes largely forgotten during the foodie revolution of today. These recipes, using today's ingredients and the range of great talent and passion for cooking all around, can yield delicious, healthy and nutritious results for your table.
VII RESOURCES
VIII ESSAYS and STORIES
VIII ESSAYS and STORIES
Community Calendar
Resources: Listings of government, health, community and business resources. Links are active. Send us your link and we'll include you in the register for services along the T-Line.
VIII ESSAYS and STORIES
VIII ESSAYS and STORIES
VIII ESSAYS and STORIES
Opinion
Commentary
Bulletins, Alerts and Updates: T-Line bulletins are issued weekly
IX CONTACT the EDITOR
VIII ESSAYS and STORIES
IX CONTACT the EDITOR
80 Years AGO ... the BOMB
by Jamie Charles Lyons
Hunter’s Point Shipyard (HPS) is located along the San Francisco Bay in southeastern San Francisco, California. Maritime activities at Hunters Point started in the nineteenth century when the first drydock was built in 1868. In 1903 a second drydock was built and operated by Bethlehem Steel Company. The United States Navy purchased Hunters Point in 1939 and took over full operations in 1941. Significant construction began in 1941 after American entry into World War II. At this time the Navy began excavation of the hills surrounding the ship yard, using the resulting spoils to expand the shoreline into the bay. Expanding the size of the ship yard through filling the bay with soil, waste and debris continued through the 1970’s.
Hunters Point Shipyard’s primary mission was the repair and maintenance of ships and submarines. However, another function of HPS was the loading of components of the atomic weapon “Little Boy” that was eventually used on Hiroshima. “Little Boy” was loaded on the USS Indianapolis on July 15th, 1945, and is reported to have contained half of the uranium-235 (U-235) available in the United States, valued at the time at $300 million ($4 trillion in 2018). The USS Indianapolis left HPS at 6:30 am on July 16th, 1945, but was not allowed to leave San Francisco’s harbor until 8:30am, after the first atomic weapon test “Trinity” (5:29 am) had been confirmed successful in the New Mexico desert.
After the 1946 atomic tests at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific (Operation Crossroads), contaminated target and support ships were brought to Hunters Point for decontamination and study. In response to the new need to understand radiological issues, the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory (NRDL) was established in 1948 at Hunters Point and operated until 1969.
HPS was decommissioned in 1974. In 1976, the Navy leased the site to Triple A Machine Shop. Triple A Machine Shop was ultimately indicted and convicted for illegal disposal of hazardous substances at Hunters Point. In 1986, Triple A Machine Shop’s 10-year lease expired and was not renewed. From 1986 and 1990, the Navy once again used Hunters Point to repair several naval vessels. In 1991, HPS was placed on the Navy’s Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) list and its mission as a Navy shipyard ended on April 1, 1994.
After the closure of the shipyard many of the facilities were leased to artists, small businesses, a railroad museum, and the San Francisco Police Department. The Navy informed tenants their leases would be terminated in 2005 because the storm and sanitary sewer systems required removal and investigation for radiological contamination.
The Environmental Restoration Program at HPS began in 1984 with the completion of an initial assessment that identified numerous contaminated areas. This included the oil reclamation ponds; industrial landfill; bay fill area; battery and electroplating shop; tank farm; pickling and plate yard; scrap yard; an old transformer storage yard; submarine base area; and bay sediment area. HPS was listed on the Superfund National Priorities List (NPL) in 1989. In 1992 the Navy, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region 9, the California Department of Toxic Substances Control and the Regional Water Quality Control Board entered into a Federal Facilities Agreement . The agreement establishes a procedural framework and schedule for the remediation of Hunters Point Shipyard.
Buildings without foundations will inevitably come down.
Jamie Lyons is an independent artist scholar whose art research spans image-making, site specific theatre, investigative journalism, writing, and other disciplines. His work has focused, in part, on toxic landscapes and using site responsive theatre practices to reveal the history of a particular environment while exploring the means to imagine alternative futures. Lyons is an avid surfer, filmmaker, writer , sailor and stage director. He earned an AB and PhD from Stanford University and has taught at Stanford, UCLA, USF, Yale and San Quentin Prison.
Convulsion
above: The USS Indianapolis sails under the Golden Gate Bridge
"I can be fooled, but my kids won’t be… either we will correct what’s wrong, it will be corrected for us."
James Baldwin, Take This Hammer
“We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.”
-- Robert Oppenheimer July 16th, 1945
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." -
-- George Santayana
“We're doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That's what it is to be alive. It's pretty dense kids who haven't figured that out by the time they're ten.... Most kids can't afford to go to Harvard and be misinformed.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Bluebeard
“History is the poisoned well, seeping into the ground-water. It’s not the unknown past we’re doomed to repeat, but the past we know. Every recorded event is a brick of potential, of precedent, thrown into the future. Eventually the idea will hit someone in the back of the head. This is the duplicity of history: an idea recorded will become an idea resurrected. Out of fertile ground, the compost of history.”
― Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces
July 16th, 2020 at 6:30am will mark seventy-five-75- years since the USS Indianapolis departed The Hunters-Point Naval Shipyard with components of 'Little Boy' aboard. History demands that we remember those lost to the catastrophe and the debacle of human tragedy that preceded and followed.
Editor - T-Line
Shipyard connections
Building 704
Building 704 (on the right), a metal-sheathed shop building, stands as a marker for an area designated as a “Radioactive Material Storage” area on a 1949 map. This storage area was just south of the building and adjacent to animal pens/kennels. In the background, Sutro Tower.
photo by Jamie Charles Lyon
Building 815
A seven-story flat-roofed steel and concrete structure built in the early 1950s as the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory’s (NRDL) main research facility and headquarters. NRDL occupied the building from 1955 through its closure in 1969. The entire building is classified as a restricted area. Each floor of the facility was occupied as follows:
Basement: Various support facilities
First Floor: Lobby, guard office, building equipment rooms, storage rooms, and laboratories
Second Floor: Health Physics Division, instrument repair, maintenance, and calibration facilities
Third Floor: Administration
Fourth Floor: Nucleonics Division laboratories and offices
Fifth Floor: Laboratories and animal quarters and offices of the Biological and Medical (Bio-Med) Sciences Division
Sixth Floor: Chemical Technology Division laboratory facilities
Seventh Floor (only floor with windows): Cafeteria and auditorium
351, 411, 366
Building 351 (on the left) is a World War II era reinforced concrete shop building constructed in 1945 and enlarged at a later date. The core building is three stories, with a flat roof and a five-story tower at the northwest corner. The site was used for electronics work area/shop, optical laboratories, NRDL Materials and Accounts Division, NRDL Technical Information Division, BUMED storeroom, NRDL Office Services Branch, NRDL Thermal Branch, machine shop (on first floor), NRDL Engineering Division, and NRDL library.
Building 411 (center) is a large curtain-walled, steel-framed building with a flat roof, located in the southern waterfront area. This building includes a saw-toothed series of rooftop monitors as well as bands of steel industrial sash and large glazed industrial doors. The building has two levels, with a taller segment to the north. The building held source storage, a civilian cafeteria, a radiography shop, shipfitters and boilermakers shop, as well as a ship repair shop.
Building 366 (on the right) is a large corrugated metal, gable-roofed Butler-type structure, measuring approximately 280 feet by 130 feet. The building was used for NRDL instrument calibration; administrative offices; Applied Research and Technical Development Branches; Radiological Safety Branch; Management Planning Division; Nucleonics Division; Instruments Evaluation Section; general laboratories; Chemical Research Laboratory; shipyard radiography shop; Boat/Plastic Shop; other military/Navy Branch Project Officers Station; and NRDL Management Engineering and Comptroller Department.
Later the building was used by 29 artists from The Point artists’ colony.
our history
USS INDIANAPOLIS and Bayview-HuntersPoint
USS INDIANAPOLIS and Bayview-HuntersPoint
USS INDIANAPOLIS and Bayview-HuntersPoint
The story involves a super-secret mission, a disastrous after-voyage, survival against the elements and a four day feeding frenzy of sharks, a Navy cover-up, political intrigue, and a fight to clear the name of a respected ship's captain that took 50 years. It is a story so harrowing that it can scarcely be believed how little-known the event is outside of the cadre of serious World War II historians, despite that the sinking resulted in the greatest loss of life involving a ship at sea in U.S. Navy history.
And yet the fact is not so strange when one considers what it took to overshadow the sinking of the Indianapolis — the nearly simultaneous first wartime use of atomic weapons.
Coincidentally, however, the same atomic bomb that obscured the loss of the Indianapolis was also inextricably linked to the ship. It was the USS Indianapolis that carried the components of the bomb used at Hiroshima to Tinian Island before the ship sailed off to meet its own fate.
In July 1945, Indianapolis completed a top-secret high-speed trip to deliver parts of Little Boy, the first nuclear weapon ever used in combat, to the United States Army Air Force Base on the island of Tinian, and subsequently departed for the Philippines on training duty. At 0015 on 30 July, the ship was torpedoed by the Imperial Japanese Navy submarine I-58, and sank in 12 minutes. Of 1,195 crewmen aboard, approximately 300 went down with the ship.[4] The remaining 890 faced exposure, dehydration, saltwater poisoning, and shark attacks while stranded in the open ocean with few lifeboats and almost no food or water. The Navy only learned of the sinking four days later, when survivors were spotted by the crew of a PV-1 Ventura on routine patrol. Only 316 survived.[4] The sinking of Indianapolis resulted in the greatest single loss of life at sea, from a single ship, in the history of the US Navy.[a]
On 19 August 2017, a search team financed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen located the wreckage of the sunken cruiser in the Philippine Sea lying at a depth of approximately 18,000 ft (5,500 m).[5] On 20 December 2018, the crew of the Indianapolis was collectively awarded a Congressional Gold Medal.[6]
Bayview Connections Today
USS INDIANAPOLIS and Bayview-HuntersPoint
USS INDIANAPOLIS and Bayview-HuntersPoint
"The ship sank so fast that few lifeboats or float-nets were recovered, leaving the majority of men in the water with nothing but kapok life jackets to keep them above water in rough seas, with swells of 12 feet or more.
The conditions were such, with daytime temperatures near 110 degrees, that thirst rapidly set in. Nighttime in the water added hypothermia as an
additional killer. Desperate men were driven to drink salt water, which rapidly produced dementia and hallucinations."
If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea,
Even there Thy hand will lead me,
And Thy right hand will lay hold of me.
- Psalm 139:7-10
"It was 4 1/2 days later," Harrell recounted, "that providentially we were spotted, but there were only 317 of us still alive."
Philip Grey, The Leaf-Chronicle
The Rescue
Only after an accidental discovery of men in the water during that flyover by the Ventura did the US Navy dispatch a number of rescue craft.
Aboard the USS Register a Destroyer Escort DE 233 was young doctor by the name of Louis Hamman, Jr. The Resister had recently been badly damaged by a kamikaze at the battle of Okinawa, with Hamman fished out of the water by another DE. Rushed into repairs, the Resgister was subsequently escorting a carrier when she was dispatched to the site of the Indianapolis on August 4, 1945.
As one of the first rescue vessels to arrive on blistering day in the middle of the ocean, 280 miles from the nearest land, the Register crew began pulling survivors out of the water. The survivors were wounded horribly by sharks, sunburned and severely dehydrated. According to his son, and as related by Dr. Hamman, he treated these survivors as he was one of the few doctors on site; the other rescue ships only had corpsmen on board. That son, born just two years after that experience, now lives less than than a mile from where the USS Indianapolis departed Hunters-Point Shipyard in 1945. His name is Michael Hamman, a Bayview-HuntersPoint resident in India Basin.
Dr. Louis Hamman is recognized in the book 'Abandon Ship'. Originally published in 1958, "Abandon Ship!" was the first book to describe how the survivors of the "U.S.S. Indianapolis" sinking watched their shipmates fall prey to shark attacks, dehydration and death, and the first to question why the captain, Charles McVay, was court martialed.
RON MOULTRIE SAUNDERS
The T-LINE is pleased to recognize and celebrate BAYVIEW-BASED artist,
Ron Moultrie Saunders, a photographic artist, landscape architect and recipient of numerous public art commissions. Ron creates photograms: photographs that are made without the use of a camera. Ron is a also a co-founding member of the 3.9 Art Collective and art94124 in San Francisco.
ARTIST PROFILE
RON MOULTRIE SAUNDERS
RON MOULTRIE SAUNDERS
RON MOULTRIE SAUNDERS
A BAYVIEW artist and resident, Ron Moultrie Saunders creates unique, beautiful and thought provoking photograms: photographs that are made without the use of a camera. This process includes positioning various organic or man-made objects or materials near or on the surface of a light sensitive material such as photographic paper or photo-sensitive material and then exposing them to either natural or synthetic light sources.
Originally from Jamaica, Queens, New York, Ron moved to Bayview in 1985 and was the artist in residence at the shipyard from 2013-2015. He currently lives in Bayview and works from his studio in Dogpatch, at the Minnesota Street Project.
Ron is a co-founding member of the 3.9 Art Collective, and is a photographic artist, landscape architect and teacher. He is being commissioned by BART to create artwork for the Market Street Canopies in San Francisco and for 19th Street Station in Oakland, CA.
His art work is in the San Francisco Arts Commission Civic Art Collection for projects he completed for the Bayview Linda Brooks-Burton Branch Library, Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, Laguna Honda Hospital and, Public Utilities Commission New Headquarters in San Francisco. Ron is also the recipient of an Individual Artist Grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission.
He was commissioned to create works for VM Ware, Inc. in Palo Alto, CA and Dallas, TX in 2013 and, for The San Francisco Travel Association (formerly SF Convention and Visitors Bureau) new offices. His art has been exhibited throughout the US including solo shows “The Secret Life of Plants”at San Francisco International Airport and CordenPotts Gallery, San Francisco, CA, and group shows “Self:Scape” at Middlesex County College, New Jersey(2012), “Exposed: Today’s Photography/Yesterday’s Technology” (San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art), “Measure of Time”(Oakland Museum of California at City Center). His work is published in several books including “Self Exposure: The Male Nude Self-Portrait”, “From Art to Landscape” and, INPHA 3 (International Photography Annual). He was an artist-in-residence at STAR (Shipyard Trust for the Arts) in the Hunter’s Point Shipyard in San Francisco and Kala Art Institute.
In the community along the T-Line, Ron's work is installed at the Linda Brooks-Burton Bayview Branch Library at Third and Revere Avenue. It is well worth taking the time to disembark at the nearby light rail platform to visit the library and to study Ron's work.
See more work by Ron Moultrie Saunders here
See more activities by artBAYVIEW.
RON MOULTRIE SAUNDERS
RON MOULTRIE SAUNDERS
Ron earned his Bachelor of Arts in Design of the Environment, University of Pennsylvania, in 1979 and a Masters of Landscape Architecture, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in
1982.
His awards have included a San Francisco Arts Commission Individual Artist Grant in 2017 and 2019; the 2007 award at The Center for Fine Art Photography, Fort Collins, Colorado, “Alternative Processes”; and was a Finalist in the 1997 International World Heritage Photo Competition sponsored by UNESCO, Honorable Mention
Ron's teaching experience is varied, and he'sbeen an instructor at Saint Mary's College of California, Moraga, California, the Bayview Opera House, the Kala Art Institute, Berkeley, California; the University of California Extension Berkeley, San Francisco, California; and as guest lecturer at Crissy Field, Golden Gate National Park, San Francisco California. Ron has also been a photography instructor at the Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, California Environmental Arts Summer Program; and was Co-developer of “arts” program for disadvantaged youths. He's also served as volunteer and board member
at the Shipyard Trust for the Arts (STAR); the 3.9Art Collective, San Francisco, California, Co-Founder; the Bayview Opera House; Art 94124 Gallery; and at LEAP (Learning and Education Arts Program), San Francisco, California.
Ron's commissions include:
2020 Southeast Health Center Expansion, San Francisco, California, San Francisco Arts Commission
2020 Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), Market Street Canopies, San Francisco, California
2019 Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), 19th Street Station, Oakland, California
2016 Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, San Francisco, California, San Francisco Arts Commission
2014 San Francisco Travel Association (formerly SF Convention and Visitors Bureau)
2013 San Francisco Public Library, Bayview Linda Brooks-Burton Branch, San Francisco Arts Commission,
San Francisco, California, “Spirit and Nature Dancing Together” and “Symbiotic Relationships”
San Francisco Public Utilities Commission Headquarters, San Francisco, California
Public Utilities Commission, San Francisco Arts Commission, Southeast Community Facility
VM Ware, Inc, Palo Alto, California and Dallas, Texas
Alternate, Alameda County Arts Commission, San Lorenzo Public Library Expansion Project
2011 Laguna Honda Hospital, San Francisco, California, San Francisco Arts Commission,
2010 Alternate, Ashland Youth Center, Alameda County Arts Commission, Ashland, California
Finalist, Hunter’s Point Shipyard Public Art Project, San Francisco, California
Addition information on Ron's inclusion in publications, reviews and residency experience may by found on his website: