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San Diego Naval Shipyard

San Diego Naval Base and Shipyard is the largest naval installation on the West Coast. Similar to Norfolk Naval Shipyard on the East Coast, San Diego Naval Shipyard is the center of naval services of all kinds. While its history as a naval installation is much shorter than that of Norfolk, San Diego Shipyard serves both its city and the Navy. The Naval Base at San Diego provides a sort of one stop shop for naval affairs, with a wide variety of services located in just one place.

The shipyard was originally commissioned in 1922 by the Secretary of the Navy, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. During its first few years of operation, the small repair shipyard expanded to include other support and training facilities. The shipyard nearly closed a number of times throughout the depression, but was repeatedly saved by the active involvement of the City of San Diego and its Chamber of Commerce. Rather than closing, the Navy actively sought other means of funding through the local public works administration, which helped fund the expansion at the San Diego Naval Shipyard.

When World War II began, San Diego Naval Station was in a perfect position to be designated as the main Repair Station for the Pacific fleet. From 1943 to 1945, employees at the San Diego shipyard worked on 5,100 ships, performing repairs, conversions, and maintenance on every class and type of warship commissioned by the Navy. During those years, the shipyard employed thousands of workers in shipbuilding and repair operations that included heavy exposure to asbestos and other toxic substances and chemicals.

San Diego Naval Station pioneered the use of floating dry docks for the repair and refitting of ships, and was responsible for the building and deployment of 155 floating dry docks that were distributed throughout the world.

In 1946, the shipyard's designation, mission, and name changed again. The new mission was to provide logistical support to active Naval ships, including repair, refitting, and dry-docking when needed. The base at the time consisted of nearly 300 buildings situated on more than 900 acres of land, and was rapidly becoming the West Coast's most active and important naval installation.

In the years following the war and up until the 1990s, the Naval Base continued to grow and expand, adding more services to those already provided. When the Navy closed the Long Beach Naval Shipyard in 1994, Naval Base San Diego became the homeport to over one-third of the Navy's Pacific Fleet.

Today, the Naval Base San Diego is home to about fifty ships, including thirty actively commissioned Navy ships. The shipyard continues to handle repairs, training, dry-docking and other logistical support services for the Navy's active fleet.

However, like any other Naval Shipyard of the last century, there are darker sides to its history. Shipbuilding and repair workers through the first 80 years of the twentieth century often worked in unsafe and unhealthy conditions. Their jobs forced them to come into contact with many hazardous materials and substances. One of those substances was asbestos, which was widely used in all Navy shipyards.

Asbestos offers superior fireproofing and insulating properties, and was ideal for use in the high-temperature and high-friction areas. However, damaged or disturbed asbestos creates a dust that contains a high concentration of tiny fibers that are deadly, though they can take decades to kill.

Many individuals who worked at the Naval Shipyard at San Diego have become ill with a variety of lung diseases, including lung cancer, asbestosis, pleural scarring, and mesothelioma, a rare cancer that affects the linings of the lungs.

Despite the dangers, neither the Navy nor any of the manufacturers that supplied asbestos-containing products warned shipyard workers they were being exposed to a toxic substance. The asbestos was used in pipe insulation, boiler wall coating, asbestos paint, spray applied insulation, gaskets, and turbines. Workers were often exposed to filings and dust laden with asbestos without any protective gear to filter the air and reduce their chances of inhaling the deadly fibers.

If you or someone in your family worked at the San Diego Naval Shipyard, you were likely exposed to asbestos. It is important to know this because the early warning signs of mesothelioma, a malignant cancer, mimic many milder diseases. Most doctors will not diagnose mesothelioma unless they have previous knowledge of a patients asbestos exposure.

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