Audio
Colonel John Kern
Transcript
Kern: (009) My family name is Kern, and my mother was a Wiedemann...
Conklin: (010) How is that spelled?
Kern: (010) W-i-e-d-e-m-a-n-n, and basically, came from the East Coast, both born in the Brooklyn, New York, area.
Conklin: (012) Do you have any siblings?
Kern: (013) I have one older sister, Elaine Magliulo,
M-a-g-l-i-u-l-o.
Conklin: (014) So, in the birth order, you're the youngest then?
Kern: (014) I'm the second and youngest, yes.
Conklin: (015) How old are you now?
Kern: (015) I'm sixty-six.
Conklin: (016) Do you have a family?
Kern: (016) I have four children living, one deceased, and I have seven grandchildren, soon to be nine.
Conklin: (018) Thank you. And where were you raised?
Kern: (019) I was raised - my early years - in New Jersey, in a little town called Roselle, about 19 miles from New York City. R-o-s-e-l-l-e. And I went to school in Roselle up through the eighth grade. And that was during the period of World War II, and I never got to finish high school. Instead I was sent to a military school - Randolph Macon Academy - in Virginia, and it was a 55-C Unit, which was a category similar to junior ROTC, but it was one in which the school had more control over the faculty. And I finished the equivalence of high school at Randolph Macon Academy. The war ended just in my senior year, so I was not called off to war, but I would have been otherwise trained as an officer to go directly in there.
Conklin: (029) Who raised you?
Kern: (030) My mother and father raised me.
Conklin: (031) You've answered some of my questions ahead of time here. Did you go to college?
Kern: (033) I have four degrees. I spent 4-1/2 years at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and I worked my way through school there. I was... I took a B.S. in Business Engineering, and then I took... I was called into the Korean War in 1951. And while in the service, I also attended... took some extension courses from the University of Virginia, from Catholic University, and also I spent a couple of years at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute on their faculty, and while there, I took additional courses. I later attended for three years the Missouri School of Mines in Rolla, Missouri, and picked up a B.S. and a Master of Science in Civil Engineering, and then later I attended the Army Command and General Staff College and received the equivalent of the second Master's degree there.
Conklin: (046) "Ralla" is "Raleigh" - how do you spell that?
Kern: (046) R-o-l-l-a. Rolla.
Conklin: (046) Oh, Rolla, I missed that. Briefly discuss your military career, and especially those assignments that related to your last job.
Kern: (049) Well, I had a typical long military career - a total of 31 years and one month service. I started out in the service as a second lieutenant; since I had been a distinguished military graduate from ROTC, I was offered a Presidential direct commission in the regular Army, and I accepted that back in the early phase of 1952. I had actually entered the service in October of '51, and was sent off to the Korean War. I served as a platoon leader, a company commander, and a staff officer in the 24th Infantry Division during that war. I rotated back to Japan. My wife joined me in Japan, and my oldest daughter was born in the city of Fukuoka on the island of Kyisha.
Conklin: (061) Would you spell both of those?
Kern: (061) F-u-k-u-o-k-a is Fukuoka and Kyisha is K-y-i-s-h-a It's the southern major island of the...Japan. And then I returned from there to teach as an assistant professor at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. From there, I was sent to an Army Advanced Officers course, and from there, I was sent to the Missouri School of Mines. So, I was actually an Army officer attending as a captain in the Army at the time, attending the School, and I was also appointed to their faculty; and I taught in the ROTC Department while I was attending classes and where I received my Baccalaureate and Master's degree. I was then assigned to Germany, to the Fourth Armored Division for 4-1/2 years, and served as a company commander and a staff officer in that division; and returned to the United States assigned to the San Francisco District, which at that time, was at 100 McAllister Street in downtown San Francisco. There was my first assignment with Civil Works, which is another role the Corps of Engineers play in which we provide all of the navigation and all of the flood control and much of the construction work for reservoirs, dams, water supply and the like, across the nation. We also built and operate a large number of recreation areas, as a matter of fact, far more than the National Park Service! But, I... while at the San Francisco District, my District was responsible from Crater Lake in Oregon and all of the wild rivers along the coast of California: Smith, the Eel, the Van Dusen, Trinity, Klamath, Russian, all of the way down to San Luis Obispo in the south. And it's there where I got my love of San Francisco and got to know my area... my way around the area, and that played a prominent role in future assignments. From the San Francisco District, I was sent back to Korea, and if you recall from history, the famous Pueblo incident - I was the guy that got the radio message, and I was serving as the War Plans Officer for 8th United States Army, and also the United Nations Command and the U.S. Forces/Korea. And upon my return back to the San Francisco District, I served another 2-1/2 years there and was sent to Vietnam during the war, where I commanded the 69th Engineer Battalion in the Delta, and built many of the highways and railroads - not railroads - highways and airfields and the like in the southern part of Vietnam. From Vietnam, I returned directly to the Presidio; and from here, through a variety of assignments, I served as either the Assistant Chief Engineer or the Chief Engineer for the next 11 years. I retired from the service as a colonel in 1981; was recalled for an additional year because of my duties with the GGNRA and the National Park Service, and ask 6th Army Engineer, and I retired a second time in December of 1982. I've maintained a close liaison with the Park Service since my retirement, and have been prominent in many of their affairs since.
Conklin: (106) Thank you. Boy, you were a busy man. I first met you when the Department of the Army was transferring the Nike Missile site to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and I have some questions about that period of time. Who were the key people involved in the negotiation? And would you spell names that could be problematical as you discuss different people?
Kern: (112) Well, my memory of names is almost zero at this point. However, I would state that the original legislation - Public Law 92-589 - which established the Golden Gate National Recreation Area transferred two portions of Fort Mason, which was divided into three parts: There was the lower part, the pier area, which is now so prominent with the Fort Mason Foundation; and then there were some warehouses and the rest in the upper part. Both of those were declared excess to the U.S. Army; and then there was a remaining portion that the Army continued to occupy. Those basically were the quarters and the like. On the... headlands side of the Bay, we had three U.S. Army posts: Fort Baker, which is on the east and west side of the Highway 101; then Fort Barry; and finally, Fort Cronkhite, on the other side of the lagoons. Cronkhite is C-r-o-n-k-h-i-t-e. And those three posts still exist and are now under the National Park Service's jurisdiction. However, when the law was passed, the Army had a right to remain in Fort Cronkhite and Fort Barry for three purposes: The one was for the use of the rifle range and for military training; the second one was to continue to occupy family quarters that we had then and still have to some degree to this day; and the third was for Nike. The Nike system was still active. We had previously had two Nike sites over in Fort Barry and Fort Cronkhite. One was a Nike Ajax, which was a non-nuclear-headed anti-air defense weapon system; and the second one, which had a larger warhead which could either be conventional or nuclear, was the Nike Hercules system. And we had Hill 87 for the Nike Ajax, and Hill 88 for the Nike Hercules. Those hills are still in existence over there, and represent where the...one of the three portions of each Nike system existed. A Nike site is divided into three areas: One is the administrative area, and I'll speak now for Nike Hercules site, which was the only one active when I occupied my position, but the administrative area where the people slept and lived and ate and were fed is now what is the Point Bonita outdoor recreation area for the YMCA. The actual firing battery is the one that we have since preserved and is still in existence for visitors to look at. And the third site was the integrated fire control site which is on top of the hill where we had the large radar antennas and other transmission equipment. It was important that the two sites, the firing site and the integrated fire control site, be invisible one from the other, since they used FM transmission; and that was why some of the peculiar language in the release to the Park Service included that they couldn't put a high rise building in the bottom of the valley. And they, of course, had no interest in building a high rise building, but couldn't understand why we couldn't block the air between the two. The Nike site itself was still active and was still in a functioning, performing role at the time of the transfer to the GGNRA. Within about a year-and-a-half, the Army nationwide abandoned all of the Nike sites except for one on the tip of Florida, pointed at Cuba, and a training site that was down in Fort Sill, Oklahoma. The Nike Hercules site was complete. Everything was there. And I felt it was a terrible waste to destroy this thing which had been the primary defense system for the United States for 30 years, only to have some historians 50 years later try to go back and reconstruct it. And I appealed through Army channels, with limited success, but no particular encouragement, except from my commanding general, Lt. General - later Four Star - General Stillwell. And - Richard G. Stillwell. General Stillwell was the original commander at the time of my appointment to the Liaison to the National Park Service, and also the Military Coordinator. He was also designated the Secretary of the Army's field representative for all matters pertaining to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. And the - I went through General Stillwell, and with his blessing, I went through the Department of the Army channels, and eventually got to communicate directly with General Creighton Abrams, the Chief of Staff, United States Army. And General Abrams was the senior officer of the Army at the time, and he had been a famous commander in Vietnam. And General Abrams gave me permission to transfer to the National Park Service everything that was non-explosive or non-classified on the Nike Hercules site. That included the mess hall, the mess trays, the knives, forks and spoons, and all of the equipment. Bill Whalen, then General Superintendent of the GGNRA, did not want the integrated fire control site or the radio vans and things that were up on the mountaintop. And so the Army disposed of those through normal surplus channels, much of which was sent to overseas sites in Turkey and Greece and other places surrounding the Soviet Union. The Army did transfer two dummy Hercules missiles, six launchers, and the entire site intact to the National Park Service. We also made arrangements for the Army to provide interviews and the Park Service was given permission and encouraged to go up and to interview the actual people - and for one month prior to their departure, so that they would know exactly what the roles of the Army air defensemen were. It was a rather isolated life; it was rather peculiar to the Army functions, and to the defense of the nation. Reluctantly, I admit that the Park Service stubbed their toe on this and never did get those interviews; and eventually, the young officer that commanded the Nike site disposed of much of the training aids and property, because he had to clear the site by a given date. But we were able to transfer the sites as such. The other site, the old AD-7 site is where World College West was given space to conduct their educational functions until they got a campus of their own, and where the Yosemite Institute still exists. And that was their training site. The old launch site for Nike AD-7 was what we converted into, and got permission to give to, the Marin Mammal Center; and that's where they operate from. And the integrated fire control site is up on the top of a mountain, which was completely removed, and it's where one of the old 16-inch gun positions existed, prior. But Nike was important, 'way back. I might mention at this time that when the Public Law was first passed, the Secretary of the Army and the Secretary of Interior each decided that they would coordinate the transfer of functions and responsibilities through a three-tier arrangement. The first tier was the Secretary to Secretary; each of them in turn appointed a field representative. Mr. Howard Chapman, who was then the Regional Director for the Western Region of the National Park Service, was the Secretary of Interior's appointee; and he appointed the General Superintendent, Bill Whalen, as the on-the-ground, first layer of communication and negotiation. In the Army side, the Secretary of the Army appointed General Stillwell, the Commanding General of Sixth Army, as his field rep; and he in turn appointed me to two additional positions, that of Liaison to the National Park Service and also the Military Coordinator for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. And the arrangement was such that Bill Whalen and I were to try to work out all transfers, all meetings, all negotiations, inter-service support, and the like, at our level. If we could not agree, we had the referral to the second tier, the General and Howard Chapman; and if they could not agree, it would go back to the Secretariat level in Washington. I'm proud to say that 100 percent of all the negotiations were handled at the Superintendent, Bill Whalen, or his successor's and myself for the next 11 years - we never had a dispute that we couldn't resolve locally, that had to go back for higher approval.
Conklin: (255) In terms of the Nike site transfer, what were some of the behind-the-scenes steps that were necessary? Was there any tricky stuff that...?
Kern: (258) Well, we allowed the Park Service access to the... first, to the administrative area, and some of the Park people were more interested at the time in supporting what now is Yosemite Institute, and what was also World College West, in those buildings and barracks on the other side of the lagoon. And one of the Park Service staff - or several of the Park Service staff - went up and actually stripped the kitchen, and took the stoves and all of the functioning cooking equipment out, and took it over to the other mess hall to build. Ironically, that same gentleman later left the Park Service and worked for the YMCA; and it moved back in and had to come to me with a red face and asking me if I could help him scrounge some stoves that he had actually stolen from himself years earlier! And I got a kick out of that. But it was the type of thing that happened. But a lot of the equipment was dissipated, and I don't think the people had a real feel for the importance of history of getting something totally complete, so they didn't have to go back and reconstruct it.
Conklin: (279) What do you think were the greatest successes in that whole transfer, and some of the failures?
Kern: (281) In my view, I think - Bill Whalen is a good friend of mine, and I appreciate and respect his performance in the past to a great extent. But he had come from Yosemite, where the theme was open space, or leave nature basically as it is. And his first orders or requests to me were: "I want the land, and I don't want any buildings on top of it. If you can, as you vacate buildings and so forth, if you can get the Army to knock 'em down and haul 'em away, it will sure be...save me. I'm here to run a Park which is basically open ground." Bill later changed his tune; but for instance, when the Fort Mason lower level was transferred, he wanted me to knock down all the piers and remove them. And I felt that those were beautiful structures that would serve a very useful future need. And now, of course, that's the Fort Mason Foundation - probably one of the highest visitation and utilized areas in the recreation field in the country! Likewise, at Fort Cronkhite, we had a - previously had - a regiment assigned and stationed there many years back. And they had rows of barracks which still exist. And we had some buildings along the front row, and he asked me to knock those down; and reluctantly, we tore down three - two or three of them. And then finally, I talked him into saving them, and we took one of them, and for $1,600 we converted it into what is now the Park Service's little ranger station over there. And we were able to convert a building. And I felt that we needed to preserve some of these structures. The rifle range they wanted us to bulldoze down, and I felt that should be preserved because that was built by Lt. General Arthur MacArthur, the father of what became later Five Star Douglas MacArthur. And that was... again, we used that on many occasions. The old balloon hangar, which was for a barrage balloon, which now exists behind the riding stable, was a structure that they wanted torn down because it was in bad condition. And it's the last surviving barrage balloon, now of historic value; instead, we were able to go in and fix the base of it so that horses would not injure themselves, and they could run on top of wood and dirt inside. So, that's now become an indoor corral for horses, where it was originally a barracks [sic] balloon hangar.
Conklin: (329) Great. Back to the Nike for just a minute. You were working at a time of great anti-war sentiment, especially in the San Francisco Bay Area. Bridging an agency charged with the protection of the country as a liaison to an agency whose mission included reflecting a wider range of values, how did that dichotomy play out for you, or was it ever an issue?
Kern: (338) On the Nike site, it wasn't too much of an issue, because the Army controlled all of the access, the tunnel; and pretty much, with military police patrols and the like, the public didn't get into what is now the Headlands area. Gradually, as we relaxed that and allowed them in, they were not allowed near the Nike sites themselves; but once a site was vacated and it was open to the public, we had a great deal of desecration of property. Some prior to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. The anti-war sentiment, for instance, just prior to the GGNRA entering the scene, we had people that went up there with acetylene torches and cut open areas that we had welded shut to preclude damage, or where there was actually a threat to public safety. We had tried to make the sites as safe as possible, but it was a real problem back in those days. And in the early phases, the Vietnamese War was not a popular war, as far as the people of the country were concerned; and unfortunately, people that don't think tend to take their anxiety out on the people who serve in the military, when they really are doing the bidding of the Congressional representatives and the President of the United States. They're not making foreign policy, they're merely executing what they're directed to do. But people that - as I refer to them - the "mental midgets" have a tendency to try to take it out on the nearest person in uniform and the like, and we had our fair share in the city of San Francisco.
Conklin: (368) Thank you. What tensions were evident, and, did these anti-war sentiment tensions - how that affect your job? Were you walking a tightrope at any time?
Kern: (374) I was in a tough position a good bit of the time. Many of the Army people thought that I was "giving away" land and facilities to the Park, and the Park looked to me as the only link in order to be able to get things that they needed and wanted. When the Golden Gate National Recreation Area started, we had a meeting in General Stillwell's war room in which Howard Chapman and General Stillwell met for the first time. Bill Whalen, many of his staff and others were present, as was I and some of my superiors. And General Stillwell had found out that I had, on my own, started a program of re-forestation. Had a man named Febelcorn had worked for me as an arborist and as a botanist...
Conklin: (389) Can you spell his name, please?
Kern: (390) I can't spell it, 'cause I can't remember, but it was F-e-b-e-l-c-o-r-n, I believe.
Conklin: (392) Thank you.
Kern: (393) And Mr. Febelcorn was a civilian, but he was in love with the West and he knew the West and the trees and the biological flora and the fauna more than anyone I've ever met. And he came in my office one day and complained about the lack of... he said, "Everybody's planting conifers and we have pine trees and evergreens everywhere, but nobody's putting back the native oaks and the hardwoods and things that used to exist here." So, with my blessings, he went to Hunter Liggett and gathered huge numbers of five different types of oak trees and brought them back. And the Army had an old nursery up behind where I lived on Kobbe Avenue - that's K-o-b-b-e - still existing in the Presidio. And I lived in quarters 1314 there, and behind that was this old nursery area that had been abandoned years earlier. And I went to the mess halls and had them all the number ten cans, and between Carl and I we cut open the cans and we planted acorns and we raised 5,000 oak trees. And my young boys, as they were growing up, got to...their daily chore was to go up and water cans of oak trees. And to this day, some 25 to 35 years later, they're still talking about the chores they had of watering those trees. But we were able to give those trees to the University of California, to the Army's recreation at Lake Mendocino, and many, many other areas, where they were planted and hopefully, helped to restore. General Stillwell had heard this story, even though I had done it as an individual, and thought that I would be, therefore, a good candidate for liaison to the Park Service. And that's where we established our first liaison. At that meeting, Bill Whalen...at the conclusion of the meeting, Bill Whalen and I went off to discuss and to become more personally acquainted. And he agreed that...or he told me that his first and most urgent mission was to get out of his boss' office over at 450 Golden Gate, the Western Region, and he said, "I haven't got anything but a desk and a chair over there. I need to get away from there so that I can get this thing off the ground." And for that reason, I worked an arrangement with a colonel friend of mine that was over in Building 201 in Fort Mason, and he moved some of his people around and gave Bill a little corner office so that he could have...and we provided him with desks and chairs. In fact, the entire beginning of the Golden Gate Park [sic] came out of Army resources. And we just had him sort of as an extra tenant there; we provided him telephone service and all the rest. And gradually, as the Army tucked up its tail and reduced in size and moved - and eventually, I moved the entire Western Region office out of that building over to the Presidio - and that is still now the headquarters for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
Conklin: (460) Ah, we're going to run out of tape pretty soon, so I think I'll change it now.
[END OF SIDE ONE]
SIDE TWO
Conklin: (007) We've begun discussing my next question, under Bill Whalen, the first Superintendent - that's spelled W-h-a-l-e-n - what were your first projects and communications? You know, you've just told me that you helped set up their office, so what was the next step?
Kern: (011) Well, Bill, basically, had nothing to work with. He had a GSA-issued car, and that was about it. And he had no way to maintain it; we didn't have any Military Police - correction: We didn't have any National Park police, and so the Military Police covered initially until the park police contingent was sent in from Washington, D.C. And as the Park Service gradually took over buildings, they had no capability to maintain them; they had no shop of any significance, and the like. And the Army had a... in Pier One in Fort Mason, the Army had its own maintenance facility there that took care of facilities at Oakland Army Base, and also Fort Mason itself. And, at my suggestion, which was a little bit difference than anything that had been done before, I suggested rather than the Park Service creating a brand new maintenance shop and looking for a place and money to buy tools and all the rest, that they just sort of move in with us and share it. And it was the first time, probably, in history where an Army maintenance facility became also a National Park maintenance facility. Later, we were able to move the Army unit out, and leave behind 100 percent of the tools, the equipment, the shop, the keymaking equipment - everything - so that when the National Park Service started, they had everything in place to operate. Pier One also had a unique facility on the end of it. During the early part of the Korean War, the General Services Administration had leased to the Maritime Administration a portion of Pier One. And the terms of the lease were that they had the right to occupy and use the end of the Pier for the war and a reasonable period thereafter. And that was rather nebulous in real estate terms. And one of the transfers that I was able to affect...Bill - we transferred all the lower part of Fort Mason and the middle part; in fact, we transferred the entire of Fort Mason to the National Park Service with continued use and occupancy of the Army of the Officers Club, the NCO Club, a Teen Club, and 43 sets of quarters, portions of Building 201 in what is...was our former telephone exchange, which is now your National Police Headquarters. So, those buildings were still Army buildings, and the telephone exchange and the rest were still active; but as the land, theoretically, was transferred, except for this end of Pier One, because it belonged to a different Federal agency. And with...at my suggestion, Bill and I went over one day to the Maritime Administration, and we asked to speak to the senior administrator. And he couldn't understand why a Park Superintendent and an Army Engineer were there to visit with him. And I said, "We just came to give him official notice." And he said, "What kind of notice?" And I said, "I want to tell you that time is up." And he was dumbstruck, because we're now in the year 1973, early '73, and of course, the Vietnamese [sic] War had ended many years earlier, and they were very carefully ensconced in the end of Pier One and had no intention of leaving. And he immediately sent for his staff legal people, and they came in and I said to them that their lease from GSA was in effect transferred to the ownership of the National Park Service and the U.S. Army, and that we were there to give him official notice. And finally, he complained, he said they had nowhere else to go. And I said, "Well, you don't have to move. We just want to transfer the land, and you can become a tenant of the Park Service." And so, for the first time in history, we're using a Department of Defense transfer document - we transferred a Maritime Administration facility, brokered by the General Services Administration to the National Park Service, Department of the Interior. And to the best of my knowledge, they stayed there as long as they wanted to stay there; and I don't know if they're yet to this day, but I think it's unique that they finally came in and signed off on it, and Bill and I walked out of there with a smile on our face that we had affected a transfer in a rather unusual - but a certainly effective - way!
Conklin: (066) Great! Did you, as representative of the Department of the Army, have, or know of, any input or influence the Department of the Army had on the 1980 General Management Plan? How involved were you in that Plan?
Kern: (070) I attended all of the meetings, and if I could digress here for a moment to say when Bill...the creation of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area occurred during a Republican administration, but that the bill was originally authored and sponsored by the two local Congressmen - Phil Burton, a Democrat, and Bill Maillard, a Republican. Burton obviously the more aggressive and more active of the two, but the two of them together had co-authored the legislation. And it was during the period when President Nixon, looking for a way to gain public popularity, had come up with his Legacy of Parks. So, the initial Secretary of the Interior, whom I believe was Rogers Morton from...at the time, was obviously wanting to get credit for the Park and the like; and he got to appoint certain members to what became the Citizens Advisory Commission. The Sierra Club and other local... People for a Golden Gate National Recreation Area, with Ed Wayburn and Amy Meyer as co-chairs, were very influential in trying to stuff the council with people of their thinking and leaning, and were primarily on the Democratic side of the house. And Bill Whalen explained to me that he was in this dilemma that he couldn't appoint any one of them as Chair without objections from the other side. And I suggested to him that I knew of a person whom I had worked for, who was my boss as the District Engineer in San Francisco, who was a very brilliant, affable, common sense-type guy who knew how to conduct public meetings and the like. And I made arrangements for Bill Whalen to be introduced to Frank Boerger.
Conklin: (095) Spell that please.
Kern: (095) Boerger is B-o-e-r-g-e-r. And Frank Boerger was a colonel, graduated Number One in his class from the military academy; he had a brother that was a general in the Corps of Engineers, also. And Frank was probably one of the finest, most logical, solid citizens that I had ever known or met. And Bill later told me that the best thing that I ever did for the National Park Service was to get Frank Boerger. And Frank was brought in as an outsider who had no political involvement, was on neither side of the fence, and was able to take over as Chairman of the Advisory Commission and ran it for at least the next sixteen or seventeen years. And...until his death. And we sorely miss Frank, but he was a wonderful contribution to the Park, and I'm proud to have been able to nominate him.
Conklin: (106) In terms of the General Management Plan, did the Army have an agenda that they wanted to get through? By 1980, was the Army pretty much out of the land and it was a park planning effort at that point?
Kern: (109) In 1980, the Presidio had no intentions of closing. It was scheduled to be here forever. The Army had voluntarily given up the rifle range at Fort Barry, because every time we fired we had to close Councilman Road and other places, and people couldn't... the bird watchers and people couldn't get up there and visit, so we just said... and I also had another job as a Commander of Camp Parks over near Pleasanton. And so, the Army gradually moved their training facilities over to Camp Parks and they're still there to this day. But the... incidentally, Camp Parks was also surplus and excess to the Army's needs at one time, and I saw the need for it, and was able to arrange to have it withdrawn from excess. And so, now it's basically used to support the reservists and the National Guard in the Northern California Area. But, as it became apparent, when the Nike closed down and the rifle range and military training would interfere with Park users, the Army voluntarily vacated what I would call the Headlands area. The legislation proposing the GGNRA also included two areas of the Presidio that were to be irrevocably permitted for Park Service use, but to remain under Army ownership; and those were approximately 45 acres in the vicinity of Crissy Field and approximately 100 acres which is now the ocean side of the Presidio, which we refer to as Ocean Beach. The legislation really intended for 17 acres of firm land above the high tide lines and 23 acres of submerged lands and Crissy Field; and approximately 45 acres of fast land, the beach itself, and 55 acres of submerged lands. I looked at these and felt that they were inappropriate. And, with Bill Whalen's concurrence, we suggested that we give a different configuration, but one which that give the entire beach areas of both areas. And instead of 17 acres of fast lands, we transferred, or permitted, 44.7 acres, which was the original Crissy Field area and approximately 103 acres of fast lands which became everything west of the highway over in the Ocean Beach side, to the Park Service. Plus some 389 acres of submerged lands that the Army held title to from the State of California. So, in effect, they got much, much greater area, but it gave the Park Service those portions of the Presidio to use and to manage that really were applicable for visitation. At the same time, the remainder of the Presidio was an open post and remained open to the public and had great amount of visitation to buildings such as the one we're in now, the Army Museum, and many hiking trails. We had a Boy Scout camp, and many, many of the public came and walked through. And it was important to both the Park Service and to the Army that the Presidio remain open to the public so long as the military were not interfered with in the accomplishment of their missions.
Conklin: (158) What was your plan for the Lanhan - is that spelled L-a-n-h-a-n - Housing in the Headlands?
Kern: (159) Lanham, L-a-n-h-a-m. When the Congress approves money for military construction based on the author of the legislation, they name it, and the particular author of that was the Lanham Act, which created housing of... many years back. And so, that Lanham Act housing here, and also some at Hamilton Air Force Base, which has become turned over recently for civilian use. But we had quite a few sets of Lanham Act housing, and...substandard by today's rules, but certainly more than adequate; with hardwood floors and the like, equipped with stoves, refrigerators, and the like, over in the vicinity of Fort Barry, near the rifle range. And I made arrangements with the Army to transfer those buildings complete; since we no longer had a need for them, we offered to transfer them complete to the National Park Service so that their young rangers and their young techs and people that were coming... being employed, but had relatively low salaries would have a place to live, and the like. Regrettably, the Park Service did not want them, and asked us, and a contract was executed, in which they were demolished and hauled off. So, we had those buildings. Also, General Abrams had given me permission to transfer two of those fine brick quarters in the Loop in Fort Mason to the National Park Service as a gesture of courtesy to the Superintendent and the Assistant Superintendent, so that they might occupy the quarters directly across from their headquarters. Bill Whalen also had a bad experience in Yosemite when visitors and the public stuck their nose in the back of his house, and indicated that he personally didn't want to live in the Park, and gracefully declined the offer. And those houses are still occupied by the Army today.
Conklin: (188) Thank you. Alcatraz, as a former military post, you told me, required demilitarization before it could be transferred off the U.S. Army books. And what did this entail? And please include the Alcatraz flag pole story.
Kern: (193) Well, the...as a standard rule, whenever the military vacates a property, they... we go through a process known as "demilitarization" and basically, you remove any ammunition, you remove anything that would be hazardous to the general public, and you remove anything that is of a salvage or a reusable value to the Army itself, to be transferred to other post camps or stations. Alcatraz had long since ceased to be an Army post, but there was no way to get to it or back from it. And having previously served in the San Francisco District, I had access to some of their small survey boats and the like, and the first trip to Alcatraz on which I escorted Bill Whalen out there, he, for the first time, found the ruins that had been left there at the end of the Indian occupation several years previous. Contrary to what people may think, that was not a peaceful occupants and that the Indian themselves stripped much of the copper wire and many of the things out and were selling them in order to raise funds in order to subsist. In fact, on Thanksgiving one year while the Indians occupied the Island, there were so many boats from San Francisco that went out there as a token, a gesture of good will; people donated turkeys to the Indians on Alcatraz as sort of a reverse of the first Thanksgiving. In fact, the Indians had so many turkeys, they had a big game seeing who could shotput the turkeys the furthest from the Rock; they had so many more than they could eat, and they were actually throwing them off into the water. But, this preceded, of course, the Golden Gate National Recreation Area time. The public...the Army was also accused of taking water out and sustaining the Indians while they were there. There was an Army barge that did it, but it was from Oakland Army Base; but I was down at the San Francisco District and caught the flak from the press. But, one our first trip to Alcatraz with Bill Whalen and the rest, they were overwhelmed at the amount of debris and garbage and trash that was there, and there were all kinds of problems of getting to and from and getting the Island more active. So, my role, basically, was to help him get out there, get access to the facilities; and then I went around with him and helped determine which of the guard towers and water tanks and things were actually in hazardous conditions and had to be removed before the public safety could be assessed. And so, our original trip out there was basically a cleanup. And then, because of the popularity of Alcatraz and the public's desire to get out there, the Park Service started conducting tours, and they had rangers and other docents out there escorting people around. And Bill Whalen planned a large dedication, the transfer; and both Congressmen Maillard and Burton were both invited, along with several other Congressional representatives, everyone from the Sierra Club, and all of the other people who were anxious to... the mayors, and all of the local politicians - everybody was there. And Bill planned it to a gnat's eyelash. He had a multi-cultural honor guard; he had a bugler there; and he planned the whole thing up to the raising of the flags. And he had a representative of both the native Americans and the African Americans and others, and the Hispanics, and the caucasians - everyone was there represented in the honor guard and the like. And I casually looked around and said, "Bill, I don't quarrel with any of your plans, but where do you plan to raise the flag? There's no flagpole!" And he looked - and this was only two or three days before the actual ceremony, all of which had been planned in great detail - and there was a...just an aura of panic that existed. So, that night, with a group of some Army volunteers, we got a large lowboy tractor trailer from the Army motor pool and we made a clandestine trip up to an old, abandoned Nike site outside of Travis Airforce Base, and somehow or other a flagpole disappeared up there, and we got it back. And the next day, with a work boat, we got it out to Alcatraz and we hastily erected a flagpole there. And it even had the old brass ball sitting on the top. And I had taken that to my wife, who dutifully tried to polish it for six straight hours to make it shine. And Bill Whalen and I, we actually engraved in the top of that he and I had sat here on the date of the dedication, regrettably, during a storm. And the next couple of years, the ball was blown off the Island, so it's been lost; but to me, that was a typical example of raising a flag on a pole that didn't exist and we were able to cover it!
Conklin: (271) Thank you - I love that story! What inter-agency negotiations were required for the U.S. Park Police and local law enforcement? And in the telling of this, could you include the safe house story for the Anthony Harris case in the Headlands?
Kern: (276) Well, the National Park Police came in and I was fortunate to be present with them when we met with the San Francisco Police and also the Sheriff in Marin County. And along the way, since they had jurisdiction on both sides, the National Park Police ended up with four jurisdictions: they had their normal Park jurisdiction; they were deputized U.S. Marshals; they were deputized Marin County Sheriffs; and they were deputized San Francisco Police, so that because of the conflicting boundary lines and the uncertainty when somebody had violated a law - a speeding ticket, or a parking violation, or even a more serious crime - we had to be sure that the police who were involved in the arrest had authority. So, I worked coordination between the Military Police and the Park Police so that if someone were picked up and if it were a military member, the Military Police just took jurisdiction and the matter was settled through their system. Likewise, if it was a civilian and they were retained by the Military Police, we somehow summoned the Park Police there and we were able to make a joint arrest, and therefore make sure that the properties were protected. But this worked well. We also arranged to have the Park Police act as Deputy U.S. Sheriffs from Marin County and San Francisco so that they could cross the Bridge; and we were able to get Bridge permits for them which saved the Park Service a great deal of money out of a budget that was very, very small when they first started. Along the way, one day I was subpoenaed to the Park Service office on a rather hurry-up basis. And I was informed that - by Bill Whalen - that... or correction: It may have been Jerry Schoeber at the time - Bill Whalen's successor.
Conklin: (309) S-c-h-o-e-b-e-r, Schoeber?
Kern: (310) Schoeber, yes, that's correct.
Conklin: (310) I think so.
Kern: (311) So, they said that they had received a call from Washington, D.C., and I was asked to go to a certain telephone and await a call. And I did this, and it turned out it came from the U.S. Attorney General's Office and one of the high officials in that office. And they explained to me that San Francisco was suffering from a rash of crimes in which a rather - shall we say - rightwing group of Muslims, Black Muslims, had decided that they wanted to perpetrate the genocide of the white race, and they were committing some type - many types - of atrocious crimes and torturing people and killing women in front of their husbands and vice versa and the like. And they - the San Francisco Police Department - was going wild to try to suppress this Black Muslim group. These became known as the Zebra Murders. And the Zebra Murder cases were quite famous all over the state. One of the Zebra members - or one of the members of this group - was captured, and his name was Anthony Harris. And the San Francisco Police Department had no place to keep him. So, they went to the U.S. Marshal Service and asked them to provide protective service for him, since there was obviously a long list of people who wanted to snub him out before he could spill his guts to the police. The U.S. Marshal Service had nowhere to go; and through their channels of the Park Police, being deputized U.S. Marshals, came to them and asked them. And, of course, the Park Service was in its infancy and had little in the way of facilities, and that's why I was asked to act as the liaison between. And so we took Building 942 over in Fort Barry, which was a two-story house sitting in the midst of some larger buildings, off by itself. And the U.S. Army... with the permission of the Commanding General of Sixth Army of the time, I was able to outfit it with furniture and equipment, and this particular prisoner, Anthony Harris, was moved in there as a safe house. He later escaped from the house while the marshals were watching the color television set that I was also asked to provide. And he escaped from an upstairs window. And the Park Police didn't tell me about it for three days. And then they brought in some... they were apparently conducting a rather extensive investigation, and they came into my office and said that they had to talk to me, that something tragic had happened and they were sure that Anthony Harris had killed his common law wife and their infant child, and that he was on the loose. And they wanted me to help them go over and search the terrain. And I said, "Well, who else knows about this?" And, of course, no one was allowed to know, nobody in the Army. The Military Police only knew that there was a house over there that if I called for assistance or help they were to respond to my call. The Park Police, with the exception of the commander and one or two of his immediate subordinates, and the Superintendent of the Park were the only Park people that knew about this operation. So, they were very embarrassed that the marshals had lost their prisoner. That very week, the centerfold of the local newspaper had a story on the U.S. Marshals Service in which they had never lost a prisoner, and they had actually lost one three days earlier, but the word hadn't gotten out. But the U.S. Marshals were sure that Anthony Harris was loose in the area; and I asked them if they had coordinated with the Military Police or had discussed this. And of course, the word was mum, nobody was allowed to speak, and so, nothing. So, I went down to the Park - excuse me, to the Military Police - and asked to review their log, specifically of the night in which the event occurred. It turned out that Anthony Harris, as bad as he was, and later accused of some four or five murders, but he was a very loving parent for his infant son, and had no intentions of killing off his common law wife. They had actually walked from the safe house in Fort Barry to the tunnel leading between east and west Fort Baker. And just before they got to the tunnel, they had to stop to change the baby's diaper. And they stopped in front of one of the Army quarters over there, and under a pine tree, changed the baby's diaper, and he was observant enough to note the name and the quarters number. He later walked, and was attempting to walk through the tunnel, which was off limits to pedestrians. A Military Police patrol coming through the tunnel at the time found them, stopped them, put them in the Military Police vehicle and took them back to the other side and radioed back to the Military Police and said they had just picked up two males and a female, and wanted to know what to do with them. And the... Anthony Harris had given them the very plausible story that he was visiting the sergeant and his wife who lived in quarters number so-and-so, and that unfortunately, they had a terrible fight; and that they had gotten up and each gone off in their own car and left he and his wife and the infant there - he had no transportation, and the like. And the Military Police sergeant at the desk authorized him, authorized the patrol, to bring him back either to the Golden Gate Bridge bus stop, or bring him back to the Military Police Station, where they would call a taxi for him. He elected the latter; and so they loaded his suitcase, which he also was carrying with the baby's paraphernalia, and he and his common law wife into the Military Police vehicle, and brought 'em back to Military Police Station. Military policemen even helped them out and carried the suitcases and things for 'em. They had called a cab for him; they had ascertained that he had a hundred dollars in his pocket; and they had even logged in the address that he was heading to over in Oakland for the cab. And when I brought all this information back to a rather large group of red-faced U.S. Marshals and told them exactly where he had gone, and that his reason for breaking away was to take the child back for a visit with the pediatrician; and that they later were able to trace him to Los Angeles, and from there, two San Francisco policemen went down and re-arrested him in the streets of Los Angeles, and brought him back. The Park Service was again asked to provide an alternate safe house, and the San Francisco police this time were going to occupy Hill 88 and set up bunkers with machine guns and all the rest; and at my suggestion - and I'm sure, with the concurrence of the Park officials - we said not only "No" but "Hell, no!" and Anthony Harris was housed down at the San Francisco Police Academy's rifle range near Lake Merced, and we had nothing further to do with him.
Conklin: (457) In the two minutes that we have left, can you reflect on the successes and shortcomings of the transition from post to park, within the GGNRA, when the Park was first established? Is there anything that you wished had turned out differently?
Kern: (465) Well, first of all, I didn't personally want to see the Presidio ever close as a military post. And I think most of the Park people agreed with me that we needed to do was to convert it to a common use by the public. And I had tried very hard to transfer those portions of the Presidio that were more amenable to Park Service - along the beaches, and along the open space - and that we would continue to occupy the rest of the post, and it could be back-filled with administrative units, not to interfere with the public's use. The Army has since chosen to do otherwise, and I think they have dumped a whale on a minnow. They have dumped a rather large piece of land, very complicated, with many buildings, on a rather limited Park structure. And fortunately, recently, legislation has been passed to permit the creation of a foundation to be able to run it. Otherwise, the National Park Service could not handle the Presidio and keep it up. I was distressed to see the buildings and the grounds start to deteriorate rather dramatically, and many people came to me and said, "They'll just let it go to ruin - we should never have given up the Presidio, it was too beautiful." So, I feel that it will be saved; it's going to take time. The Presidio is obviously going to go down in quality before it comes back up in quality.
[END OF TAPE]
Description
Col John Kern discusses his military career and how he was involved as the main liaison between the Army and the National Parks Service in the transfer in an interview with Sara Conklin of the National Park Service in 1995
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