History of Clark Air Base - The Task of Reconstruction: The Late-1940s and The 1950s

The Task of Reconstruction: The Late-1940s and The 1950s

Post World War II, Clark Field saw a building boom, with barracks, operations, and storage buildings being constructed at a breakneck pace. Constructed during this period were "liberation barracks", which housed enlisted men, a base operations building, a post office building, an outdoor movie theater, the NCO Open Mess, and the Clark AB golf course, once one of the finest golf courses on any U.S. military installation in the world, and the renovation of the Officers' Restaurant and the Clark Air Base Officers' Open Mess (CABOOM). Religious facilities would also be constructed.

Clark's Base Headquarters was nicknamed "The Little Pentagon" because it consisted of five long quonset huts radiating out from a central area. It was built on Henry Avenue at the east end of the Parade Ground in 1947 as administrative offices on the site of the original 217-bed Post Hospital, which dated back to September 1903. Behind the hospital was an open field used for horse grazing, troop drills, and cavalry practice. Old houses still in the area were used as doctors' quarters. On the site of the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company office, were the nurses' quarters. During the Japanese occupation, the old hospital was used both as a dispensary and barracks. Soldiers heated water for bathing in the big steel drums directly in front of the building. Doctors and their families occupied the barns that clustered around the hospital. With the adoption of the 1979 amended Military Bases Agreement and the establishment of Philippine sovereignty over Clark AB, Base Headquarters was moved to the Clark Air Base Compound Building at the intersection of Bong and Dyess Highways. In 1986, workers began demolishing the Pentagon to make for a new Combat Support Group Headquarters Building.

At the end of World War II, Clark Field, like so many other American bases in the Western Pacific, became a dumping ground for battle-damaged equipment. Clark was a major dumping ground for P-38 "Lightnings", the mainstay of the Allied air forces in the Pacific. After being stripped of all usable material, these aircraft were simply pushed into giant pits and covered with dirt. Such "boneyards" exist at several locations on Clark and occasionally, new construction efforts result in the rediscovery of one or more of these almost completely decomposed aircraft and equipment. Although the Sixth Army's 37th Infantry Division declared that Clark Field and Fort Stotsenburg had been "liberated" on January 31, 1945, remnants of Japanese forces hiding in the Zambales foothills west of the field could still do some damage.