Secret Abandoned Bunker

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After a ton of research, I finally found the holy grail of World War II bunkers here on Oahu!  As it remains a relatively unspoiled historical monument, many people have worked to keep this place a secret.

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Let me start by saying that I completely underestimated the difficulty of this hike.  Also, it should be known that this location is on private property.  Maybe we just went the wrong way, but we never found a path or a trail.  We had to scale the hillside through thorny bushes and shoulder-high California Grass.  We banged our knees on half a dozen solid stones that were concealed by the undergrowth.  This is the type of hike that sure makes me glad we don’t have snakes here in Hawaii…  In the above photo, you can see the upper entrance to the bunker up ahead of us.

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As we were approaching the bunker, I noticed two security cameras between us and the entrance. I sure had not anticipated this.  But I had hyped this bunker up so much to my wife that I could not just give up now (especially after the ridiculous trek up thorny meadow and prickly prairie).  So we retreated back down the hill till we were just out of the cameras’ range, then we snuck back up.  Well bad news, someone had put a huge padlock on the steel door of the bunker and we could not get in.

Thanks for reading!

THE END

No wayzzz!!! I was not giving up. Although I must admit a nauseating feeling came over me  when I realized that we might never get in.  To make matters worse, I had brought my wife who had been listening to me ranting and raving about this ridiculous adventure for days. I had made it sound soooo dope.  She had actually gotten pretty excited about it.  However, my research had informed me that two more entrances existed at a lower level.  Unfortunately, we had no clue where they were and we were losing light fast.  Everything was very overgrown and there was no obvious direction to go in.  So I decided to head to a higher vantage point to see if anything would come into view.  As the sun was setting, I was getting a bit nervous because we knew that we could not use our flashlight outdoors as it would make us quite conspicuous to the property owners.  I could not even imagine climbing back down this hillside in the dark…  Furthermore, I had the creeping suspicion that, if the upper entrance was locked and guarded by security cameras, the lower entrances would also be blocked someway or another.

Hawaii, Oahu, WW2, World War, 2, two, bunker, battery, Arizona, Ship, USS, Guns, Coastal, Defense, Bomb, Shelter, Fallout, Vault, 101, 111, Military, Navy, Army, Abandoned, secret, hidden, lost

After making my way up a very artificial looking hillside, I noticed an indentation a couple hundred feet below us, on an adjacent hill.  I suspected the entire hillside had been excavated to build the battery, then “replaced” on top of it.  The hills looked too uniform and flat topped.  It’s hard to explain, but there was just something about those hills that looked like they were hiding a big fat bunker.  Two entrances, like the one in the picture above, were located about 100′ from each other.  Unfortunately, the first one we spotted was welded shut (that was strike two for us).  I had read that the next gate had a hole in it and that people could slip through it.  But when we arrived to the next gate, it looked like someone had welded a few pieces of steel over the hole making it impenetrable.  Someone went through a lot of effort making this abandoned bunker adventurer proof.  In despair, I hung my head down and threw my arms up against the gate.  The barrier shifted back…  This gate was not welded shut like the other, but just chained shut.  The chain was far too tight to slip between the double gates.  But the gate moved just far enough back that a skinny person could climb up and squeeze through the gate and the door frame.  I loved it!

Bring me your fences, your gates and your fortifications!

Hope was restored!  I told my wife to climb on over while I held the gate back.  I was not sure that I would fit, so I handed her the camera and told her that if I could not make it, she had to leave me behind and explore it for me…  It was all very dramatic.  Luckily I was, just barely, able to squeeze through.  My wife and I are super skinny, so be sure to drink a couple slim-fasts before expecting to fit through that gate.  I almost didn’t make it. Rusted steel was scrapping my back as I pulled myself through (very exfoliating).

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But we did.  WE GOT IN!!!!  We looked at each other with the biggest brightest eyes. Pure Stoke.  We could (should) have turned around so many times.  Perseverance was the true MVP of this adventure.  A few steps in and our excitement turned to anxiety.  It was now night and we were locked into a very big and very dark bunker.

Bunker, spent, Shells, Shotgun, bullets

A few steps in and a room opened on the right side of the hall. Inside there was some burnt furniture and shotgun shells.  Not the most comforting sight.

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The structure was very old and a mysterious dust enveloped us as we progressed deeper in the subterranean colossus.  We both looked at each other and said “Asbestos”! We had not brought breathing masks, so we used our shirts instead (I don’t even know if that does anything).

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Deeper in, we found a large empty storage room.  This is believed to either be the powder or projectile magazine room.  This entire structure was build around a huge three gun turret which would have been on the surface (70′ above us).

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The corridor came to what resembled an elevator shaft.  This was likely used for raising artillery ammunition to the main gun.

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A mysterious staircase spiraled up into murky darkness. We would come back to them later.

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I’m actually really bummed because we saw this ladder and said that we would come back to it. But we completely forgot about it. who knows what untold wonders awaited us up there.  It was probably a chamber full gold and precious stones…

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Naval-type watertight doors at the base of the barbette connected to the projectile/powder magazine.

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So strange of find ship doors in an underground building (at least to me it is, maybe this is standard).  Perhaps this was to protect from humidity moisture or even flooding.  I can only speculate…

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I was really surprised at the good condition this bunker was in (compared to the dilapidated condition of the more famous bunkers I’ve visited around the Island).

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The other magazine room.

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White walls, with no graffiti (now that’s something you don’t see in abandoned structures).  The shelves were still in pristine condition, as if the military had just moved out the day before.  There were even still bulbs in the light-fixtures.  Oooh another doorway.

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We continued ever deeper.

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It’s difficult to convey the creepiness of these hollowed halls.  Looking back at these photos I’m always freaked out I will end up seeing a face or a silhouet that we didn’t notice while we were actually there…  I’ve been watching too many horror movies.

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Whoooaaa a genuine 1943 uriflush 9000.  This is truly a collectors item.

WW2, World War, 2, two, urinal

Yup it works! (JK, I wouldn’t desecrate a historical monument like that).

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The halls just kept going deeper into the mountain.

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This was one of the biggest rooms (maybe 50′ x 200′).  I believe this could have been the generator room.  Some strange machine was still resting there.

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The room showed evidence of fire damage. I have no clue what happened here, but there was rubble and debris everywhere. We did not walk through the room much as the floor looked damaged and weak.

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Watch your step!  The bunker was full of pitfalls throughout the ground floors.

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The paint on the wall showed obvious signs of fire damage (bubbled up and charred).

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Such a strange contraption.

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Not sure what that is supposed to be, but it appears confused as well.

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As we continued through another doorway, we came to a smaller hall lined with multiple rooms/offices.

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Peek-a-boo!!!

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Switch for the electric chair?

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One of the few unlocked doors we came across.

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So we meet again.

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The plotting room was full of chalk boards on every wall.

All sorts of planning could have gone on here.

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Under all the nonsense, there appeared to still be some numbers and calculations on the board.  What went on down here?!?!

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Further down the hall, we past another office and then ran into a ladder.  I suspected this is the way we would have come down if the upper entrance to the bunker had been unlocked.

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Each ladder was about 20′ tall and we had to climb up 6 of them to reach the top of the bunker.

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A mysterious mount sat in the dark, just waiting to bang an unsuspecting shin, as I walked by…

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I hope this isn’t the valley of death…

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Awwww… another adventurous couple was here.  I wonder how they are doing.

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We eventually had to make our way back down the ladders and through all the creepy rooms and halls to get back towards our exit.

spooky, blood, abandoned, bunker

I did not remember this just puddle of blood on the way in… Time to bounce!

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I want these kind of doors in my house.

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Oh snap! We had almost forgotten about the stairs. We could not pass those up.

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On the second floor there was some strange debris and caging on the ground.

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Perhaps the caging wend around this shaft to protect bystanders from falling through.  This hole connected to the ground floor beneath.  Another hole was directly above it leading to the 3rd floor. I suspect giant shells were passed through this channel to be loaded into the huge guns.

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We continued our assent to the 3rd floor.

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There were no more stairs, but just a ladder leading to an enigmatic hatch. It was locked, so we could could go no further.

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As we went back downstairs we decided to check out the other side of the generator room.  Inside we found a huge boiler (sorry, I don’t have a better picture of it).

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The boiler was open. We could have climbed into it, but opted not to.  It extended about 30′ back.

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We climbed up another ladder to a garret where a few large fans were likely used to aerate the entire complex and keep it cool down there. I can’t imagine how hot it must have gotten with  a boiler, generators and all sorts of other machinery.

Hawaii, Oahu, WW2, World War, 2, two, bunker, battery, Arizona, Ship, USS, Guns, Coastal, Defense, Bomb, Shelter, Fallout, Vault, 101, 111, Military, Navy, Army, Abandoned, secret, hidden, lost

We spent about an hour exploring the massive bunker.  This was beyond a doubt the biggest bunker I had ever been in.  Getting off the property in the dark proved to be quite tricky.  Escaping the premises involved diving into some bushes to get out of the headlight beams of a passing truck, then tripping tumbling through the dark all the way to the base of the hills. Once at the bottom we were blocked by a fence with razor wire on it (which we had definitely not seen on the way in).  So we ended up using a storm drain that flushed all the way out to the ocean… I couldn’t make this ridiculous adventure up if I wanted to.  So nuts!

Well I guess if you’ve read this far, you at least deserve to know the name of the place.  This formidable fortification was know as Battery Arizona, named after the USS Arizona.  During the devastating Pearl Harbor attack (12/7/1941), the Arizona Battleship was struck 4 times by high flying Japanese Bombers deployed from the carriers Kaga and Hiryū.  The last armor-piercing bomb to find its target on the deck of the Arizona punctured the ship’s forward powder magazines and detonated.  The apocalyptic explosion that ensued killed 1,177 of the 1,512 sailors onboard and sunk the ship.  After the lost battle of Pearl Harbor, it was decided that Oahu needed to strengthen its coastal defenses.  In 1942 an agreement was struck between the Hawaii Department, US Army, and Rear Admiral William Pye (acting commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet) to transfer naval turrets in order to arm coastal batteries.  This marked the first time naval turret mounts would be used on shore as seacoast artillery for the U.S.  While most batteries were outfitted with 8-inch guns, Battery Arizona was to be equipped with the USS Arizona’s three “recycled” 14-inch Mark VIII Navy guns that had been removed from the sunken ship. Guns fired at sea have enough recoil to push the entire ship several feet back in the water.  When ship mounted guns were placed on land, an elaborate concrete base had to be built around them to disperse the shockwave they produced when fired (otherwise they would literally break the ground).  Pretty dang cool!  To read more about what happened to the Japanese carriers that attacked the U.S. at Pearl Harbor, check out The Battle of Midway.



 

37 thoughts on “Secret Abandoned Bunker

  1. Robert Bartle September 16, 2016 / 3:42 pm

    As you said it was battery Arizona because the Navy removed the after turrets and used them for shore batteries. That is why the watertight doors are there; they’re part of the turret housing.

    • sunshinehawaii September 16, 2016 / 11:32 pm

      Interesting. Thanks for the insight!

      • Bronson July 21, 2017 / 10:23 am

        On your not going to give it up but can u say what part of the island was that

    • Erich October 1, 2017 / 1:10 pm

      Heard they have welded doors at the top of the ladder well, and blocked the hole in the lower doors effectively cutting off entry. Glad I did it years ago.

      • Sunshine October 1, 2017 / 3:03 pm

        You are lucky! But ya unfortunately they locked it down 🙁

  2. Nicole September 26, 2016 / 7:25 pm

    We love the history and exploration of these of places. We are coming to Oahu in October and have been researching places like this to adventure. If you have any suggestions please let me know. Awesome find!

    • sunshinehawaii September 27, 2016 / 3:41 am

      Thank you! This particular adventure was pretty tricky to find. Even once we had found it, we almost didn’t make it inside. It’s an amazing bunker, but the property owners are definitely trying to make it as difficult as possible to get in. We could tell that they tried to completely seal off every possible entrance. We were just lucky enough that we could squeeze in one of the gates.

      • Byron P. November 13, 2016 / 10:18 pm

        I know this bunker is secret but is there anyway you can throw this local Oahu hiker any clues to its location?

        • sunshinehawaii November 15, 2016 / 12:51 am

          The other hikers who have kept this place a secret for years would kill me if I gave explicit directions and locations of this bunker. However, I have left a breadcrumb trail of clues in the post, which would have helped me find the place a lot faster if I had been given the same information. But again, this place is crazy difficult/near impossible to get into now

          • Scott Festa March 19, 2017 / 8:11 am

            I love the hypocritical posts about this and other hikes in HI. Best hike in the world, this hike changes my life but, it would be wrong for me to say where it is.
            If you posted how you found the place and didn’t hike it out of respect for the land, the property owners, the history involved that would be worth reading.
            Let people decide for themselves, if it’s illegal, they take the chance, and they get caught; that has nothing to do with you.

          • Sunshine March 20, 2017 / 9:21 pm

            As I mentioned, I left enough clues in the write up for anyone to find it. I managed to find it with a lot less information. I’m just hoping that it will take a bit more research than most vandals would be willing to put into it. There are a series of amazingly well preserved coastal defense bunkers all around Oahu, most of which rarely see visitors. I have actually been refraining from posting most stories about them (although I’ve already have written drafts for them) out of fear that they will get permanently shut down once hordes of visitors start going to them. However, a side of me that feels that it would be an injustice to allow the history of these places to just vanish with time.

          • Wai`anae Steve June 7, 2019 / 9:55 am

            Thank you for NOT giving away the location.

          • Sunshine July 5, 2019 / 6:39 pm

            For sure! These sorts of spots are really special and the wrong crowd will get them shutdown forever. Also, I feel that the detective work that goes into researching these spots is incredibly fun and rewarding once you find the place. Wouldn’t want to deprive anyone of a little research 😉
            Have you been there lately?

  3. Stephen Porter (US NAVY, RETIRED) November 23, 2016 / 7:11 am

    Great write up on your adventure…and you did a bit of homework on the history and people involved in one of the navy/army dispersal of salvaged equipment. Happy hunting on the multitude of WWII bunkers through our Gibraltar of the pacific.

    • sunshinehawaii November 23, 2016 / 9:50 am

      Thank you so much! Finding these bunkers is super exciting to me, but I feel that the story behind each one is super interesting and a true testament to the resourcefulness and ingenuity of the US military. Thank you for your service!

      • STEPHEN PORTER December 15, 2016 / 8:16 am

        Hea thank you, my grandfather participated in the salvage of the battleships, and removal of the turrets, that were later used all over the island. One such bunker is hidden in plain site on salt lake. Happy hunting.

        • sunshinehawaii December 15, 2016 / 7:59 pm

          Interesting. I did find a massive bunker in that area, but it seemed more “Cold War” looking to me. I will have to check around the Salt Lake area for more sites! Thanks for the tip

  4. Byron P. November 23, 2016 / 11:42 pm

    I appreciate the bread crumbs, me and the wife found it however I am too big to fit through the gate.

    • sunshinehawaii November 24, 2016 / 12:37 am

      Gosh sorry to hear that. It was a super tight squeeze for me. My back was got scratched pretty good and my hair got all caught on the rust. It was definitely not graceful.

    • Scott Festa April 7, 2018 / 2:19 pm

      Combination on the lock that I picked is 0818

  5. Owlsurfer February 19, 2017 / 12:06 pm

    Heyyyy I want to go there but I don’t go by myself. I know where that place at!! Pls email me.

    • Sunshine February 21, 2017 / 1:45 am

      I will keep you posted

  6. Shannon April 25, 2017 / 2:25 pm

    Enjoyed this post. I will be speaking to my husband about it! Thank you.

    • Sunshine April 27, 2017 / 5:07 pm

      Great! I’m glad to hear it. It’s a tricky one, but totally awesome if you find it and are able to get in it.

      • Eddy August 15, 2017 / 3:13 am

        We need to get this place ready for a potential nuclear strike

        • Sunshine August 15, 2017 / 11:18 am

          I know right!!! Well at least you know somewhere to go if things ever go south…

  7. adrian January 17, 2018 / 12:12 pm

    this was a fantastic read, and well done write up. I am intrigued by these sorts of things, i guess watching too many ww2 tv ha. more recently this has the added importance of being actually useful given the events of last weekend. -_- .. my defacto bunker WAS the koko battery, but given we get only 20min warning (with likely half of that time the only useful time to ACT — koko rules itself out, as the hike is a good 15min to reach (unless there is a lower level access way) ? anyways let me know if you would be interested in trying to map out a series of hotspots that could be pre-supplied with provisions near by and at least give the participants a fighting chance at survival , depending on where they are/were on island at the time of such an attack

    • Sunshine January 18, 2018 / 7:27 pm

      Thanks for the kind words! I’m glad you enjoyed it. Ya that ballistic missile alert caught us all off guard. Pretty scary stuff. Given the short amount of time we would have to respond, it’s uncertain if we would have time to reach any shelter before it was too late. There are a variety of other, larger abandoned bunkers around the island. I have had the posts written up for a couple years now, I just never published them because I was afraid potential backlash (they do not seem have been abandoned all that long ago). But after realizing that the military doesn’t really plan to share any space with civilians in there functional bomb shelters, perhaps I should publish all the other bunkers I’ve found.

      • Harrison March 27, 2020 / 1:44 pm

        Yes I’d love to know about all bunkers on oahu. Just in case

    • Tim Schnell April 12, 2019 / 9:30 am

      You should just go to Fort Ruger, up at the old Fire Control Station at Diamond Head Crater 🙂

      • Sunshine April 12, 2019 / 4:37 pm

        I’ve been by there a few times but I thought I saw some security cameras inside the fence. Kind of sketched me out. But maybe I should take another look at it 😉

    • Sunshine January 19, 2018 / 5:59 pm

      That looks like an awesome book. The cover alone gives a great blueprint of the entire facility!

  8. Lance March 22, 2018 / 7:15 pm

    Bro sick adventure! Definitely want to go do this one let me know if you would be willing to go again! 🙂

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