To Europe and the Far East — Pacific Area’s over 175 years of history!

       As the refrain of the Coast Guard marching song “Semper Paratus” indicates, the service has a global reach. Expansion into the Pacific area has taken shape over the past 175 years.

With the founding of the United States under the Constitution, Coast Guard predecessor services would begin to grow geographically. In 1790, a year after the Lighthouse Service founding, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton established the U.S. Revenue Marine placing revenue cutters under direction of politically appointed customs collectors in major seaports. These included homeports at ten East Coast seaports from Savannah, Georgia, up to Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

In 1789, the U.S. Lighthouse Service was established and began its mission of overseeing lighthouses in the founding states of the Union. Over time, the Lighthouse Service would develop a district system to administer its lighthouses and buoy depots. The Lighthouse Service would rely on this basic district system until its absorption by the modern Coast Guard in 1939.

From 1790 through the 1840s, revenue cutter and lighthouse operations grew across the North American continent. The 1846 Mexican American War had the side-effect of expanding revenue cutter and lighthouse operations beyond the eastern U.S. for the first time. In 1849, Revenue Cutter C.W. Lawrence rounded Cape Horn to enter the Pacific. Lawrence was the first cutter to sail the Pacific, proceeding on to Hawaii, where she enlisted the first Pacific Island crew members into the service. The Lawrence finally arrived in San Francisco, California Territory, to inaugurate cutter operations on the West Coast.

Lighthouse operations soon followed Lawrence’s arrival. By 1860, the service had revenue cutters operating under customs collectors in San Francisco, Oregon Territory (Astoria), and Washington Territory (Port Townsend). And in 1867, purchase of Alaska from Russia inaugurated West Coast cutter patrols along the Alaskan and Siberian coasts, and Bering Sea; Arctic rescue operations; and the fisheries enforcement mission in Alaskan waters. By the mid-1870s, U.S. Life-Saving Service stations also began to populate the West Coast starting with the San Francisco area.

The late 19^th century saw important changes affecting service expansion beyond American shores. During the 1880s, changes in technology, leadership and organizational structure unleashed the service from archaic practices, such as cutters serving under politically appointed customs collectors. These Progressive Era changes also transformed the new U.S. Revenue Cutter Service into a modern organization. Even though it was not an official military agency, Revenue Cutter Service personnel now served in a military chain of command with its head, the commandant, located in the Treasury Department.

The year 1898 saw dramatic events in service history. The 1898 Overland Rescue Expedition to Point Barrow, Alaska, became the most daring and successful Arctic rescue in American history. On its 1898 voyage around the globe to serve on the West Coast, Revenue Cutter McCulloch paid first-time service visits to Indo-Pacific ports in India, Hong Kong, and Singapore. In the 1898 Spanish American War, Revenue Cutter McCulloch served in the Battle of Manila Bay becoming the first revenue cutter to serve in combat in the Pacific. After the brief Spanish American War, the U.S. annexed Guam, the Philippines, Hawaii and, in 1899, Wake Island.  

Expansion continued after the Spanish American War. In 1900, American Samoa became a U.S. territory, and, between 1903 and 1905, Lighthouse Service jurisdiction expanded to Hawaii, Midway Island, Guam and American Samoa. In 1904, Revenue Cutter Thetis became the first cutter stationed at Honolulu. For over ten years, Thetis patrolled the Hawaiian Islands up to Midway Island as well as the Northern Pacific. And, after the Philippines came under U.S. control, the service saw a heavy influx of native Philippine recruits in the food service rates. The 1915 merger of the Life-Saving Service and the Revenue Cutter Service into the modern Coast Guard consolidated numerous boat stations together with cutter bases on the West Coast and Pacific Northwest.

During the 1930s, under the direction of Commander Russell Waesche (later Coast Guard commandant) the Coast Guard instituted the “Area” command structure. Initially, the Coast Guard had four Areas layered over Coast Guard districts. The original Coast Guard Areas included the Eastern Area, Western Area, Northern Area and Southern Area. This organizational model formed the basis of the system used today by the Coast Guard.

During World War II, the Coast Guard was transferred from Treasury to the Navy to support military operations with shore installations, beach patrols, buoy tenders, cutters, patrol craft, aircraft, weather ships, amphibious vessels, and transports. As early as 1942, Coast Guard-manned transports were visiting India and the South Pacific to deliver troops and, in some cases, evacuate civilians. In addition, the Coast Guard adopted the Navy’s district system, including 14 naval districts with the territories of Alaska and Hawaii, and the Panama Canal Zone, each constituting a separate district.

By the middle of the war, the Coast Guard began building a network of Long-Range Aids to Navigation (LORAN) stations in the Pacific theater. The LORAN system provided precise 24/7 all-weather navigation for ships and aircraft. By the spring of 1945, there were 20 LORAN stations located on various islands across the Pacific. Later in the war, the service also began establishing Aviation Detachments, or AIRDETS, at various Pacific military airfields for SAR operations. These included Annette Island, Alaska, and Kaneohe, Hawaii. Coast Guard units and personnel served in every major campaign of the Pacific War, including Guadalcanal, Tarawa, the Philippines, Iwo Jima and Okinawa. And the Coast Guard saw duty in lands as distant as New Zealand, Australia, New Guinea, and China. Indeed, the service’s wartime reach prompted one service member to write music with the refrain:

I’d like to find the guy that named the Coast Guard,

And find that bit of coast he had in mind.

It wasn’t on the tanker we’d protect from submarines.

The coast at Casablanca wasn’t soft by any means,

I couldn’t find it on the beach at Attu.

I couldn’t find it at Guadalcanal.

If he thinks the name will rate it,

Where the hell can I locate it,

Oh, I’d like to find the guy that named the Coast Guard!

After World War II, the Coast Guard cemented its Pacific area footprint. In 1947, Palau, the Marshall Islands, Northern Mariana Islands and the islands of Micronesia, became part of the U.S. administered Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. In the post-war years, these territories became part of the Coast Guard’s area of responsibility administered from bases in Hawaii and Guam.

After the war, the Coast Guard retained the Area system with the districts layered underneath. The districts were each overseen by a flag officer who held authority over all Coast Guard operations and activities in each district. With slight modifications, this is the organizational model retained by the service today. These modifications included the consolidation of the four original areas to just an Eastern Area and Western Area. In January 1973, these two areas were renamed Atlantic Area and Pacific Area, respectively.

For commercial navigation and U.S. defense purposes, the Coast Guard continued to carry out wartime missions. It operated Ocean Station cutters stationed across the Pacific as weather ships and SAR vessels for transoceanic air travel. It also operated numerous LORAN stations around the Pacific, Alaska, and Far East. By 1946, these LORAN stations proved so numerous and remotely located that the service commissioned the 339-foot coastal freighter, CGC Kukui, as a re-supply and support vessel. In the 1940s and 1950s, the Coast Guard also expanded its network of AIRDETs between the U.S., Guam and the Philippines to supply LORAN stations and serve as aviation SAR bases.

The Cold War years returned the Coast Guard to serve in certain wartime roles in the Pacific. In 1950, the Korean War brought the Coast Guard to the Korean Peninsula to operate a LORAN station and help establish a South Korean coast guard, which later became the South Korean Navy. The service also added new Ocean Station patrols across the Pacific to assist commercial vessels bound for Korea.

Coast Guard units also pushed farther than ever into the Arctic. Driven by supply needs of the Air Force’s Distant Early Warning (DEW) stations along Alaska’s and Canada’s northern shores, cutters Storis, Bramble and Spar made a first ever U.S. transit of the Northwest Passage in 1957. These three vessels demonstrated that Arctic military bases could be accessed by icebreaking ships. And, in 1965, the Vietnam War brought Coast Guard cutters, aids to navigation and shoreside Coast Guard units to Vietnam for the first time.

Late in the 20^th century, funding cuts, automation, and technological obsolescence saw the reduction of Coast Guard units in the Pacific. As the satellite-based global positioning system (GPS) grew, the LORAN system declined until closure of all stations in the 1990s. Meanwhile, the service closed its network of AIRDETS across the Pacific and the support vessel Kukui was decommissioned. Today, the Coast Guard’s Pacific footprint includes units in Singapore, American Samoa, and Saipan; as well as larger installations, such as Activities Far East/Marine Inspection Office Asia, in Japan, and Coast Guard Forces Micronesia/Sector Guam, which hosts several cutters and a buoy tender. And Hawaii hosts District Oceania, Sector Honolulu, Air Station Barber’s Point, boat stations and various cutters and buoy tenders.

The Coast Guard has served the Pacific Basin both in times of war and peace for over 180 years. As the nation’s overseas territories grew in the late 1800s, the Coast Guard’s predecessor agencies’ area of responsibility also grew. By the end of World War II, the Coast Guard operated afloat and shoreside units across the Pacific. Thus, the region has benefitted from the service’s law enforcement, humanitarian service, environmental protection and defense readiness missions. As the World War II song goes, the Coast Guard no longer guards just the coasts!