Life in a Quonset Hut

Quonset hut "city" on Adak - World War II

Lou's fellow sailors

In 1941 the United States Navy needed an all-purpose, lightweight building that could be shipped anywhere and assembled without skilled labor. The George A. Fuller construction company was selected to manufacture them. The first was produced within 60 days of contract award.
A Quonset hut is a lightweight prefabricated structure of corrugated steel having a semicircular cross section. The design was based on the Nissen hut developed by the British during World War I. The name comes from their site of first manufacture, Quonset Point, at the Davisville Naval Construction Battalion Center in Davisville (a village located within the town of North Kingstown, Rhode Island.)
Between 150,000-170,000 Quonset huts were manufactured during World War II. After the war, the U.S. military sold the surplus Quonset huts to the public for $1,000 each. Many are still standing throughout the United States, primarily used for commercial buildings (especially Army surplus stores). - from Wikipedia

Lou's home away from home

We lived in Quonset huts [while stationed on Adak] with bunks lining each side of the room. We each had a locker built into the side of the hut and a bunk type bed beside our locker. The huts had a door in each end with two windows at each end with plywood covers to keep any light from showing out at night. We also had a table about 4 feet square at each end of the room. They were usually being used for card games of the gambling type.

Lou's space
notice all the pictures of Leona on display!

We didn’t have tables at our bunks, but each locker had a small shelf on the side by the bunk that could be used for writing. No tables meant no place for junk to pile up on! The lockers had adequate shelving for all of our clothes and anything else we had. At the bottom they were quite deep, but at the top they were quite shallow. We had an oil stove in the middle of the room that would get red hot if turned clear up. It was really quite comfortable and because of the construction, they did not have inspections, except to see that it was not a health hazard.

We had no easy chairs, but we were free to lie down on our bunks any time without fear of inspections of our beds or lockers. We weren’t supposed to have food in our lockers that might get contaminated and cause us to get sick, but anything that was not perishable was okay to have in our lockers. It was really quite comfortable to sit and write letters or read.

Dining Hall on Adak

The head (toilets, showers, and wash basins) was located in a central place to about each group of 8 Quonset huts with 16 guys to a hut. The chow hall was up the hill next to the Quonset area and the Radio Shack was on up the hill about 100 yards.

Note the wooden walkways
(unidentified sailors)

There were wooden walks with a large line (rope) to hold on to in stormy weather as we went to chow and up to the radio shack. If it was storming at night we hung onto the rope to get where we wanted to go. In the winter it was light only a few hours around noon and in the summer it was only dark for a couple of hours at midnight.

The Quonset huts were tight, not allowing the winds to come in, and they had a protective entering area around the one door that we used most of the time. Because of their shape, the wind just went over us most of the time, and the rain and snow went down the sides into ditches which drained the water away from the Quonset hut.