AMERICAN SAMOA

Blunts Battery | Breakers Battery | Fita Fita Barracks | Matautu Ridge Battery | Tutuila Naval Station

ABOUT AMERICAN SAMOA
MAPS OF AMERICAN SAMOA

¤ HARBOR DEFENSES of PAGO PAGO

¤ Blunts Battery
(1917 - 1919, 1941 - 1944), Blunts Point, near Utulei
Two guns are still located here in situ, one on Matautu Ridge 50 feet above the lower gun. The lower gun is currently a public park, and the upper gun is private property. Both guns are 6-inch naval guns in concrete emplacements that were manned by a U.S. Marine Defense Battalion. Blunts Point is also known as Tulutulu Point.

Matautu Ridge Battery, which consisted of two guns (a 3-pounder and a 3-inch field gun), was manned by personnel from Tutuila Naval Station during World War I. Two German naval vessels were seized in Pago Pago Harbor when the U.S. entered WWI in 1917.

¤ Breakers Battery
(1941 - 1944), Breakers Point, near Aua
Two 6-inch naval guns are still located here in situ on the opposite side of the harbor entrance from Blunts Battery, and were manned by a U.S. Marine Defense Battalion.

¤ ALSO: Several 3-inch naval and AA guns were also used by the Marine Defense Battalion, which first arrived in March 1941.

Special thanks to Al Grobmeier of the Coast Defense Study Group for providing info on the Pago Pago defenses.

Tutuila Naval Station
(Tutuila Naval Base Historic District)
(1900 - 1951), Fagatogo
Originally established as a coaling station for the American Navy's Pacific Fleet. By World War II there were over 100 buildings constructed. There was very little action here during the war. The base was closed in 1951 when the Navy left and transferred executive control of the island to the U.S. Interior Department. There are only fourteen original structures left remaining today within the Navy Base Historic District. The old naval commissary (Bldg. 43) (1919) is now the Jean P. Haydon Museum (since 1971). The Fita Fita Barracks (1908), built for the Samoa Fita Fita Guard, is now used by the local Department of Public Safety. A concrete machine-gun pillbox (?) is located nearby at Utulei Beach Park.

NOTE: The eastern half of the Samoan Islands has been a U.S. Territory since 1900. The Samoan Islands were jointly administered by Germany, Great Britain, and the United States between 1889 - 1899.
Swains (Quiros) Island (formerly Gente Hermosa), originally claimed by the United States in 1856, was formally annexed in 1925 from the British colony Gilbert and Ellice Islands. No known military use.

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