Hawaiian Chemical Depot

McMillin, Chemical Officer, Hawaiian Chemical Depot, was prepared to issue 60,000 service gas masks when, less than an hour after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor began. Colonel Unmacht, department chemical officer, ordered distribution. The departmental CWS also stocked about 90 tons of bleach, no tons of chemicals for impregnating permeable protective clothing, and nearly 2j,ooo gallons of noncorrosive decontaminating agent. Several thousand hand decontaminating apparatus and a completely inadequate supply of personal protective ointment completed the defensive stock. ... 

The 8th assisted the 43d Laboratory Company in manufacturing the first batches of the stabilized flame thrower fuel (napalm plus activated silica gel) developed by the latter unit in 1945. In the summer of that year the Hawaiian Chemical Warfare Depot built its own unit for the activation of the silica gel. The 8th had this unit operating at a rate of one ton per day during the last weeks of the war. Between May and August of 1945 the depot manufactured a total of 226,343 gallons of fuel." ... 

Following the experiences at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal during Project Eagle, an experimental facility to test multiple destruction technologies was constructed at Tooele Army Depot in Utah as the Army began to consider destruction of obsolete unitary munitions.In 1982, after substantial internal and external review of the test results from the Tooele facility, incineration was selected for future destruction of chemical weapons. Johnston Atoll, over 800 miles south-west of the Hawaiian islands, was chosen as the site for the first full-scale incinerator facility. 

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