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Lieutenant Colonel John S. Westerlund,
USA (ret.) “retired from the U.S. Army in 1994 after a twenty-six year career as a field artillery officer that included
Vietnam and three tours in Europe. He taught at Northern Arizona University and completed doctoral studies in American history
(American West, Arizona) in 2001. He has published numerous articles in French and American journals, and his book, Arizona’s
War Town: Flagstaff, Navajo Ordnance Depot, and World War II, received several awards for the preservation of Southwestern
culture. He is currently a seasonal ranger with the National Park Service.” Lieutenant Colonel John
S. Westerlund is the author of Arizona’s War Town: Flagstaff, Navajo Ordnance Depot, and World War II. According to the book description of Arizona’s
War Town: Flagstaff, Navajo Ordnance Depot, and World War II, “Few American towns went untouched by World
War II, even those in remote corners of the country. During that era, the federal government forever changed the lives of
many northern Arizona citizens with the construction of the U.S. Army ordnance depot at Bellemont, ten miles west of Flagstaff.
John Westerlund now tells how this linchpin in the war effort marked a turning point in Flagstaff's history. One of only
sixteen munitions depots built between 1941 and 1943, the Navajo Ordnance Depot contributed significantly to the city's
rapid growth during the war years as it brought considerable social, cultural, and economic change to the region.
A clearing in the ponderosa pine forest
called Volunteer Prairie met the military's criteria for a munitions depot—open terrain, a cool climate, plentiful
water, and proximity to a railroad—and it was also sufficiently inland to be safe from the threat of coastal invasion.
Constructing a depot of 800 ammunition bunkers, each the size of a 2,000-square-foot home, called for a force of 8,000 laborers,
and Flagstaff became a boom town overnight as construction workers and their families poured in from nearby Indian reservations
and as far away as the Midwest and South. More than 2,000 were retained as permanent employees—a larger workforce than
Flagstaff's total pre-war employment roster.
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As Westerlund's portrait of wartime
Flagstaff shows, prosperity brought unanticipated consequences: racism simmered beneath the surface of the town as ethnic
groups were thrown together for the first time; merchants called a city-wide strike to protest emerging union activity; juvenile
delinquency rose dramatically; Flagstaff women entered the workforce in unprecedented numbers, altering local mores along
with their own plans for the future; meanwhile, hundreds of sailors and marines arrived at Arizona State Teachers College
to participate in the Navy's "V-12" program. Whether recounting the difficulty of 3,500 Navajo and Hopi employees
adjusting to life off the reservation or the complaints of townspeople that Austrian POWs-transferred to the depot to ease
the labor shortage-were treated too well, Westerlund shows that the construction and maintenance of the facility was far more
than a military matter. Navajo Ordnance Depot remained operational
to support wars in Korea, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf, and today Camp Navajo provides storage for thousands of deactivated
ICBM motors. But in recounting its early days, Westerlund has skillfully blended social and military history to vividly portray
not only a city's transitional years but also the impact of military expansion on economic and community development in
the American West.”
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