The 100-year history of the Pearl Harbor shipyard is as much about the thousands of men and women who have worked there as the events surrounding the facility. Here are the stories of some shipyard workers:

COMMANDING THE FUTURE

Dick Camacho's father went to work in the shipyard in 1929. The Camacho family lived on Wilder Avenue across from Punahou School.

In 1984, after earning a master's degree, becoming a submariner, and working with Adm. Hyman Rickover, known as the father of the nuclear Navy, Dick Camacho took over as commander of the Pearl Harbor shipyard.

He had been brought to Hawai'i to take on the overhaul of 688 Los Angeles-class submarines.

"It was complex," Camacho said. "We had gone from the older, more roomy ships to the Los Angeles class. By design, we had a lot of equipment packed in there. It went pretty well, but it was a learning process."

The previous Sturgeon class of subs were not as long as the Los Angeles boats, but inside, the Sturgeons weren't as crammed with gear, Camacho said.

It also was a time of downsizing.

News came in 1985 that the Navy would reduce its eight shipyards by 5,500 workers. There are just four Navy shipyards now. By the end of 1985, Pearl Harbor had reduced its workforce from 6,788 to 6,150, according to the shipyard.

"We saw the workload come down a little bit," said Camacho, who now works out of Washington, D.C. "We were lucky to get some additional ships assigned out here."

That year, Camacho was promoted to rear admiral. He's now retired from the Navy and a strategic planner for BAE Systems, which has a contract with the Navy and use of Drydock 4 for surface ship work, while the public yard focuses mostly on submarines.

"I think from the shipyard's standpoint, they ought to stay pretty stable because we (Hawai'i) are in a strategic position," said Camacho, 74. "We're the foremost, farthest western place where we can work, other than Guam. But Guam doesn't have the infrastructure we have here. So it's pretty big and we have the submarines here, so Pearl's pretty good."

MODERNIZING THE SUBMARINE FLEET

Cmdr. William Greene oversees workers who cut big holes into the side of a submarine.

Actually, he's deputy project superintendent for the submarine USS Columbia's depot modernization period, and has been at Pearl Harbor for nearly three years.

As part of the 15-month project, the fast-attack submarine was drydocked, and a swarm of workers removed pumps and valves and modernized combat systems and electronics.

That requires cutting access holes that are later meticulously welded shut.

After about 10 years, Los Angeles-class submarines like the Columbia go in for the work.

The Columbia went into the shipyard on April 7, 2007, and came out of drydock in January.

The repairs are followed by testing, certification, and sea trials before the submarine returns to the fleet.

Greene, 43, a native of Ann Arbor, Mich., said about 200,000 "man days" of labor are involved, with salary equivalents of more than $70 million.

Submarines account for the lion's share of the work done at the shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility, which does quarterly 30-day tuneups on subs, Greene said.

About 17 Los Angeles-class submarines are based at Pearl Harbor, and 2009 will bring the first of more than three new Virginia-class attack submarines.

"We have to make sure (a sub) is safe to operate and in peak operating condition when they send it out on these extended deployments," Greene said. "I think a lot of people don't appreciate how reliable the systems on the ship have to be to go and operate for six months deployed away from your home port. ... So our ships consistently are able to do that because of the maintenance provided by the shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility."

CAREERS AT THE SHIPYARD RUN IN THE FAMILY

The Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard has been in business for 100 years. Richard Perreira has been there for half of it.

The 69-year-old Punchbowl man started in 1958, and hasn't stopped since.

Never once did he get laid off in the roller coaster employment of war and defense buildups and peacetime downsizings that periodically led to what's known as a "rif," a reduction in force.

Now, he's an electrical work leader in Shop 51.

"I used to work outside, but as you get older and age, they kind of put you in the shop," he said with a laugh. "You cannot get on submarines no more, you know?"

Perreira comes from a long line of shipyard workers.

His father, Ernest, worked there, starting just before "the war," meaning World War II.

One uncle was in Shop 38. Another was in Shop 17. Another relative was in Shop 71. Perreira's brother, Mitchell, was a machinist in the shipyard.

"The shipyard has been really great to me, honestly," Perreira said.

In the early days of his career, Perreira worked on diesel submarines, including the USS Barbel. The subs are all nuclear now.

He also helped repair the USS Enterprise in 1969 when the nation's first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier experienced an explosion and fire off Kaho'olawe. A Zuni rocket exploded, setting off nearby 500-pound bombs. Twenty-eight crew were killed.

Engineers estimated it would take 10 weeks to repair. Pearl shipyard workers did it in about seven.

The work increased during the Vietnam War, and then tapered off.

"The direction right now is tremendous for young people," Perreira said of the shipyard's future. "We are looking at the Virginia-class submarines (coming in), and we are prepping for that right now. This submarine will be here for a long, long time."

Some in the Navy have complained about a lack of efficiency at Pearl Harbor over the years. Perreira bristles at that.

"A lot of people say we don't work here. How can that be?" he asks. "When we win how many wars already? How can the ships get out there to fight? Somebody has to fix them. We do."

Reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluad vertiser.com or 525-5459.

FROM SCHOOLROOM TO WAR EFFORT

When the bombs fell on O'ahu on Dec. 7, 1941, Herman "Timmy" Choy was a 15-year-old in 10th grade at 'Iolani School.

He lived on Young Street near where the Safeway is now and heard the planes overhead.

Curious, he went down to Bishop Street.

"The planes were flying kind of low there," Choy, 83, recalled. "So I stopped the car and looked out, and all the planes were flying in dogfight fashion."

That's when his schoolboy eyes were opened to the realities of war.

The following month, he was introduced to the work world when he took a job in the shipyard. The schools had been closed after the attack, he said.

"That (the shipyard) was the place that was hiring for the war effort. So I went down there and applied, and of course, they hired me."

Choy said he wanted to do his part.

At first, he was a laborer, doing cleanup on ships that had been hit.

"There were some casualties there, of course, onboard ship. So we were down there cleaning up."

He helped recover bodies. Asked what it was like to see casualties as a 15-year-old, Choy laughed an uncomfortable laugh.

"It was not easy," he said.

He worked the 14-hour night shift and said he went in by the train that ran from 'A'ala Park to the shipyard.

After World War II, Choy finished high school and completed a couple of years of college.

He was in and out of the shipyard, and went back in about 1960. The shipyard sent him to Vietnam in 1967 with about 40 technicians. Choy was consultant to the shipyard manager and was in Vietnam for eight years.

He came out during the evacuation in 1975, when there were so few American military members left that he and other civilians sometimes had to stand watch.

He finally retired in 1993.

"It's a wonderful place to work," Choy said of the shipyard. "Ultimately, it was the best decision I made."

In the latter part of his shipyard career, Choy was a project manager working on the overhaul of Los Angeles-class attack submarines.

CALLED TO ARMY, BUT SHIPYARD AND NAVY CAME FIRST

Samuel B.Y. Lum started work in the shipyard in April of 1941 as an apprentice.

He had graduated from McKinley High about two years earlier.

"When I graduated at 19, in those days, wages were very low — about 35 to 40 cents an hour," Lum said. "I worked around town awhile and the opportunity came — there was an ad in the paper for the (shipyard) apprentice examination. So I took it and I passed, and I was accepted."

Before the attack, Hawai'i was in a defensive mode and aircraft carriers would come and go for exercises, but everything was pretty calm, Lum said.

On Dec. 7, 1941, Lum recalled a neighbor saying, "Hey, there's something going on in Pearl Harbor."

The radio broadcast the news, as well as the order for all shipyard workers to report.

"They took us in the yard and all we did was gather around the shop and kind of talk to each other about what was happening," the Palolo resident said. "All of a sudden, we hear some rapid fire, some machine gun of some sort, so we all dive beneath the table, but I think it was our own people trying to defend."

Lum didn't see a lot of the devastation at first. That came later. The battleship Arizona was smoking and other ships were sunk, Lum said. The calm that Lum experienced earlier had been replaced by a frenzied war effort.

"We were kind of short-handed, so they brought in people from the Mainland," he said. "At one point, we had over 30,000 workers."

Lum, who retired around 1977 from the shipyard and now is 87, recalled that during the war, the Army was looking for recruits, and he kept getting draft notices.

"So I submitted them to my office, and they said, 'Don't worry about it, we'll take care of it.' " But the notices kept coming.

"So they said, 'We're going to put a stop to that,' because they told the Army, 'We need these people more than you do,' " Lum said.

To make it harder for the Army to draft shipyard workers, they were put temporarily into the Navy Reserve.

After the war, the Navy gave the shipyard workers a mass discharge.

"But it was all on paper. We never actually went through the process," Lum said. "So a funny thing happened. When the Army heard about that, they sent me a draft notice, and I got drafted."

He spent the next three years in the Army.

"The government was nice at that time," he said. "They felt that, since you guys left for the military, we have an obligation to hire you back. So I got hired back in the Navy shipyard."