There are attached for your information a copy of a memorandum from the Assistant Secretary of Defense approving the revised projects, and revised construction project justification data in support of the four projects. Pursuant to the provisions of section 805, Public Law 207, 83d Congress, the Department of the Army requests that the four projects for Okinawa be reconsidered in the light of revised justifications and estimated costs. Sincerely, G. HONNEN, Major General, General Staff, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, ह Memorandum for the Under Secretary of the Army. Subject: Fiscal year 1954 public works program, section 805, Publie Law 207, 83d Congress, clearance. 1. Reference is made to your memorandum dated April 27, 1954, subject as above, requesting clearance of this office for presenting to the appropriate committees of Congress, under section 805, Public Law 207, 83d Congress, certain projects contained in the fiscal year 1954 public works program for Okinawa, which were deleted by the House Appropriations Committee on November 25, 1953, pending a restudy of their design, size, and need. 2. Based on the additional supporting information furnished with your memoandum, and considering the economies proposed through new housing designs and by reductions in other requirements after further review, approval is given as requested to present the following projects at the costs shown below to the appropriate congressional committees: Mr. DAVIS. General Carter, if you will proceed to explain the studies which have been made and the revisions which have been accomplished with respect to the items which are before us this morning. General CARTER. Briefly, in connection with the original submission, the subcommittee requested we restudy the housing situation regarding the plans and numbers of 1-, 2-, 3-, and 4-bedroom units of housing which were being requested, the cost of the PX warehouse and its size, the officer messes' costs and sizes, and to give additional discussion pertaining to the expansion of the authorized and funded 250-bed hospital to the 500-bed clinical facilities for the 250-bed hospital. In the family housing area we have restudied the situation. I have Mr. Taylor here from Okinawa to go over the details which you may desire. We have directed and the commanding general in Okinawa has resubmitted his project based on the Department of the Army criteria as published in Army Regulations 415-107 of September 24, 1953. You can see it is dated immediately preceding the hearings of last. November. That gives the proportion in large housing areas such as this in Okinawa of 20 percent 1-bedroom units, 50 percent 2-bedroom units, 25 percent 3-bedroom units, and 5 percent 4-bedroom units. In restudying this situation we have come up with a revised requirement which is set forth on Form 68-C which you have before you for using the funds which are authorized to construct 459 sets of such quarters. They are divided into 129 one-bedroom units, 750 square feet, and 330 two-bedroom units, at 950 square feet. According to the percentages, the Okinawan command already has the three-bedroom units required for their permanent strength. We will be glad to answer any questions pertaining to this project which you care to ask. Mr. DAVIS. All the construction so far, then, has been of the threebedroom type. Is that correct? General CARTER. Yes. There are 1,131 of such quarters on the island which have been constructed out of public works funds, and those are all three-bedroom units. Average of the square footage is 1,080 square feet. The one-bedroom units will be built in row-type dwellings. The two-bedroom units are duplexes. The four-bedroom units, of which we require a few, will be singlefamily units. Mr. DAVIS. All of these in the program now before us, then, are 1- and 2-bedroom units? General CARTER. That is right. Mr. DAVIS. Tell us more about this item of $227,500 for collateral equipment. General CARTER. That is to provide signal equipment at $495 per unit. Mr. Taylor, can you give us more information as to just what is involved in that? Mr. TAYLOR. The signal facilities for each individual house, of course, includes the instrument, which is a small item, and the cable which runs from the main distribution system into the housing area itself and provides the housing area with the telephone trunk cable system with their necessary distribution boxes. Mr. DAVIS. You are planning to construct 459 units? Mr. DAVIS. As compared with 293 in the program presented to us in November? General CARTER. That is correct, sir. We feel the subcommittee has done a very good thing here in calling for this study which has resulted in providing these additional units for the same amount of money requested in November. (Discussion held off the record.) Mr. DAVIS. Are your revised plans now up to date and are you ready to go ahead with construction on this? General CARTER. Yes, sir. Mr. Taylor can give you detailed information on that. I believe we plan construction almost immediately. Mr. TAYLOR. Yes, because we have been planning for this. We have the site preparations and plans already completed. They are ready for bid. We have contractors there who are interested in building the type of construction we plan and they have had con siderable experience. The Okinawans themselves have learned how to apply this type of construction. General CARTER. Actually, sir, our situation in Okinawa is that we are hurting now on lack of funds to keep the contractors going. We have pushed all of our work into the fiscal year 1954 program, practically all of it, and this will be put under contract this summer. Mr. DAVIS. This is a block-type construction? General CARTER. That is right. Mr. DAVIS. Which is substantially earthquake and typhoon proof? General CARTER. That is right, similar to the other Okinawa construction. It is concrete block with concrete slab floor, and, I believe, concrete roof tied down so it will not blow off. Mr. TAYLOR. That is correct, sir. Mr. DAVIS. Judging from the comments we have heard I am sure Congress is very much aware of the need for going ahead with the program, and the only question we have had has been as to the type of construction it will be. Evidently very substantial progress in getting that straightened out has been made here. Mr. HAND. Has there been any material change in the design of these family quarters except to confine them to 1- and 2-bedroom units instead of the other larger units? General CARTER. They are a completely new design, sir. Mr. HAND. In what respects significantly costwise have they been changed? General CARTER. The original presentation was an average of $20,000, I believe, per unit. These, as you can see, are $11,500 for the 1-bedroom and $13,500 for the 2-bedroom unit. Designing a 1- and 2-bedroom unit is somewhat different than just taking the 3 and modifying it. The other houses, all of the three-bedroom units, were individual houses. These 1-bedroom houses are in row type construction, and the 2-bedroom units are duplexes. Mr. CEDERBERG. What assurance do we have we can build these for this much money? Has there been discussion with the contractors to indicate they can meet these prices? General CARTER. Yes. We have been continually working in Okinawa. Mr. Taylor can give you the latest information on bid prices. Mr. TAYLOR. The information from the district engineer, who has been talking to the contractors, is that due to the fact that this is a new type of construction other than what they have been building, and further from talking to contractor representatives, who are not just fly-by-night organizations but firm, respectable Japanese contractors who know how to bid and where their margin of profit is, have assured him that they would be willing to take these dependent quarters at the price of $11,500 and $13,500. We have experienced no difficulty at all with them. Mr. ČEDARBERG. Do they provide performance bonds? Are the contractors bonded? Mr. TAYLOR. I believe they are, sir. Mr. RABAUT. You say this is a new type of construction? General CARTER. He meant a new design, sir. Mr. TAYLOR. New design, sir; I am sorry. It is a new design. General CARTER. They have built, you see, the existing 1,131 of more or less square houses, all along the same plan, previously. They knew exactly what those would cost. This design has been changed. It is the same type of construction, but the bathroom is in a different place and the living room and kitchen are different, so they did have to do some estimating. Mr. RABAUT. You feel certain these estimates are good? Mr. HAND. Refresh my memory on the cost factor in Okinawa. General CARTER. It varies a great deal depending on individual buildings. For buildings like this it is a little higher than it is in the States. For certain other buildings it is a little lower. We are using actual bid experience in Okinawa rather than factors. Mr. HAND. Generally speaking this type of building would be approximately equal to continental costs? General CARTER. Just about the same or a little bit higher, because there is, you see, a good deal of plumbing work involved in the quarters and that is a little difficult. OFFICERS' MESSES Mr. DAVIS. We have up for consideration next an item of $244,400 for two officers' messes, one at Naha and the other at Machinato. The current request of $244,400 compares to a request of $602,000 which we had before us in November. Will you tell us what you have done to reduce that figure, General? General CARTER. We have reduced the sizes in order to bring that down. Mr. FOSTER. The original sizes proposed last November were 13,480 square feet for one and 5,100 square feet for the other. They are now both in at 4,700 square feet each. Mr. DAVIS. I notice at Naha that your unit cost estimate of $33 per square foot in November has been revised to $26 at the present time. Does that reflect a completely new designing of the building? General CARTER. These buildings have been completely redesigned. Mr. TAYLOR. That is right. These buildings are to be a copy of a building we already have constructed. We do have an engineering plan completed, specifications have been written, and one has been built. Mr. DAVIS. So at Naha we have 400 square feet less? General CARTER. That is right, sir. Mr. DAVIS. And about something over $7 a square foot less in cost. estimate here? Mr. TAYLOR. Yes, sir. General CARTER. About $7 less. Mr. TAYLOR. That is right. (Discussion held off the record.) Mr. DAVIS. At Machinato the cost per square foot has been reduced by about $6.20 per square foot. Evidently you have eliminated the item of the club completely in your plans at this time? General CARTER. That is correct. Mr. DAVIS. So we are going to have practically an identical officers' mess at Machinato to the one you are contemplating at Naha? Mr. TAYLOR. Yes, sir. Mr. DAVIS. And similar to one you already have operating elsewhere in the island? Mr. TAYLOR. That is correct, sir. (Discussion held off the record.) Mr. DAVIS. The committee is very much encouraged with the efforts that you have made with respect to these items since last November. Mr. CEDERBERG. Are these buildings still typhoon proof? General CARTER. Yes. It is the same type construction as the others. It is all concrete block. Mr. CEDERBERG. Do I recall, General, you stated that at the present time you are having trouble keeping the contractors busy? General CARTER. What I said, sir, was that we have all of our funds which we now have under contract on jobs contracted for last year which are ending up. These funds are required to keep the flow of work there to keep the contractors on the island. They are there only for this construction. They cannot afford to stay. They will have to leave. Mr. CEDERBERG. That has a tendency to make them sharpen their pencils more than if you had so much of a backlog that they wouldn't care so far as price is concerned? General CARTER. That is right. Mr. CEDERBERG. But if they are faced with a possibility of just about winding things up and you hear of more contracts you can give them, you can get a better price? General CARTER. And we also have certain installations on the island, such as quarries, and things like that, which furnish material. Those have been built. If we can keep them operating at an economic rate our costs are less. POST EXCHANGE WAREHOUSE Mr. DAVIS. Next is the post exchange warehouse, for which we are now being requested $1,080,000 as compared to $1,260,000 last November. General CARTER. This project has been carefully reviewed. We were unable to reduce the size. The command reviewed it from every angle and feels that the 120,000 square feet is definitely required. It will support the Army and Air Force and Navy, all of the post exchange systems on the island. However, by certain changes in plan and more up-to-date cost figures, we have reduced the cost per square foot from $10.50 down to $9.00. That is the reason for the reduction. It is estimated a savings of about $181,000 per year will accrue from this construction. The facilities now being used, which actually comprise 157,000 square feet, are scattered all over the island and it is necessary to have guards, handling costs are larger, goods losses are larger, and there is still material stored in the open, so that our total losses each year have been about $181,000. The structure will be amortized in about 6 years. Mr. DAVIS. There will be several different Defense entities, then, which will be getting some of the benefit of this $181,000, and we would not be able to allocate it to any one particular place, would we? |