The First Inhabitants of the South Post
Two months before the attack at Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941), the War Department proposed an expansion of Fort Oglethorpe. The announcement stated the expansion would accommodate 7,000 troops and cost $4.5 million (October 16, 1941, Chattanooga Daily Times). It was to be located in the northwest quadrant of the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park. Specifically, south of McFarland Avenue from the McDonald Field to the Snodgrass Hill field, and west of the Battlefield Visitor's Center and Park Headquarters. Although the name "South Post" had not yet been used, we will adopt it here to describe the expansion.
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Initially, the War Department was secretive about what purpose the expansion would serve. It was reported as part of the Army's "pre-planning" program. Throughout 1941, America had been posturing for war in response to Japan's aggression in the Pacific and Nazi Germany's expansion across Europe. The battlefield and fort were considered to be too small to accommodate mechanized unit training (this gave rise to the prominence of Camp Peay in Tullahoma, TN, later renamed Camp Forrest), so it was guessed that the expansion would most likely be for infantry or medical. The contract for design and preparation was awarded to Atlanta architectural firm Burge and Stevens (whose successor became Stevens and Wilkinson). On November 6, Captain Earl C. Smith was named construction quartermaster of the project.
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Because the War Department held "pre-planning" information in secret, there are few details in the local newspaper about when the actual construction began. On March 29, 1942, the War Department announced (Chattanooga Daily Times) that there would be two enemy alien internment camps at Fort Oglethorpe, a smaller camp inside the reservation (on what is today Forrest Road) and a larger camp for "several thousand" in the Chickamauga Park. The report claims that the smaller camp inside the reservation was complete and that the larger camp in the battlefield is still under construction. The reporter wrote that the roads to this part of the battlefield were closed to the public, thus making it difficult for the reporter to see the actual construction and report on its progress. Despite the secrecy of the War Department, we may infer that between October 1941 and March 1942, the purpose of South Post construction was initially to expand military capacity, but as a result of Pearl Harbor, then switched to an internment camp.
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In a letter dated March 3, 1943, two months after the Third Women's Army Corps (WAC) Training Center opened at Fort Oglethorpe and located in the South Post, WAC Catherine Katopes wrote home describing what she saw:
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"This fort [is] a very big one and across the way from our barracks there is a high fence. It seems they were building a concentration camp for Jap prisoners. They have evidently given up the idea though."
Note the smaller POW camp in the upper right quadrant of this map. The South Post is the lower left quadrant, which at one time was considered to become the larger of the two internment camps. The upper right quadrant is what was known as the North Post. The original Fort Oglethorpe post is the upper left quadrant.
On June 2, 1942 (Chattanooga Daily Times), the War Department announced that a military police school would be coming to Fort Oglethorpe and would occupy the newly constructed expansion area. Its official title was the Provost Marshal General School, or PMG. The PMG was relocated from Fort Lee, VA, and would accommodate 2,000 trainees at one time. By June 12, the school was in operation. The term "South Post" was first used in this context. While an interesting and important chapter in Fort Oglethorpe history, the PMG would be short-lived. On November 18, 1942, it was announced that the school would be transferring to Camp Custer, MI.
Three days later, the Chattanooga area Chamber of Commerce was planning a three-man envoy to Washington to lobby the War Department for a suitable replacement. The economic loss to the city was quite unexpected, and the Chamber wanted to prevent the South Post from being utilized as an internment camp because prisoners do not spend money in the city. But before the committee even left, they postponed their efforts due to "developments" in Washington. A couple of weeks later, it was announced that the Third Women's Army Corps (WAC) training center would be coming to the South Post.
The Third Women's Army Corps Training Center officially opened on January 1, 1943. Over the next two years of the war, about 8,000 women soldiers were in the South Post at any one time, even though they rotated in and out as they graduated training classes. The WACs spent a lot of money in Chattanooga, so the Chamber was pleased, especially as the notoriety of the training center spread across the country. It became the largest and the most well-known of all the WAC training centers (there were five) and ultimately about 50,000 women were trained here. As a result of the war beginning to wind down, the center closed on July 20, 1945.
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After the WAC departure and with the end of World War 2, Fort Oglethorpe became a "redistribution center," and a Chaplain's school and an Adjutant General's school (Administrative History of the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, pg. 196, February 1983). According to the park's Administrative History, the South Post was remodeled and redesigned to be a redistribution center. This served as an administrative processing center for soldiers returning from overseas. An estimated 4,000 soldiers a week came through the post and were either sent to their next duty station or sent home.
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Below is a portion of the last known post inventory map dated January 1, 1944, found by the author in the National Archives, Atlanta, GA, where most of the records regarding the surplus and land sales after the post was decommissioned are kept. This portion focuses on the South Post. A portion of Barnhardt Circle can be seen at the top of the map for reference. The author paid the reproduction fee to get a high-resolution scan from the National Archives.
If the reader walks the trails through this part of the Chickamauga Battlefield Park today, they will see the concrete and brick ruins of the South Post. Overgrown with woods and lost to time, many park visitors and even local residents are baffled at what these ruins are, what they mean, and whether they are related to the Civil War or not. Thanks to Molly Sampson and her efforts to keep the living history of the Women's Army Corps alive, and in conjunction with the National Park Service, two interpretive signs have been installed near these ruins in the battlefield to clear up the mystery of what purpose they served. But it should be known that these ruins are older than the WAC chapter at the post. The ruins were first an expansion of military capacity, then intended to be an internment camp, which never happened, then became the military police school, and finally became the WAC's training camp, which was the South Post's most famous chapter of Fort Oglethorpe history.