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Long Beach Naval Shipyard

Long Beach Naval Shipyard operated on Terminal Island in Long Beach, California, from 1943 until it closed in 1997. For most of that time its work was overhauling and repairing Navy surface ships already in service, not building new ones, which routinely meant cutting out and replacing asbestos insulation, gaskets, and lagging inside engine and boiler spaces. A 1979 study of the yard’s own workforce, one of the few of its kind tied to a single Navy shipyard by name, found asbestos related lung findings in a substantial share of the employees examined.

Long Beach Naval Shipyard, California, with ships alongside the piers
Long Beach Naval Shipyard, California. U.S. Navy photo (public domain).

What work happened at Long Beach Naval Shipyard

Long Beach was built and equipped as a repair and overhaul yard, not a shipbuilding yard. Between February 1943 and August 1945 alone, the yard docked 406 ships and completed 303 major repairs, including work on 9 battleships, 14 cruisers, 46 destroyers, 31 destroyer escorts, and 30 oilers. It also built five floating dry docks during that period, according to the California State Military Museum’s history of the yard.

Overhaul work exposes shipyard workers to asbestos differently than new construction does. On a ship already in service, insulation, gaskets, and lagging installed years earlier have to be cut out, often in confined engine and boiler spaces, before new material goes in. That removal and replacement work, repeated across hundreds of ships over more than five decades, is the setting in which the yard’s documented asbestos exposure occurred.

Dry Dock No. 1, a 1,093 foot dry dock at the yard, was designated the Navy’s West Coast emergency dry dock for nuclear powered aircraft carriers, a standby role separate from the yard’s routine repair work, according to Wikipedia’s history of the yard. The yard also supported the Navy’s POLARIS, POSEIDON, and SEALAB programs during this period, using its existing repair trades rather than a new construction mission.

Documented asbestos use at this yard

Long Beach Naval Shipyard has one of the more directly documented occupational asbestos records of any Navy repair yard, because both a peer reviewed researcher and a federal oversight agency examined its own workforce by name.

In 1979, physician J.S. Felton published a peer reviewed radiographic study of 6,640 Long Beach Naval Shipyard employees, reported as 88.6 percent of the shipyard’s total workforce at the time. Every worker in the study received a chest X-ray to screen for asbestos related disease. The study found abnormal, asbestos related findings in 1,061 of the 6,640 workers screened, 16.0 percent, with pulmonary fibrosis diagnosed in 140 of them. Findings became more common with a worker’s age and length of service, and production workers made up the large majority of the positive cases.

That same year, the U.S. Government Accountability Office reviewed the Navy’s efforts to protect shipyard workers from asbestos exposure nationwide. Of every Navy shipyard in the country, GAO named only two for direct review in that report: Long Beach and Norfolk. The report documented the Navy’s asbestos insulation policy, which the Navy revised in 1979 to selectively replace insulation in high maintenance ship areas at a vessel’s next overhaul, rather than yard wide.

Trades and ratings with documented exposure

The yard’s documented repair and overhaul mission, covering hull structure, boilers, piping, insulation, and ship systems, involved a range of shipyard trades working inside occupied ships. Based on that documented scope of work, the trades most exposed to asbestos containing material as a routine part of the job included:

The Felton study’s finding that abnormal chest X-rays climbed with a worker’s age and years of service is consistent with repeated exposure across a long shipyard career in these trades, rather than a single incident.

Closure and the years after

Long Beach was established February 9, 1943 as US Naval Dry Docks, Roosevelt Base. It was renamed Terminal Island Naval Shipyard on November 30, 1945, then Long Beach Naval Shipyard in March 1948. The yard went into inactive status June 1, 1950, and was reactivated January 4, 1951 for the Korean War. Civilian employment peaked at 16,091 workers in August 1945, according to the California State Military Museum, and had fallen to roughly 3,000 employees by 1994, shortly before closure.

The yard came close to closing earlier than it did. In the 1993 round of military base closures, the vote to keep Long Beach open was decided only by the closure commission chairman’s own tie breaking vote. Two years later, a 1995 round, recommended by Defense Secretary William Perry, closed the yard for good, effective September 30, 1997, according to Wikipedia’s history of the yard. A separate, adjacent facility, Naval Station Long Beach, had already closed on September 30, 1994. By 2004, about 72 percent of the shipyard’s land had been transferred to the City of Long Beach.

For decades the yard also held part of the Pacific Reserve Fleet, decommissioned Navy ships kept in reserve. Some were later reactivated for Korea and Vietnam, while others were scrapped at the site. A 374 foot floating crane, taken from Germany’s navy after World War II and known at the yard as Herman the German, worked there from 1946 until 1996, per Wikipedia’s history of the yard.

After the Navy left, a proposed lease of part of the site to a foreign shipping company drew political opposition citing national security and was cancelled in 1997. The Long Beach Harbor Department went on to build a cargo terminal on the site itself, which it leased to a commercial shipping line, according to Wikipedia’s history of the yard.

Environmental record

The Environmental Protection Agency tracks the former shipyard site as Naval Shipyard Long Beach, EPA ID CA1170090483, on Terminal Island. EPA classifies it as a federal facility under Federal Facility Lead Cleanup. It is not on the National Priorities List, the EPA’s list of the most seriously contaminated sites in the country.

EPA’s own list of contaminants of concern for this site names barium, chromium, and pyrene, all found in groundwater. Asbestos does not appear on EPA’s list of contaminants of concern here. That is a separate question from the occupational asbestos exposure documented above. EPA’s environmental review tracks contamination in soil and groundwater. It does not track historical exposure inside ship compartments, and the two records should not be read as confirming or contradicting one another.

A separate, adjacent EPA-tracked site covers the former Naval Station Long Beach, which is a distinct location from the shipyard and should not be confused with it.

If you worked at this yard

If you or a family member worked at Long Beach Naval Shipyard, in the Navy or as a civilian employee, in any of the trades above, records that show where and when the work happened can matter later. Documents that help include:

These documents establish where someone worked and for how long. They do not by themselves determine any outcome, and nothing on this page is legal advice.

For veterans, VA disability compensation and health care are handled through the VA’s own claims process. Our VA forms for mesothelioma page collects the relevant VA forms in one place, and our veteran case review page walks through how a veteran’s service and work history is typically documented. If asbestos trusts may be relevant to your situation, our trusts overview explains what these trusts are and how they generally work. Our shipyards hub covers other yards where Navy veterans and civilian workers served, in case more than one yard applies to your history.