Naval Station Treasure Island California Patch

Treasure Island is man-made, built in 1936 and 1937 out of 287,000 tons of quarried rock and dredged bay sand piled on the Yerba Buena Shoals. It was meant to host the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition and then become a second airport for San Francisco, with hangars ready for Pan Am's China Clipper flying boats. The war changed that plan. The Navy began leasing the island in 1941 as a reception center and took it over outright on April 17, 1942. For the next half century it was Navy ground in the middle of the bay.

During World War II more than 12,000 men a day were processed at Treasure Island for assignments in the Pacific, and after the war thousands more came back through it to be separated. In the years that followed, the Naval Technical Training Center on the island taught electronics, from communications and radar systems to RADIAC radiation detection gear. It also ran damage control and shipfitter training, including nuclear, biological and chemical decontamination, and Building 600 housed the Naval Firefighting School. A lot of Hull Maintenance Technicians and Damage Controlmen learned their trade there. The 1991 Base Realignment and Closure Commission put the station on the list, and Naval Station Treasure Island closed in 1997.

The patch is cut to a tall shape with a shackle loop on top and a banner across the bottom, 3.75 inches wide and 5 inches tall, with a cut edge following the outline. NAVAL STATION TREASURE ISLAND arcs over the top in black on a tan field, and GATEWAY TO THE PACIFIC runs below in red. In the center a sunrise throws orange rays over blue water, a red bridge spans the bay, and a white anchor and a palm tree stand on a low sand-colored island. It reads like the view from the island itself, the bridge, the water and the open Pacific out past the Golden Gate. The back is iron-on, and it can be sewn on too.

For a huge number of sailors, Treasure Island was the last stop before the Pacific and the first stop coming home. Some passed through for a few days with orders in hand, and some spent months in school there learning radar, electronics or firefighting. The station sat a short ride from San Francisco, and liberty in the city is part of what a lot of men remember. The two exposition hangars and the Administration Building still stand. The island has gone civilian, but the people who served there still call it TI.

Mount it in a shadow box with your school certificate and your first ship's patch, or wear it on a vest at a reunion. It also makes a good gift for a father or grandfather who shipped out through San Francisco Bay. A small piece of a base that sent a generation to sea.