On this Dec. 7, Nancy Walden on Alani Drive wants to tell you a story about what was once the second-largest "city" in Hawai'i, bigger than Hilo, but it was never put on a map. This city had a theater, bowling alley, two beer gardens, three ice-cream factories and restaurants, but nobody talked about it.

The name of this place was Housing Area D at Pearl Harbor, where defense workers lived before and during World War II. At one time, it had a peak population of 12,000, all young bachelors.

"I want the whole world to know what the defense workers did," Walden said firmly. "It's an untold story. The defense workers who lived in Housing Area D played a vital part in winning the war. But at that time, information about them was classified. At that time, I would have been put in jail for the papers I have about them."

The papers are a collection of official correspondence between Navy admirals and orders from the president on down that governed the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard at a time when the fate of our nation hung on refloating and repairing the ships that had been sunk and damaged in the attack on Dec. 7, 1941.

The most famous story about their work is about repair of the carrier USS Yorktown after the Battle of the Coral Sea, in time for the Battle of Midway. Walden said other stories are just as dramatic, such as how the defense workers repaired the battleships USS Nevada and USS Maryland in record time.

She said the stories contained in the letters and memos are fascinating. "The men loved Adm. Nimitz," she said. "They were all young, and they had to learn their jobs. Locals didn't want them coming into town. The biggest problem was gambling, to which the commanding officer turned a blind eye."

Walden, whose husband was a naval officer at Pearl Harbor, said it was highly illegal to make a personal file of these secret documents, but that William Furlong, the admiral put in charge of the shipyard by Fleet Adm. Chester Nimitz, was a dyed-in-the-wool historian.

"His assistant, H.L. Stickney, was also a history buff," she said. "I think they realized that they lived in an important place at an important time, and that the information should be preserved."

After the war ended, Stickney left for the Mainland. Before he left, he entrusted several cartons of papers to Lt. (j.g.) Robert F. Walden, Nancy's husband and Stickney's best friend. The boxes sat around for many years until Robert Walden died.

Nancy then looked through the boxes and was stunned by what she found. Since then, she has learned that they are the only copies of the once-secret documents outside of Navy archives. The archivist at the Arizona Memorial National Park was eager to have them, but Walden donated them to the Hawai'i-Pacific archives at the University of Hawai'i's Hamilton Library because anyone can access them there at no cost.

Reach Bob Krauss at 525-8073.