Fort Lewis is a United States Army base located south-southwest of Tacoma, Washington. Fort Lewis was merged with McChord Air Force Base on February 1, 2010, to form Joint Base Lewis–McChord.
Fort Lewis, named after Meriwether Lewis of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, was one of the largest and most modern military reservations in the United States, consisting of of prairie land cut from the glacier-flattened Nisqually Plain.
Joint Base Lewis-McChord (Fort Lewis) is a major Army installation, with much of the 2nd Infantry Division in residence, along with Headquarters, the 7th Infantry Division, 593rd Expeditionary Sustainment Command, and the 1st Special Forces Group. However, the Headquarters of the 7th Infantry Division is primarily a garrison management body. Fort Lewis's geographic location provides rapid access to the deep-water ports of Tacoma, Olympia, and Seattle for deploying equipment. Units can be deployed from McChord AFB, and individuals and small groups can also use the nearby Sea-Tac Airport. The strategic location of the base provides Air Force units with the ability to conduct combat and humanitarian airlifts with the C-17 Globemaster III.Joint Base Lewis-McChord official website
Joint Base Garrison
The Joint Base Garrison operates the installation on behalf of the warfighting units, families, and extended military community who depend on JBLM for support. The mission of the unit is to provide support to mission commanders and the joint base community, to serve as an enabler to the soldiers as they train and project America's combat power, and to make JBLM the station of choice for American soldiers and their families.
With an Army joint base commander and an Air Force deputy joint base commander, the garrison supports the installation through directorates and agencies that provide a full range of city services and quality-of-life functions, everything from facility maintenance, recreation, and family programs to training support and emergency services.
The major organizations that make up the bulk of the Joint Base Garrison include: Directorates of Public Works: Logistics Family and Morale, Welfare, and Recreation Human Resources; Emergency Services Plans and Training Security and Plans
Additional staff offices that support the installation mission include the Joint Base Public Affairs Office, the Religious Support Office, the Resource Management Office, the Equal Employment Opportunity Office, the Installation Safety Office, and the Plans, Analysis, and Integration Office. Other partners who work closely with the Joint Base Garrison include the Civilian Personnel Advisory Center, the Mission and Installation Contracting Command, and the Joint Personal Property Shipping Office.
Three military units support the Joint Base Garrison. 627th Air Base Group Provides command and control and administrative oversight to the Airmen who perform installation support duties on behalf of the garrison. Headquarters and Headquarters Company, Joint Base Garrison Provides administrative oversight to the Army personnel in the garrison and supports newly arrived soldiers during their in-processing period.
JBLM Soldiers receive medical care through on-base Madigan Healthcare System facilities such as the Madigan Army Medical Center, the Okubo Clinic, and the Nisqually Clinic. JBLM Airmen receive medical care at the McChord Clinic as well as the Madigan Army Medical Center.
JBLM Main and JBLM North JBLM has more than 25,000 soldiers and civilian workers. The post supports over 120,000 military retirees and more than 29,000 family members living both on and off-post. Fort Lewis proper contains , and the Yakima Training Center covers .
JBLM Main & North have abundant, high-quality, close-in training areas, including 115 live fire ranges. Additional training space is available at the Yakima Training Center in eastern Washington, including maneuver areas and additional live fire ranges.
In 2009, the former Fort Lewis Regional Correction Facility was remodeled and renamed the Northwest Joint Regional Correctional Facility (NWJRCF). The facility houses minimum- and medium-security prisoners from all branches of the U.S. Armed Forces.Northwest Guardian
Also adjacent to the post is Camp Murray (Washington National Guard).
History
Fort Lewis was originally established in 1917 with the passage of a Pierce County bond measure to purchase of land to donate to the federal government for permanent use as a military installation. A portion of the initial land was taken from the Nisqually tribe's reservation. (The Nisqually people would later petition unsuccessfully for the return of this land.) In 1927, Pierce County passed another bond measure to establish a military airfield just north of Fort Lewis. The airfield, called Tacoma Field, opened in 1930 and was renamed McChord Field in 1940. McChord Field separated from Fort Lewis when the U.S. Air Force was created in 1947 and was subsequently renamed McChord Air Force Base. The two bases operated independently of one another for more than 60 years before merging in 2010.
Fort Lewis began as Camp Lewis in 1917, when the citizens of Pierce County voted by an eight-to-one margin to bond themselves for to buy of land. They donated the land to the federal government for military use. The only stipulation was that the tract be used as a permanent army post. Captain David L. Stone and his staff arrived at the camp site on May 26, 1917, and a few days later the initial construction began. As work on the camp was pushing forward, the War Department named it "Camp Lewis" after Meriwether Lewis of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The entire camp was ready for occupancy a month ahead of schedule. In 90 days, Stone had supervised the construction of a "city" of 757 buildings and 422 other structures, all lighted and heated for 60,000 men. The first recruits moved into their new barracks on September 5, 1917, exactly two months after the post building plan had been handed to the contractors.
When they implemented the auction of the new cantonment, workmen subscribed for $4,000 to build the main gate, which is still standing. The arch was built of fieldstone and squared logs, resembling the old blockhouses that stood in the northwest as forts. Some 60,000 men, including the 13th and 91st Divisions, moved into the hastily constructed cantonment to train for World War I. Recruited largely from the northwest, the 91st was considered "Washington's Own." In 1917, Pierce County, through the process of condemnation proceedings (eminent domain), took of the Nisqually Indian Reservation (14 km2) for the Fort Lewis Military Reserve.
The following two years saw tremendous activity at Camp Lewis as men mobilized and trained for war service. With the conclusion of the war, activities at Lewis ground to a standstill. Camp Lewis passed from the hands of Pierce County and became the property of the federal government when the deed for 62,432 acres (253 km2) was recorded in the county auditor's office in Tacoma.
When World War I ended in 1918, the Nisqually people petitioned for their land to be returned to them, but the request was denied by the Secretary of War, Newton Baker.
Brigadier General David L. Stone, who had supervised the original construction of Fort Lewis as a captain, returned as its commanding general in 1936, serving until 1937. The project of constructing an army airfield, which later became McChord Air Force Base, directly north of the Fort Lewis installation, received approval as a WPA project in January 1938, and $61,730 was allocated for construction. The allocation provided for clearing, grading, and leveling a runway long by wide.
From 1942 to 1943, 42 Japanese, German, and Italian Americans were held at Fort Lewis as part of the government's "enemy alien" internment program during World War II. The Japanese and Italian internees were transferred to Fort Missoula and the Germans to Fort Lincoln, and the temporary detention facility closed on March 30, 1943."Fort Lewis (detention facility)" Densho Encyclopedia. Retrieved 25 July 2014. Italian prisoners of war, organized into units, were trained as quartermaster units at Fort Lewis since, after Italy surrendered to the Allies and declared war on Germany, they were not strictly held to the work requirements that prohibited prisoners of war from working on items directly headed for the war or in the war effort.
At the conclusion of World War II, the northwest staging area of Fort Lewis became a separation center and discharged its first soldiers in October 1945. Sometime in the early 1960s, Interstate 5 was built through the fort, separating the northwest corner of the fort and creating "Northfort". With the departure of the 4th Infantry Division (United States) for Vietnam in 1966, Fort Lewis once again became a personnel transfer and training center. David H. Hackworth described his service commanding a training battalion at the Fort during the Vietnam War in his memoir "About Face". In 1972, the 9th Infantry Division (United States) was reactivated and trained there until its deactivation in 1991.
The Fort Lewis Military Museum was established in 1972 to preserve and document the post's history.
The base received much media attention in the wake of the Kandahar massacre, committed by a Fort Lewis soldier in March 2012.Hill, Christian, and Adam Ashton, "Is Lewis-McChord A 'Troubled Base'?", The News Tribune, 18 March 2012.
The 1st Joint Mobilization Brigade disbanded in late May 2014.Jake Dorsey, [http://www.nwguardian.com/2014/05/29/18047/1st-jmb-inactivates-after-13-years.html 1st JMB inactivates after 13 years: Unit had an impact on Army’s readiness of tens of thousands of service members, Northwest Guardian, 29 May 2014. It previously controlled and provided host unit support for mobilizing, deploying, and demobilizing reserve component units from all the U.S. military services. The unit began as the 2122nd Garrison Support Unit (Army Reserve), overseeing the mobilization of about 27,000 Soldiers. The group of fewer than a dozen personnel mobilized about 15,000 soldiers within three weeks at the start of the War in Afghanistan. The unit was redesignated the 654th Area Support Group (Forward) in May 2004 and the 1st JMB in March 2007. Training and mobilization validation moved to individual units (instead of the 1st JMB) in 2011.
Major units
The United States Army's I Corps commands most Army units at Joint Base Lewis-McChord and conducts planning and liaison with other assigned active and Reserve component units in the continental United States. It is one of the active Army's contingency corps. I Corps stays prepared to deploy on short notice worldwide to command up to five divisions or a joint task force.Joint Base Lewis-McChord I Corps history
In 1981, the I Corps was reactivated at Fort Lewis. On October 12, 1999, General Eric K. Shinseki, Chief of Staff of the Army, announced I Corps would lead the acceleration of Army transformation, training, and the initial creation of the first two Stryker Brigade Combat Teams at Fort Lewis. Since September 11, 2001, I Corps and Fort Lewis assets have been active in providing support for global war on terrorism operations, including Operation Noble Eagle (Homeland Defense), Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan), and the Iraq War.