Port Hueneme is a city of 25,000 residents surrounded on three sides by the City of Oxnard, with the Pacific Ocean as its western front. Port Huenemeas identity and character have endured valiantly despite the outside influences of the much larger city, a sometimes violent ocean, and the worldas greatest armada. The U.S. Navy arrived in an enormous way at Port Hueneme during World War II to take command of the only deep-water port between San Francisco and Los Angeles. The servicemen stayed during the Korean War, maintaining an abiding relationship with the community. And still, the town itself has the strength of longevity, being three decades older than Oxnard and with a pioneering legacy of farmers, fishermen, merchants, and families. They survived, repeating the requisite spelling and pronunciation (aY-nee-meea) of their cityas name, which is Chumash Indian for ahalfwaya or aresting placea between Point Mugu and the estuary of the Santa Clara River.

In 1942, the navy sought a location for an advance base on the West Coast to ship construction materiel, equipment, and men into World War II's Pacific theater. Port Hueneme's deepwater harbor, rail system, and rural setting made it the ideal site from which to send 20 million measurement tons of war materiel and a quarter of a million men onto island specks that later became headlines: Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and the Philippines. Seabees later deployed from Port Hueneme to serve in the Korean, Vietnam, Desert Shield/Desert Storm, and Iraqi conflicts, as well as in peacetime, for more than 60 years. Charged with building air bases, ports, combat camps, hospitals, and other support facilities as part of military and humanitarian efforts around the world, the Seabees remain at home in Port Hueneme.