That’s a great photo, thank you for posting. I went there from Guam on a 95’ patrol boat while in the USCG. It was beautiful and I knew the history of it as a stop over for our troops and I could only imagine what it looked like but this photo brings it home. The magnitude and organization to get just some of those ships underway is a calculated high risk game.
The Seabees even built an R and R center on land that could handle thousands of men at a time while their ships were at anchor. Because of that forward base and not having fleets return to Pearl for port facilities, we greatly sped up the tempo of operations against the Japanese. Something else they didn’t anticipate.