This image from Google Earth shows the swastika-shaped barracks at the Coronado Naval base near San Diego.
Following objections from the Anti-Defamation League, the U.S. Navy has set aside $600,000 of its 2008 budget for landscaping and rooftop adjustments that will camouflage the shape of the building.
"We told the Navy this was an incredibly inappropriate shape for a structure on a military installation," says Morris S. Casuto, the ADL's regional director. "[But we] never ascribed evil intent to the structure's design."
Comments
I heard of this years ago, but was unable to learn anything more. The official story then was that the navy brass was unaware of it.
Have you ever heard of a government building anywhere that didn't have its floor plan posted publicly on the walls in a number of spots? Obviously they knew, they knew back when the plans were just plans, and they went ahead anyway.
Now they got caught.
Posted by: CRM-114 | September 27, 2007 4:50 PM
Unfucking believeable! Are we allowed to say that? I wonder who the doofus architects were? Adolf, Hermann & Fritz? I'm sure our Crack Senate Investigating Committee will get right on it.
Posted by: J-Dog | September 27, 2007 5:11 PM
If I'm reading the image correctly, it's four "L" shaped buildings. So, things like the fire escape plans would not have shown the swastika nature of the group. Still, I'm sure thousands of people have passed through and figured it out over the years. Any idea when these were built?
Posted by: John McKay | September 27, 2007 5:19 PM
As a Jew, I have very little trouble being pretty unmoved by this.
Then again, I'm a really bad Jew.
Posted by: Signout | September 27, 2007 6:10 PM
Could it just be that certain design decisions necessitated this design. Military architects love radial symmetry, maybe something required these rays to be bent. Yeah they knew what it would look like but before google earth how many people would have noticed?
Posted by: Troy | September 27, 2007 6:48 PM
What I heard was that they were aware of the shape of the building when it was being built. At the time, they decided to leave it because it was only visable from the air (obviously before Google Earth).
Posted by: Michele | September 27, 2007 10:31 PM
Seriously, does anyone really think they did this on purpose?
Well, perhaps they were hindu. Or Buddhist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika
I once met this awesome girl from india, but one day I saw her sketching out a swastika, and I had a large knee-jerk reaction. Now, I don't. It's just a fucking symbol. If people want to use it in the hitlerian context, piss them off by refering to it in the eastern religion context.
Yeah, nazi's are so superior they can't even come up with their own unique symbol.
Posted by: Josh Charles | September 28, 2007 9:24 AM
Y'know, the swastika was a common symbol before the Nazis decided to use it. Should we then abolish all uses of the symbol?
What about triskelions? They're almost like swastikas.
Posted by: Caledonian | September 28, 2007 10:04 AM
I am amused.
It is my pleasure to direct a brief viewing of the Wikipedia entry regarding the multicultural existence of the swastika symbol. As provocative as this architectural design is, there may well be more to consider than its significance as a crude hand gesture to modern history.
Posted by: simpletwist | September 28, 2007 10:19 AM
These are four separate buildings which were constructed in 1967.
Posted by: Cathy | September 28, 2007 11:14 AM
What is the big deal here?
okay, some buildings in a navy base are arranged in the shape of a swastika.... so what? is everything that resembles something "evil" in certain contexts going to be banned?
too much fuss over something that the architect probably did not even realize, that his buildings were going to be interpreted as a subliminal message pro-nazism.....
please...
Posted by: 410n50 | September 29, 2007 2:12 PM
True the symbol was in use before the Germans adopted it, it should still have not been used because of its recent reference and the fact that children of the Halocaust and their surviving parents do not want to relate the American Navy to something as sinister as this.It is an awful reminder and an example of arrogant architectural planning.
Posted by: ecrivan | September 29, 2007 5:24 PM
read "The Nazi Connection with Shambhala and Tibet" by Alexander Berzin; there is no random 'coincidence' and no, it wasn't because Hitler's graphics artists couldn't make up their own logo, it was because they believed themselves to be the mythical "master race" who originated the symbol, the expropriation was entirely intentional on their part, and the lack of objections by the Buddhists were, apparently, equally as intentional as they truly felt (at the time) that their best chances for themselves (facing China) were to align with the wacky Germans and hope for their support.
They were both wrong, of course, but nonetheless, there was no mere coincidence of their ensigns.
Posted by: mrG | September 30, 2007 10:57 PM
Here is other "Swastikas" on Google Earth
Posted by: GeoTrotter | November 2, 2007 9:04 AM
I'd say "what a waste of $600,000" (to alter a perfectly structurally fine building because, from the sky and in a way you can only see if you click a certain webpage or fly over it), it looks like a symbol), but then again the military wastes that every few seconds, so how can I even bother?
Posted by: - | May 17, 2008 9:47 PM
why is everyone getting so worked up about something so insegnificant as a symbol that originaly means good luck. yah thats right the swastika is an ancient far east symbol like buddhist or hindu. the natzi's found that symbol on ancient germany pottery and called it their own. so the swastika means good luck. people are complaining that it promotes natziesm or some crap like that. maybe it was built before the natzi's rose to power and afterward thought nobody would notice or care. but they could not forsee the amazing level of stupidity and arrogance of some americans today. it bogles my mind that people shuld expect the United States Government which is currently in a war wich has put us in trillions of dollers in debt shuld just spend 600,000 dollers of wich it does not have to appeal to such an insegnificant thing as this. if i have offend some people sorry this is america I have freedom of speach.
Posted by: William Donald | June 17, 2008 11:14 PM
If anyone had bothered to follow up, and even look at the lower left part of the pic, it was done on purpose - and there are buildings shaped like bombers headed towards the swastika!
Posted by: sjs | June 23, 2008 11:53 AM