It was established in December 1943 was published monthly until the end of the war. He immediately began aggressively expanding the hospital’s recreational and rehabilitation resources.Ī hospital newspaper The Ahwahnee News contributed to the development of morale. Besides being an inspirational leader, Hayden was competent, sensible, compassionate, and very resourceful.

Reynolds Hayden, was a seasoned veteran with years of experience managing military medical units (including commanding officer of the Navy Hospital at Pearl Harbor during the 1941 surprise attack). The Ahwahnee News would feature the growing number of activities offered to patients and staff.Ī change in Navy leadership in August 1943 marked a dramatic change in the hospital’s rehabilitation strategies. Healing Through Interaction, Not Isolation As one early staff member recalled, “If the patients weren’t nuts when they got to Yosemite, the boredom there soon sent them over the edge.” Staff morale also suffered badly. It was a new direction, but the same old problems prevailed. Within a few months, hospital administrators wisely decided to phase out psychiatric treatment at the Ahwahnee and convert the facility into a general physical rehab unit. Isolation and lack of diversionary social or entertainment outlets left their disturbed idle minds preoccupied with the very memories the Navy hoped to erase. The towering cliffs caused many to become claustrophobic. In fact, the site quickly proved to be exactly the opposite of what these patients needed. The thinking was that shell-shocked patients would respond well to the peaceful setting of an isolated scenic facility. The Navy’s operation at Yosemite was initially intended for neuro-psychiatric rehabilitation. They were veterans of the Battle for Okinawa. Eleven days later, the first patients arrived. Naval Convalescent Hospital Yosemite National Park, California” was commissioned on June 25, 1943. The transition was not easy, partly because visitors were still being lodged at the facility when the Navy arrived.

In 1943, well into the war, the Navy leased the Ahwahnee for a recuperation hospital, with the first staff arriving at the end of May to begin refitting. By the end of the war, the Yosemite Special Hospital would have almost 900 hospital beds.Īfter the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor, Yosemite National Park joined national parks across the nation in efforts to join the war effort while preserving and protecting the park’s precious ecosystems. Ward A was one of several wards in the Hospital. Works, Sullivan County Government Center, Monticello, For more information please contact the county at the Sullivan County Division of Public Represent important chapters in the county's long and eventful The Sullivan County Division of Public Works maintains seven parks and historic sites that Park Service, Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River.

Minisink Battleground: National Register of Historic Places Nomination, Mary Curtis, United Shawnee-on-the-Delaware, Pennsylvania, 2001 Inners and Peter Osborne, 66th Annual Field Conference of Pennsylvania Geologists, Blood and Mayhem on the Upper Delaware: Military Geology of Brant's Minisink Raid and the Battle of Minisink, July 1779, Jon The Battle of Minisink (2nd edition), Vernon Leslie, T. The Minisink battle has become part of the heritage of the region encompassed by Sullivan and Orange counties, New York, Sussex County, New Jersey, and Pike County, Pennsylvania.įor additional information on the battle and the events leading up to and after it, the following Second Minisink raid in July of 1779 led by Joseph Brant, a Dartmouth-educated Mohawk warrior commissioned a colonel in the British Army.The actual attack on the settlements at Minisink (present-day Port Jervis and the Town of Deerpark, New York) was destructive enough, but it was the ensuing Battle of Minisink, in which nearly fifty New York and New Jersey militiamen lost their lives, that really sent shockwaves of loss and grief though the frontier population along the Delaware. The most significant of these raids was the The raiding parties often contained as many white Loyalists, or Tories, as Indians. And it was subject, on numerous occasions, to the depredations of Indians allied to the British - though People of the upper Delaware River valley in the late 1770's and early 1780's for this was the frontier during the American The ringing words of 'the Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America' had a special meaning for the

Valley of war hospital