Bunkers Hold Hieroglyphics of Modern Youth : Graffiti: The abandoned concrete structures, built for defense in World War II, have attracted three generations of teen-agers. Their wall art is being studied by an archeologist before the buildings are demolished.

By DAVID HALDANE

Nov. 14, 1993 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

HUNTINGTON BEACH — It looks like an ancient pyramid half buried in the sands of time.

A huge concrete structure with 16-foot-thick ceilings and 6-foot-thick walls, it has stood as a massive gray monument to a bygone era. Now being demolished, it is yielding archeological treasures just as any real pyramid would. Instead of hieroglyphics, however, archeologists have been trekking here to study graffiti.

“I think every 14-year-old in Huntington Beach has been inside this thing,” said Larry Brose, vice president of the Koll Real Estate Group, which owns the property upon which the Huntington Beach bunker sits.

Built in 1944 by the Army Corps of Engineers, the 600-by-175-foot bunker--along with a smaller one nearby--was part of an elaborate defense system planned to protect the California coast from a Japanese attack during World War II. The bunker, designed to hold large gun emplacements at each end, contained huge storage areas for ammunition as well as a latrine and sleeping quarters for its crew.

But the war ended before the facility could be armed and the finishing touches put in place. Later, the Koll group bought the land on which it sat--1,100 acres including the Bolsa Chica Wetlands just south of Warner Avenue along Pacific Coast Highway.

For nearly 50 years, the bunkers have stood as almost irresistible challenges to generations of local teen-agers bent on defying the rules to enter a place of privacy, darkness and calm.

“They had to work to get in,” said Brose, who routinely welded the bunkers’ huge steel doors shut, further sealed their entryways with chunks of concrete and maintained a chain-link fence.

Nothing worked. The intruders simply removed the concrete, broke open the doors and dug their way in. “It’s been a constant problem,” Brose said. “We’ve been out there regularly closing them up, but these were the most popular nuisances in Huntington Beach.”

Three years ago, the company began applying for permits to demolish the two bunkers, in the first visible step toward realization of a planned--and controversial--400-acre housing development that would include a restored wetland. During the application process, researchers say, county and state officials determined that the Bolsa Chica bunkers--two of 104 built in the United States--had no significant historical value, largely because they were never finished.

One feature of the bunkers, however, fascinated Nancy Whitney-Desautels, an independent state-licensed archeologist contracted by Koll to study the site: the graffiti that plastered the dark inner walls, layer upon layer of youthful art placed there over the years by succeeding generations.

“I think it’s really interesting,” said Whitney-Desautels, who spent years excavating cave sites in Italy and Greece. “It’s very similar to the pyramids or American Indian cave paintings. If you ignore the concrete walls and look at the rock art, it’s almost like stepping back in time and watching somebody put a message on the wall just like the early Indian people here in the United States.”

Intrigued, Whitney-Desautels decided to document the wall paintings by assigning a photographer to snap a picture of each one during the demolition, which began two months ago.

The subjects range from a series of simple white brush strokes dated Sept. 1, 1958, that form the names Jeff Arnold and Pete Williams and the names of their high schools (Millikan and Lakewood), to elaborate spray-painted, multicolored panels dated this year and depicting current cartoon characters with slogans such as “Rap Man Was Here.”

“What we hope to document is when people were here, who they were and how social issues affected what they drew,” said David Hocking, the photographer documenting the drawings. The bulk of the graffiti, he said, are from the 1990s. “These are people who went to a lot of trouble to put some graffiti here.”

The archeologist said she plans to publish her findings--including comparisons of the Bolsa Chica and San Pedro graffiti--in a professional journal. Also, sometime next year, she said, a “traveling bunker show” will visit various parts of Orange County, exhibiting photos of the bunker art that was.

After demolishing the smaller of the two bunkers and getting a good start on the larger one, crews closed up the structure and stopped work this month in anticipation of the rainy season. Work is expected to resume in April.

All of which gives residents plenty of time to express their dismay at the impending loss of a structure to which many have become sentimentally attached.

“The bunker was there before any of us,” said Shirley Specht, 50, who has lived across the street from the wetland for 10 years. “I don’t know why they have to tear it down. I’m a World War II baby; when they tear these down I feel like I’m going too.”

Chuck Steel, a longtime resident, remembers a time many years ago when his two children used to play down at the bunkers. “I hate to see them go,” he said.

But were his children among the intruders whose bunker graffiti are now being immortalized? Hardly likely, Steel said. “We didn’t know about graffiti back then.”