Qualla: Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune

Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lance Cpl. Michael J. Ayotte, USMC, Public domain. Janey Ensminger was nine years old when she died of leukemia in 1985. Her father, retired Marine Master Sergeant Jerry Ensminger, spent the rest of his life trying to understand why. The answer, when it came, was that between 1953 and 1987 the drinking water on Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune was poisoned with trichloroethylene, perchloroethylene, vinyl chloride, and benzene. As many as a million Marines, sailors, civilian workers, and their family members may have been exposed. Camp Lejeune is many things. It is the largest Marine Corps base on the East Coast, the cradle of amphibious doctrine, the launching point for two generations of America's wars. It is also the place where Janey Ensminger drank the water.

Image: Lance Cpl. Michael J. Ayotte, USMC | Public domain

Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune: Marine Barracks New River

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit USMC Archives from Quantico, USA, CC BY 2.0. Construction began on 1 May 1941 under Lieutenant Colonel William P.T. Hill, on 11,000 acres of Onslow County farmland the federal government had just acquired. About 2,400 residents were displaced. The first base headquarters was set up in a summer cottage on Montford Point and ...

Image: USMC Archives from Quantico, USA | CC BY 2.0

Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune: Montford Point and the Devil Dogs

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit USMC Archives from Quantico, USA, CC BY 2.0. After President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802 in 1941 desegregating defense industries, the Marine Corps reluctantly began recruiting African American Marines. Between 1942 and 1949, about 20,000 of them trained at Montford Point, a segregated satellite camp on the wester...

Image: USMC Archives from Quantico, USA | CC BY 2.0

Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune: The Water

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit USMC Archives from Quantico, USA, CC BY 2.0. From 1953 to 1987 the wells supplying Tarawa Terrace, Hadnot Point, and other base housing areas drew water tainted with industrial solvents. Tarawa Terrace was contaminated mostly by perchloroethylene from an off-base dry cleaner; Hadnot Point was contaminated by trichloroethyle...

Image: USMC Archives from Quantico, USA | CC BY 2.0

Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune: Justice, Slowly

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit USMC Archives from Quantico, USA, CC BY 2.0. The 2012 Janey Ensminger Act, named for Jerry Ensminger's daughter, authorized VA medical care for up to 750,000 Marines and family members who had lived on base between 1957 and 1987 and developed any of fifteen listed conditions. But the law required residence on base, excludin...

Image: USMC Archives from Quantico, USA | CC BY 2.0