Artillery For Honolulu.

New York Times 100 years ago today, May 19, 1913:
Detachment from Fort Slocum on Routine Duty, Not War Business.
    Coast artillerymen from the army training station at Fort Slocum to the number of 250 left here over the Pennsylvania Railroad at 4-o'clock yesterday afternoon for San Francisco, where a transport will be waiting to take them to Honolulu. Major Grote Hutcheson, the commanding officer at Fort Slocum, said yesterday that his orders to send the artillerymen to Honolulu were received about ten days ago, and that there was no reason for any one to think that their transport was due to the present diplomatic controversy between this country and Japan as a result of the alien land ownership legislation in California.
    "We are all the time sending men from Fort Slocum," said Major Hutcheson, "and the detachment that was sent away this afternoon was the third within the past two weeks. We sent several hundred men to Panama a few days ago, and also a large detachment to Fort Snelling, in Minnesota. There is absolutely no reason for any war scare because of the sending of these men. It's a regular thing here at Fort Slocum, where it is our business to train men for the various arms of the army, and after we have trained them the most natural thing in the world is to send them to organizations where they are needed to take the places of the men whose enlistments have expired, or who have been transferred to other commands."
    The detachment that left for San Francisco yesterday was under the command of Capt. J. L. Roberts of the Coast Artillery Corps. It is traveling on a special train of fourteen Pullman cars.
    At San Francisco the detachment will be joined by Col. William C. Rafferty, who has just been relieved of the command of the coast defenses of the Potomac; Major Frank W. Coe, who has been on duty at Fort Totten, and Capt. George L. Hicks, Jr., of the Potomac District. All of these officers are ordered to Honolulu for duty.
    Also under orders for Hawaii are the 119th and 143d Companies of Coast Artillery, now at Fort Washington, Md. These are veteran commands, and are scheduled to sail from San Francisco next Saturday.
    Capt. Frederick W. Phisterer, until recently ordnance officer of the coast defenses of the Artillery District of Southern New York, is in command of the One Hundred and Nineteenth Company, while Capt. Henry Hatch has been relieved of his Fort Wadsworth command and assigned to command the One Hundred and Forty-third Company.
    The troops now in Honolulu are the Fourth Cavalry, the First, Second, and Twenty-fifth Regiments of infantry, three batteries of the First Regiment of field artillery, and the Tenth, Fifty-fifth, Sixty-eighth, Seventy-fifth, One Hundred and Sixth, and One Hundred and Fifty-ninth Companies of coast artillery, and one company of engineers.
    Brig. Gen. Frederick Funston is in command of the Department of Hawaii, with headquarters at Honolulu. Brig. Gen. Montgomery H. Macomb is in command of the troops in the City of Honolulu.