An isolated Navy station known for brutal Alaskan winter storms and thousands of unexploded bombs might soon be reborn as a frontline base to counter Russian and Chinese advances in the Arctic.

Last week, the top commander in the Pacific, Adm. Samuel Paparo, joined other military officials in calling for a revival of a base on Adak Island, a tiny, rocky outpost in Alaska’s Aleutian Island chain. The island, which sits halfway between mainland Alaska and Russia, would give the U.S. “an opportunity to gain time and distance on any force capability that’s looking to penetrate,” Paparo said at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

Service members assigned to Adak in the past found it to be a fairly rough tour. With a “harsh and demanding” climate, the treeless island base earned its reputation as a hardship duty station before it was shuttered in the 1990s, according to an article by Barry Erdman who was one of roughly 150 Marines based at Adak during the Cold War. 

For most of the year, wrote Erdman, precipitation was daily and in winter, troops were greeted by storms of horizontal snow mixed driven by wind blasts that the Aleuts referred to as “Williwaws.” Under the worst of it, Erdman recalled, “when you held your arm outstretched and you could not see your hand.” But troops got some reprieve with a week’s worth of “all-day sun in the summer,” which led base schools to close “so the students could enjoy the day,” he wrote.