GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — Mention this place, and folks have a tendency to consider caged males carrying orange uniforms and on their knees, the picture of opening day at the wartime jail 4 months after the assaults of Sept. 11, 2001.

But this army base is multiple huge jail. About 6,000 folks reside at the U.S. Navy outpost, which has the trappings of small-town America and the facilities of a school campus, and capabilities like a cross between a gated neighborhood and a police state.

It has a Defense Department college system for the youngsters of sailors and contractors, a seaport for Navy and Coast Guard provide missions, bars, ball fields, neighborhoods with swing units, seashores with barbecue grills and pleasure boats to hire for excursions on the bay.

It additionally has a McDonald’s with a drive-through large sufficient for tactical autos, just under a hilltop church with a white steeple. A 10-minute drive in a single route takes you to Nob Hill, a neighborhood of three-bedroom properties for junior officers on the base of 700 households.

Drive 10 minutes in one other route, previous the base’s scrubby nine-hole golf course, and also you arrive at a gate to what’s basically a base inside the base, the detention zone. It is beneath the command of an Army brigadier common who’s answerable for the Pentagon’s last 39 wartime prisoners and a employees of 1,500 folks, largely troopers from the National Guard on nine-month excursions of obligation.

The base covers 45 sq. miles straddling Guantánamo Bay, the U.S.-controlled physique of water that splits the base in two. A small unit of Marines is answerable for safety on the U.S. facet of 17.four miles of fences that encompass the base. A portion of the Cuban facet has a minefield.

Most days it’s simple to overlook that the base sits in southeast Cuba.

Little Spanish is spoken right here, besides when a unit of the Puerto Rico National Guard is on the submit for a tour of obligation in the jail zone. Tagalog and Creole are extra prevalent as a result of about one-third of the residents are Filipinos and Jamaicans. They are employed by Pentagon contractors and function the spine of the labor drive.

They do development, make and serve meals in the eating places, and are cashiers in the commissary. They change beds at visitor quarters, reduce and shade hair at the salon, and provide crusing classes at the marina. None are allowed to convey household, they usually reside in separate housing areas maintained by their employers. Bingo inside the base ballroom is a well-liked permitted pastime.

By some measures, the base resembles a school campus — however one with a capturing vary, razor wire, tons of of troopers and sailors in battle gown, and automobiles that all of the sudden cease in the street at eight a.m. when “The Star-Spangled Banner” is broadcast every morning.

Some residents are issued meal playing cards for the cafeteria-style eating amenities. Single troopers and sailors reside in dormitories. The base has a memento store peddling alumni-style T-shirts, espresso mugs and shot glasses. “No Bad Day,” says a T-shirt decorated with palm trees that boasts “Good Vibes” and “High Tides” at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. It has a Saturday night time scene at the Tiki Bar, a volunteer automotive pool known as Safe Ride so folks gained’t drink and drive, and Alcoholics Anonymous conferences thrice per week.

It additionally has intramural sports activities occasions and a sexual assault consciousness marketing campaign.

But it’s a army base, in spite of everything. Drones are forbidden. Trick or treating is allowed solely in sure neighborhoods. News photographers should submit each image they take to army censorship. Forbidden photographs embrace guard towers, sure razor-wire-ringed fences and safety cameras, in addition to crucial infrastructure, resembling the 4 wind generators that tower above the base and might be seen at sea.

Anyone touring to the base wants permission from the commanding officer, a stamped entry type that’s basically a visa to the Independent Republic of Guantánamo Bay, after which a seat on an permitted flight, usually a Pentagon constitution from the Eastern Seaboard.

The present commanding officer is Capt. Samuel “Smokey” White, who goes by Sam to the few residents on board who don’t deal with him as “sir” or “skipper.”

He has a zero-tolerance coverage for alcohol, that means regardless of how huge you might be, you’ll be able to’t have a beer and drive. Get caught driving whereas drunk, and the commander can throw you off the base. Or not.

Usually the skipper is the individual at the helm of a ship. But the honorific is especially apt as a result of, ever since the United States reduce itself off from the Cuban infrastructure grid in the 1960s, after Fidel Castro’s revolution, Guantánamo may be very very similar to an plane at sea.

The base treats its personal water in a desalination plant and generates its personal vitality from fossil fuels, photo voltaic panels and wind vitality. It is resupplied by air and sea. A twice-monthly barge from Jacksonville, Fla., brings meals for the commissary, new autos for the army, development and constructing provides, and family items. A twice-weekly fridge flight delivers recent vegatables and fruits and different perishables.

For practically 20 years, base commanders have described the U.S.-Cuba relationship alongside the fence line as benign, with none of the tensions urged in “A Few Good Men.” Each June, the base commander reminds his Cuban counterpart in the Frontier Brigade that there shall be fireworks on the Fourth of July; no person is capturing at them.

In 2018, when a wildfire superior via the Cuban minefield towards Nob Hill, forces from either side dug ditches and fought the blaze. The collaboration culminated with a Soviet-era Cuban helicopter making a number of passes over the Navy base, scooping up water from the bay and dumping it on sure sizzling spots to snuff them out.

The base additionally has hundreds of feral cats, the descendants of felines that discovered their approach to the base via the Cuban minefield or of home cats left behind by Navy households. A gaggle of involved cat lovers based Operation Git-Meow, which seeks to seek out properties for the feral cats and is making an attempt to steer the Navy to allow an all-volunteer catch, neuter and launch program to scale back the wild cat inhabitants.

A small neighborhood hospital on the base gives household care and publicizes the first child of every new 12 months on its web site. It additionally handles the take care of the prisoners, regardless of how sophisticated, beneath a congressional prohibition on bringing prisoners to the United States. Everyone else with a posh medical case is routinely despatched to the mainland.

There was a time after the jail opened in 2002 and the detainee inhabitants rose to a peak of 660 in 2003 when the base bustled with a goal that revolved round the detention operation.

Air Force cargo planes frequently delivered detainees introduced from Afghanistan, and base residents have been ordered to remain inside for the high-security switch of prisoners from the airstrip on one facet of the bay to the cells on the excessive different.

Troops in camouflage cruised the base in Humvees. Members of Congress, senior army brass, authorities legal professionals, journalists and international delegations paid common visits, filling Guantánamo’s hotel-style visitor quarters.

Over time, curiosity waned. There was a flurry of exercise after President Barack Obama ordered the prison closed, and administration officers labored to lower the detainee inhabitants. But congressional restrictions made it unattainable to switch the final dozens to the United States for any motive.

Most days, the jail operation that put Guantánamo on the map 20 years in the past is out of sight and out of thoughts — besides when a convoy of white, windowless vans passes the McDonald’s to convey a detainee or two to the courtroom compound at Camp Justice.