The hospital was built at a cost of one-million pounds and consisted of 490 barrack type buildings containing approximately four-thousand-two-hundred and fifty beds.

The Americans, who at the time, were using the Hydro Majestic Hotel in Medlow Bath as a hospital, relocated and moved into the first section of the Herne Bay premises in May 1943.

The site was visited by General MacArthur, First Lady Mrs Eleanor Roosevelt, Artie Shaw's Band and Bob Hope.

In that same month, the Royal Navy (United Kingdom) opened a hospital to treat wounded members of the British Pacific Fleet in the vacated buildings.

The suburb developed an unsavoury reputation for poverty, overcrowding and violence, and its name was changed to Riverwood in 1957, in large part to remove the stigma associated with living there.

From the 1950s onwards, purpose-built utilitarian public housing apartment blocks and freestanding bungalows replaced most of the former military buildings on the northern side of the railway line, while the southern part of the suburb was mostly privately developed.