From the early 1950s into the late 1980s, many of the service members and families aboard the nearby Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune were exposed to contaminated drinking water. The fact of this was covered up by the Department of the Navy until around the year 2000. While the water negatively impacted the health of all who were exposed, it was particularly hard on the most vulnerable—those in utero and newborns. This portion of the Jacksonville City Cemetery holds many marked and unmarked graves of those victims.