The West Coast During World War Two

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Peter_Uzelac]Peter Uzelac
Life on America's West Coast changed dramatically after the December 7, 1941 Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. The radical changes enacted after the attack changed how people went about their daily lives and the new laws and social changes that resulted are talked about and debated to this very day.
The driving force behind these changes of course were geographic. Hawaii, while not really next door to California, was close enough for American's to be quite concerned. While you couldn't say there was hysteria, there was a degree of concern about a possible land invasion of the western U.S. While theoretically possible, the probability of such an invasion was low. For the Japanese to carry it out would have been a logistic undertaking like never before. The forces necessary to accomplish such an expedition would have been almost impossible to pull off. The large American population on the west coast along with the terrain would have presented great difficulty. While this was most likely realized by those in our military there were still many other concerns regarding our overall west coast security. One of those concerns were the number of Japanese living on the west coast, mostly in California. Many of these people were Japanese born and had not attained citizenship. On the other hand, many were born on American soil and were indeed U.S. citizens.
The West Coast truly was experiencing a unique situation. Never before had the possibility arisen that the U.S. might be invaded by another nation. You had to have gone back to the War of 1812 for a similar circumstance. The probability of course was small. The Hawaiian Islands would have been taken first and this proved not to be in Japan's game plan. Furthermore, after the Japanese stunning defeat in the Battle of Midway, the tide turned the other way with prospects of an invasion of Japan's home islands. Regardless of the long shot of action being seen on our west coast, there were several other concerns which did emerge.
Anti-Japanese factions, mostly in California, began petitioning the federal government to do something about what they perceived was a security threat. The threat they were alluding to was possible Japanese-American spying and/or sabotage. America's West Coast was home to many naval bases, shipyards and other war related industries. Could a spy secretly radio out American ship movements to submarines positioned off the coast? Could someone sympathetic to Japan's cause sabotage a factory producing war equipment? Both of these were possible. German saboteurs were known to operate on the east coast. Neither of these scenarios were out of the question. In regards to the west coast which had the distinction of being home to thousands of people of Japanese ancestry, the question was..what to do?
The result was Executive Order 9066 signed by President Franklin Roosevelt on February 19, 1942. This order allowed military commanders to designate areas "from which any or all persons may be excluded."This action come without a lot of prodding. After Pearl harbor there had been a great deal of both discrimination and harassment directed at Japanese-Americans. There were signs posted on storefronts, newspaper editorials, student harassment at schools, property destruction and of course some relatively minor acts of violence all directed toward the Japanese-Americans. When Executive Order 9066 was signed into law the federal government ordered 120,000 Japanese-Americans who lived on the West coast to leave their homes and jobs and live in 10 relocation camps in remote areas in the western states. In many of these cases the Japanese who were rounded up lost their homes and belongings while away at the camps. Two-thirds of the people interned were native-born American citizens. To add to their hardship, the Japanese of the west coast were only allowed to bring along a few possessions and in some cases family members were split up in separate camps. The camps were located in the states of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming. The conditions at many of these camps were considered poor, especially in regards to medical treatment. The climate itself at many of these western camps was more harsh than what many had been accustomed to on the west coast and this sometimes caused physical problems. To learn more about personal experiences endured by the internees, there are several very good books available at most public libraries that offer detailed accounts. These are quite interesting and revealing stories.
In December 1944, Public Proclamation 21 finally allowed the internees to return home. Some returned back home and started on the road to rebuilding their lives. What they found back home in regards to the property they left behind was another matter. Many lost everything. Others who had been soured by the experience decided to return to Japan. Another interesting fact was that during the entire war only ten people were convicted of spying in the U.S. and none of these were of Japanese ancestry.
During the war years there were several Japanese attacks along the west coast however what occurred are better described as uncoordinated isolated incidents. One was the shelling by a Japanese submarine of an oil platform in Santa Barbara California resulting in some dam but no injuries. The submarine then left the area never to be seen again. Another incident occurred at the mouth of the Columbia River in Oregon when n June 21, 1942 a Japanese submarine fired on Fort Stevens. The only damage sustained was to a baseball field backstop. The submarine followed local fishing boats to avoid minefields. Searchlights spotted the sub but there was no return fire from the Americans mainly because the attack was at night and they chose not to give away their positions by firing. Another hazard to people on the west coast were the incendiary devices which were launched from Japan by balloon and taken to the North American continent by natural wind currents. The first bomb balloon was launched on November 3, 1944. From then until April 1945, the Japanese launched an estimated 9,300 balloons, up to 100 a day. Every month the balloons kept appearing, falling, or being sighted in some 26 states and localities from Mexico all the way to Alaska and as far east as the states of Kansas, Iowa, and Michigan. The goal of this effort was an attempt to set the northwest forests on fire. Most balloons never made it to their destination, and of the ones that did, only a few sporadic small fires resulted which were quickly put out by fire fighters. There was an incident with a balloon which apparently landed in the woods in rural Oregon. A group of children led by a Reverend Mitchell and his wife from Bly, Oregon set out for a Sunday afternoon picnic. While Reverend Mitchell parked the car, his wife and the five children explored the area. The group discovered a device the U.S. government knew about but had kept secret. This was the balloon bomb device. When one of them touched the device, it exploded. The explosion killed Mrs. Mitchell and the five children. The six Oregonians became the only known deaths on the United States mainland from enemy attack during all of World War Two. Records indicate that after the Oregon tragedy that claimed six lives, the federal government made the public aware of these dangerous devices sent over from Japan. On August 20, 1950, the company Weyerhaeuser, who owned the land where the explosion occurred, dedicated a bronze memorial plaque to the six victims. The explosion site is now part of a National Forest Service Recreational Area.
The residents of the west coast were certainly more affected by World War Two than many of their counterparts around the nation. With that being said, there were precautions taken in many other areas. The Galveston, Texas and Louisiana area which was a central shipping point for oil was the target of several German U-Boat attacks. As a result, there were regular blackouts in effect and a concerted effort by the Navy and Coast Guard to hunt for the U-Boats.   rel=nofollow [http://westerntrips.blogspot.com/2011/05/galvestons-strategic-world-war-two.html]Galveston's World War Two defenses were quite extensive. The same was the case in San Francisco defenses. Spotter planes were launched from the Alameda Naval Air Station and other bases to patrol the coast. San Francisco defenses also included artillery batteries along both side of the inlet to the Bay.
World War Two presented the west coast with a set of problems never before encountered by the American public. Some of the steps taken were extreme and the program of Japanese internment was certainly one of these. It was a controversial move which is still debated to this day. At it's worse, the internment came about by the efforts of anti-Japanese factions within the non-Asian community. These may have been groups of people who disliked the Japanese presence on the mainland even before Pearl Harbor. At it's best, it was an honest effort by the federal government to react to a situation which it never encountered before.
By Peter Uzelac [http://westerntrips.blogspot.com/]westerntrips.blogspot.com
Peter Uzelac enjoys researching the history of America's West. You can contact him at  [mailto:peterstripg@aol.com]peterstripg@aol.com or at westerntrips.blogspot.com
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