1942 (1941) (1943) (1930-1940) (1940-1950) Table of Contents
Fred E. Basten Main St. to Malibu, Yesterday & Today, Graphics Press, Santa Monica, CA, 1980, 123pp., 1942 See Text
Robert Gottlieb and Irene Wolt* Thinking Big: The Story of the Los Angeles Times, Its Publishers and Their Influence on Southern California, G.P. Putnam's Sons: NY, 1977. 603 pp., 1942 See Text
James W. Lunsford The Ocean and the Sunset, The Hills and the Clouds: Looking at Santa Monica, illustrated by Alice N. Lunsford, 1983, 1943, 1942, 1941, 1940, 1933, 1921, 1913, 1912 See Text
Lawrence Mace In Search of Whole Rainbows, Unpublished Manuscript 1994, 1952, 1948, 1942 See Text
Tom Moran and Tom Sewell Fantasy by the Sea Peace Press: Culver City, CA, 1980 (1979) (Originally published by Beyond Baroque Foundation with a grant from the Visual Arts Program of the National Endowment for the Arts), 1942 See Text
John Gross-Bettleheim Assembly Line (Home Front) 1942 See Image and Text
Kevin Starr Embattled Dreams California in War and Peace 1940-1950, Oxford University Press: Oxford, UK, 2002, 386 pp., 1942 See Text
Documents
Fred E. Basten Main St. to Malibu, Yesterday & Today, Graphics Press, Santa Monica, CA, 1980, 123pp., 1942
"Searchlights and anti-aircraft guns comb the sky for unseen enemy over Bay area on February 25, 1942. Photo, snapped during a wartime blackout, clearly shows blobs of light made by exploding shells." p. 78
Robert Gottlieb and Irene Wolt* Thinking Big: The Story of the Los Angeles Times, Its Publishers and Their Influence on Southern California, G.P. Putnam's Sons: NY, 1977. 603 pp., 1942
Chapter 18 Cold War Journalism
1. Relocation Camp
"The Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor, which opened the door for Los Angeles's massive industrial expansion and urbanization, also brought out a renewed racial hostility from the white Southern California population. Anti-foreign /nativist movements had deep roots in the area. Since the 1860s the state's labor movement and small farmers, threatened by massive immigrations of cheap Asian and Mexican labor, had reacted with prejudice and attempts at exclusion. . . . .
" . . . Chandler had attacked various racist-inspired moves to limit land ownership-the 1913 Alien Land Law, for instance-or to restrict immigration. . . . " p. 296
"By the late 1930s, as first- and second-generation Japanese and Mexican-Americans entered the job market, questions concerning immigration were replaced by the urban-based social and economic problems of acculturation and discrimination. With the outbreak of the war, some of the old tensions found new expression, and the Los Angeles press, led by the Hearst papers and the Times, contributed to one of the region's most shameful periods.
"Within a month after the Pearl Harbor attack, California's press began a systematic campaign to evacuate all Japanese-Americans in California and the rest of the country into "relocation" camps for the duration of the war. . . .
" . . .
" . . . Ninety thousand Japanese-Americans in California were uprooted from their homes and farms to live for more than three years in concentration camps . . ." p. 297
" . . . more than $5 million in Japanese property was auctioned off in the city [Los Angeles]."
" . . . Earl Warren [called] Democratic Governor Culbert Olson soft on Japanese-Americans and "identified the absence of any sabotage up to then as an attempt to create "a false sense of security." p. 298
James W. Lunsford The Ocean and the Sunset, The Hills and the Clouds: Looking at Santa Monica, illustrated by Alice N. Lunsford, 1983, 1943, 1942, 1941, 1940, 1933, 1921, 1913, 1912
"15. Santa Monica High School, 601 Pico Boulevard. The cornerstone for the high school was laid on April 11, 1912, on what was once known as Prospect Hill; the campus has expanded over the years to its present size by incorporating the former Santa Monica College site.
"The high school contains a great many points of interest, especially the Memorial Open-Air Theater dedicated in 1921; Barnum Hall, dedicated to William F. Barnum*, who served as principal from 1913 to 1943; a senior bench donated by the Classes of 1940 to 1943; an imposing Athletic Hall of Fame in the Men's Gymnasium; a trophy collection; the Freedom Shrine in the Administration Building; and the Hall of Fame in the History Building. Two special items of interest in Barnum Hall's lobby are a mosaic-tile mural depicting the landing of the vikings and a four-foot-tall concrete owl that stood atop the original high school from 1913 until 1933, when an earthquake caused its removal."
Lawrence Mace In Search of Whole Rainbows, Unpublished Manuscript, 1994, 1952, 1948, 1942
pp. 107-108 (circa 1942, Lawence is twelve years old)
"Our favorite outing was Venice Pier at the beach west of Los Angeles. A fat, jolly lady robot rocked backward and forward, laughing incessently above the front of the fun house. Ernie [Lawrence's younger brother] and I would play there for hours. We groped our way through a maze of mirrors and staggered through an obstacle course of moving stairways and walkways. An operator blasted compressed air through holes in the passageway floors, forcing girls to hold their dresses down with both hands.
"There was a huge hardwood slide with lanes for several riders. It was convex and then concave several times. We started by sitting on a burlap pad high up near the roof of the building, then hurtled down the slide, going weightless flying over each convex bump, finally scooting out onto the flat surface at the bottom.
"There was a twenty-foot rotating, hardwood disc with a slight downward incline from its center. We climbed onto it and sat at the center with our backs together. The disc began to rotate, moving faster and faster. Soon, the centrifugal force began to take its toll. One after another we lost our positions, sliding outward off the disc, crashing into a padded trough surrounding the disc.
"Sometimes a rider was able to center perfectly and stay on while the disc spun at top speed. There were metal buttons embedded in the hardwood near the disc center. Whenever maximum centrifugal force failed to dislodge a rider, an operator pressed a switch sending electricity to the buttons. The perfectly centered rider then left his position quickly, to the delight of everyone watching.
"Ernie and I both loved the fabulous, scary roller-coaster on the pier, but our favorite ride on the pier was the Dragon Slide. The dragon wrapped itself around a one-hundred foot conical tower. Its tail stuck straight upward at the top, with its huge head next to the bottom of the tower.
"The slide was inside the spiral dragon, constructed from split bamboo stips attached to the inner walls of the spiral. A rider sat inside a heavily paddded bag, on a swivel board, at the top of the dragon tail. An operator pivoted the board from horizontal to vertical. The rider plummeted straight downward into the dragon tail, spiraling around and around, finally zooming out the dragon's mouth. It was an awesome thrill. The Dragon Slide was closed and torn down after several years. A bamboo strip had come loose from the slide impaling a rider."
Tom Moran and Tom Sewell Fantasy by the Sea Peace Press: Culver City, CA, 1980 (1979) (Originally published by Beyond Baroque Foundation with a grant from the Visual Arts Program of the National Endowment for the Arts), 1942
"A large Japanese-American population lived in Venice. They had started settling in the area as early as 1913, buying and leasing truck farms where they had planted snap beans and celery crops. A number of Japanese-Americans were also attracted to the pier and bingo parlors along the beach front.
". . . the federal government issued an Executive Order . . . West Coast residents of Japanese heritage were ordered to report to . . . internment camps . . . Manzanar."
Karl Rydgren* (1914- ) I Remember, Unpublished Ms., 1975 [Reprinted 2005], 1942, 1906
"Mr. Emile Pourroy* [ -1942] arrived in California during the San Francisco earthquake (1906). He ran the Blue Streak Roller Coaster and later the Merry-Go-Round. Later he worked for the City of Santa Monica as a grounds keeper at Santa Monica High School. He used a hand mower. He also planted all the trees at the McGinley* Estate, now Jocelyn Park, and was chief caretaker there until his passing in 1942."
Roberta Lehrman Introduction The People Work, Associated American Artists, 20 West 57th Street, NY, NY, 10019 June 6-29, 1990
Kevin Starr Embattled Dreams California in War and Peace 1940-1950, Oxford University Press: Oxford, UK, 2002, 386 pp., 1942
[p. 262] " . . .
"Despite his Republicanism, Earl Warren remained sympathetic to his Democratic supporters . . . Cary McWillliams suggested that Warren was merely seeking to mask his conservatism through imitating FDR as much as he could within the limits of his Republican affiliation and instincts. . . Marquis Childs . . . described Warren as a "New Deal wolf in Republican sheep's clothing" . . . Harry Truman, "He's a Democrat and doesn't know it." . . . [p. 263] Within the limits of the Old California myth, for example, Warren had excellent relations with Mexican-Californians. As a boy in Los Angeles, he had attended Mexican festivities in the Plaza and been enchanted by the dancing and singing, the gaily colored horses . . . Like so many Protestant Californians, Warren revered the myth of Old California as a Spanish Arcadia of white-walled, red-tiled haciendas and a colorful, pastoral way of life. Whenever possible, he attended the Old Spanish Days Fiesta in Santa Barbara. When Warren ran for governor in 1942, the actor Leo Carrillo, a sixth-generation Californian and a registered Democrat, campaigned for his compadre among Mexican-American voters. Carrillo, in fact, became the closest thing to a pal Earl Warren seems to have had in publci life: Pancho to Warren's Cisco Kid, a combination factotum-court jester, master of ceremonies, and sometimes hatchet man of the sort most politicians, even Earl Warren, seem to find necessary.
" . . .
[p. 264] "Masons and Roman Catholics were oil and water in these years, yet Earl Warren, Grand Master Mason, sustained deep and warm personal and intellectual connections with members of the Roman Catholic community, especially of the Irish persuasion . . .
"Warren was intrigued by Roman Catholic intellectuals, especially the social democratic aspects of their political philosophy. The single most influential person in the Warren administration was William Sweigert, a brilliant Irish Catholic attorney from San Francisco, a Democrat, strongly influenced by the liberal social teachingz of papal encyclicals . . . Sweigart became Warren's liberal alter ego . . .
"Warren was equally friendly to another liberal intellectual Irish Catholic Democrat strongly influenced by the social teachings of the papal encyclicals, Attorney General Robert Kenny. To the manor born (an old Southern California family, long active in banking), Kenney grew up in Los Angeles, graduated from Stanford and Stanford Law, and had worked as a foreign correspondent in London and Paris before returning to Los Angeles to pursue a career as a lawyer and a judge. In 1938 Kenny won election to the state senate, where he replaced Culbert Olson when Olson became governor. As state senator, Kenny was one of the few important state officials-perhaps the only one-to speak out against the internment [p. 265] of the Japanese. Oddly enough, this did not prevent him from being elected attorney general in 1942, replacing Earl Warren.