2. War & Peace
• -Seized as act of war (1846), gov’d by military till 1850, CA remained
connected to the military throughout the rest of the 19th century.
• -Navy maintained important ship repair facility on Mare Island in San
Francisco
• -1891 – Fourth Cavalry had been patrolling Yosemite Valley as a
responsibility.
• -Military of California was very important
• -Spanish-American War of 1898 formally established USA as Asia-Pacific
Power.
• -WW II formally began on Sept. 1, 1939 – United States were officially in
the war head on after the attack on Pearl Harbor on the morning of
December 7, 1941
• -Prior to attack, War Dept. had been increasing presence in California,
upgrading installations, purchasing property, commissioning, and
constructed fifty thousand war planes to in attempt to make the US the
“Arsental of Democracy”
3. War & Peace
• -White California movement – gained strength in 1913,
legislature passed the Alien Land Act prohibiting Japanese
immigrants from owning land in the state.
• -Racism, toxicity, not universal in California but still tainted
a portion of the population – especially progressive upper
middle class throughout the 1930s.
• -March 1, 1942 – DeWitt issued Proclamation #1
designating the western half of California, Oregon and
Washington and southern third of Arizona as military zones
from which all Japanese people were to be removed – the
evacuation program was to be carried out and “relocation
camps” were made under Roosevelt’s “Civilian War
Relocation Authority.”
