Places of World War II in the San Francisco Bay Area

San Francisco's Chinatown, looking toward the Bay Bridge. Photo by Christian Mehlführer, CC BY 3.0.

World War II reshaped the mid-20th century, and its effects still shape the world. The communities around San Francisco Bay were changed for good, and still carry its marks: old military bases and coastal forts, ships and shipyards, worker housing and day-care centers.

"Fortress San Francisco"

Mobilizing the Bay Area was a massive effort.

Building ships — and more

The Bay Area's biggest contribution to victory was shipbuilding.

• Bay Area shipyards, such as Kaiser's Richmond Shipyard Number Three, built 1,400 vessels during the war — a ship a day, on average — among them the SS Red Oak Victory.
• Mare Island Naval Shipyard offered long-established repair and shipbuilding facilities.
• The converted Richmond Ford Motor Company Assembly Plant prepared tanks for shipment to the Pacific.
• The Benicia Arsenal made munitions for these and other weapons.

Tens of thousands of Bay Area women challenged common ideas of what they could do — and faced, for the first time, the problems of working parents: finding day care and housing.

Executive Order 9066

Three months after Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, ordering more than 110,000 men, women and children from their homes into remote, military-style camps.

In the weeks that followed, local papers reported almost daily on proclamations, plans and restrictions on civil liberties issued by Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt from Building 35 at the Presidio. One, Civilian Exclusion Order No. 20, required 660 people living in the area bounded by Sutter and California streets and Presidio and Van Ness avenues to register with the Japanese American Citizens League at 2031 Bush Street — and then, on April 29, 1942, to report for removal.

Headlines in the San Francisco News show how fast it happened:

People were first taken to one of 13 "assembly" centers in California, such as the Tanforan race track in San Bruno (since demolished), where 8,000 Japanese Americans were held in converted horse stables and makeshift barracks from April to October 1942 — and then to permanent camps inland, such as Manzanar, now a National Historic Site. In all, nearly 100,000 Californians of Japanese descent were removed from their homes and livelihoods and held until 1945.

More: the Park Service's World War II in the San Francisco Bay Area travel itinerary.

Sources

Based on "Places of World War II in the San Francisco Bay Area," National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The import had cut one sentence short; it is completed from the live page. The source's link for Fort Point leads to Fort Mason and is left out here. The photograph is by Christian Mehlführer under CC BY 3.0.