The Terminal Island [UPDATED]
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A TV news program does a segment on Terminal Island, an off-shore island established after the abolition of the death penalty. First degree murderers are shipped off to the island to spend the rest of their days fending for themselves.
Terminal Island, historically known as Isla Raza de Buena Gente, is a largely artificial island located in Los Angeles County, California, between the neighborhoods of Wilmington and San Pedro in the city of Los Angeles,[1] and the city of Long Beach. Terminal Island is roughly split between the Port of Los Angeles and Port of Long Beach. Land use on the island is entirely industrial and port-related except for Federal Correctional Institution, Terminal Island.
In 1946, Howard Hughes moved his monstrous Spruce Goose airplane from his plant in Culver City to Terminal Island in preparation for its test flight. In its first and only flight, it took off from the island on November 2, 1947.[16]
Preservation of vacant buildings earned the island a spot on the top 11 sites on the National Trust for Historic Preservation's 2012 Most Endangered Historic Places List.[18] In mid-2013, the Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners approved a preservation plan.[19] The trust cited the site as one of ten historic sites saved in 2013.[19]
The west half of the island is part of the San Pedro area of the city of Los Angeles, while the rest is part of the city of Long Beach. The island has a land area of 11.56 km2 (4.46 sq mi), or 2,854 acres (11.55 km2), and had a population of 1,467 at the 2000 census.[citation needed]
The Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach are the major landowners on the island, who in turn lease much of their land for container terminals and bulk terminals. The island also hosts canneries, shipyards, and United States Coast Guard facilities.
Aerospace company SpaceX is initially leasing 12.4 acres (5.0 ha) from the Port of Los Angeles on the island at Berth 240. They will refurbish five buildings and raise a tent-like structure for research, design, and manufacturing. SpaceX has been building and testing its planned Starship crewed space transportation system intended for suborbital, orbital and interplanetary flight in Texas. The new SpaceX rocket, too large to be transported for long distances overland, will be shipped to the company's launch area in Florida or Texas by sea, via the Panama Canal. The 19 acres (7.7 ha) site was used for shipbuilding from 1918, and was formerly operated by the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation and then the Southwest Marine Shipyard. The location has been disused since 2005.[20][21][22]
Terminal Island is connected to the mainland via four bridges.[23] To the west, the distinctive green Vincent Thomas Bridge, the fourth-longest suspension bridge in California, connects it with the Los Angeles neighborhood of San Pedro. The Long Beach International Gateway, the longest cable-stayed bridge in California, connects the island with downtown Long Beach to the east. The Commodore Schuyler F. Heim Bridge joins Terminal Island with the Los Angeles neighborhood of Wilmington to the north. Adjacent to the Heim Bridge is a rail bridge called the Henry Ford Bridge, or the Badger Avenue Bridge.[23]
The island later starred in one of the darkest chapters of U.S. history, when its residents became the first Japanese Americans to be forcibly removed from their homes and detained at internment camps during World War II.
December 7, 1941 changed Terminal Island forever. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the FBI took all the non-native Japanese fishermen and community leaders into custody immediately, and all traffic to and from the island was suspended. Only some of the men were released; the others reunited with their families only later, at detention centers. The women and children were left to fend for themselves financially, leaving many families in dire straits for months.
It's the kind of movie that can almost be reviewed by watching the trailer, if not the TV commercials. Everything they tell you is true enough, but there's nothing in the movie except the high points. The rest of the time, everybody stands around in awkward groupings, discussing the last high point and planning the next. The movie is about a group of condemned criminals who are placed on Terminal Island to fight it out. Well, it's better than the death penalty. The island is furnished with several grass huts, a goat, and apparently, a great beauty salon for the women.
The exhibit looked at Terminal Island as a sort of organismic, flowing, landscape machine, composed of five separate terminal activities that occur on the island: importation, exportation, excretion, deportation and expulsion. Each one of these activities was described in text, and depicted through video captured by CLUI personnel over the months prior to the exhibit.
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At first, the remaining residents were given a 30-day eviction notice, but ten days later a submarine scare led to the mass eviction from the island upon only a 48-hour notice. After the war, animosity toward the Nikkei fishermen continued and through an amendment to a 1933 statute of the California Fish and Game Code, Issei were denied a commercial license. The statute was challenged by Takahashi vs. Fish and Game Commission in the Los Angeles City, California State and U.S. Supreme Court until it was overturned several years later. Photo of local fisherman taken by the FBI, 1941.
The small-scale evacuation of Terminal Island in February 1942 was aprecursor of the mass evacuation of the west coast and provided a vividportent of the hardship that would be wrought by evacuation.Approximately six miles long and one-half mile wide, Terminal Island,most of whose residents would ultimately be evacuated to Manzanar,marked the boundaries of Los Angeles Harbor and the Cerritos Channel.Lying directly across the harbor from a U.S. Navy base at San Pedro, theisland was reached in 1942 by ferry or a small drawbridge.
The isolated Japanese community on the island consisted of some 500families, primarily occupied in the fishing and canning industries. Ahalf-dozen fish canneries, each with its own employee housing, werelocated on the island. In 1942, the Japanese population of the islandwas approximately 3,500, of whom approximately half were American-bornNisei. The majority of the businesses, including restaurants, grocerystores, barbershops, beauty shops, and poolhalls (in addition to threephysicians, and two dentists), which served the island were owned oroperated by Issei or Nisei. [46]
Immediately following the Pearl Harbor attack, the FBI removedindividuals from the Japanese community on Terminal Island who wereconsidered dangerous aliens, and followed this with "daily dawn raids...removing several hundred more aliens" and sending them to internmentcamps in Montana and North Dakota. In late January 1942, the island wasdesignated by authorities as a "strategic area" from which enemy alienswould be barred. Within several days, FBI agents again raided theJapanese community, arresting 336 Issei who were considered potentiallydangerous. On February 10, 1942, the Department of Justice posted awarning that all Japanese aliens had to leave the island by thefollowing Monday. The next day, a presidential order placed TerminalIsland under the jurisdiction of the Navy. By the 15th, Secretary of theNavy Knox directed Rear Admiral R. S. Holmes, Commandant of the 11thNaval District in San Diego, to notify all island residents that theirdwellings would be condemned, effective within 30 days. On February 25,however, the Navy informed the island residents that the deadline hadbeen advanced to midnight, February 27, slightly more than 48 horn'saway. The Terminal Islanders were, in essence, evicted, and the Navy didnot care where they went as long as they left the "strategic" island.[47]
As a consequence of the FBI raids on Terminal Island, the heads ofmany families, as well as community and business leaders, were gone andmainly older women and minor children were left. With the new edict,these women and children, who were unaccustomed and ill equipped tohandle business transactions, were forced to make quick financialdecisions regarding their property and possessions. [48] Dr. Yoshihiko Fujikawa, a resident of theisland, described the chaotic scene prior to evacuation:
Around the turn of the century, the wealthy were building beachfront resort houses on one part of the island, while artists, writers, scientists and bohemians squatted in makeshift houses on stilts in a community known as East San Pedro.
The listing was welcomed by Min Tonai, president of the Terminal Islanders club. Terminal Islanders, who hold their annual picnic this weekend, have been steadfast in their desire to preserve the history of the island, raising the funds to build a memorial to the fishing village in 2002.
Route:WFrom a junction with Long Beach-San Pedro Line at Island Junction (3.51 miles from Long Beach, 19.84 miles from Los Angeles) This line proceeded (double track, private way) via Ford Avenue and the Terminal Island Bridge to a point adjacent to the main entrance of the California Shipbuilding Corporation's ship building yard, where it terminated in a four-track yard 6.30 miles from Long Beach, 22.63 miles from Los Angeles.History:WThe Terminal Island Railway was a creature of abnormal times, but it was built well (although hurriedly) by PE's time-tested personnel. Built to replace the original electric train-ferry service operated from Los Angeles and Long Beach to the Catalina Terminal, Wilmington, the Terminal Island Railway and its trains were owned by the United States Maritime Commission, although employees and operators of the line were all PE personnel.WConstruction began in August of 1942 and the work was pressed forward with all haste. At the peak of construction, about 300 men were on this job. The line required three new junctions (Flint Junction and Pioneer Junction to get USMC tains from the San Pedro via Dominguez Line onto the Long Beach-San Pedro Line, and Island Junction---a double track wye---to get them from the Long Beach-San Pedro Line onto the Terminal Island Railway), a new substation (electrical equiptment for which came from dismantled IER facilities in San Francisco), a new tower (at Island Junction) with CTC (which could control at peak hours as many as nine different trains on six different railroads), a unique roadbed (laid for a mile on top of pavement on Henry Ford Avenue) and a special trolley wire lowering device on the drawbridge (which prevented the wire from being cut as the huge counterweights descended whenever the bridge was opened). Opening day was set for March 15, 1943, but delay in arrival of track crossings from Seattle postponed the opening until March 19th.WAll during the war the operator at the Island Junction Tower heard the familiar signal over his loudspeaker from trains desiring to be switched onto the Terminal Island trackage (one long whistle, one short). The trains rolled down from Los Angeles in five car cuts, and came over from Long Beach in three-car units--their steel helmeted passengers benefitting from reliable, low cost transportation so necessary to conserve rubber tires.WWith V-E and V-J Days came the end for the Terminal Island Railway. The last car ran onto the Island on September 16, 1945, and work began shortly thereafter on removing all vestiges of this railway. Today all that is left to remind one of busy days of only yesterday is the shell of the prosaic substation building, standing by itself amid a forest of busily pumping oil wells.Equipment:WThis line was served throughout by USMC cars, the former IER-SP cars of the Oakland-Alameda-Berkeley electrification. These bore the USMC name on their letterboards and were numbered in their old IER-SP numbers (300-400-625 Classes).Track:WTrackage unique to this line was of 90 lb. T-rail, laid on redwood ties with crushed rock ballaStreet Special work came from far and near, wherever USMC could find same. In contrast, the latest type of electric powered switch machines were installed.Electrical Facilities:WSame as Long Beach Domingues Line and Long Beach-San Pedro Line plus one permanent substation housing a mercury arc rectifier (a new portable substation---USMC 00187--handled power requiremets until the permanent sub was finished).Car Storage:WSame as above three lines. No cars were stored on Terminal Island except during shift workings.Freight:WNonePassengers:WFigures unavailableMiscellaneous:WAlthough short in length, this line presented many unusual problems in regards to railroad and pipeline crossings. Eight railroad crossings had to be negotiated, and several pipelines had to be buried six feet deep to permit the heavy trains to cross them in safety, one Santa Fe and two Union Pacific crossings were controlled from Island Junction Tower, but the others required 10 mph speed limits.WThis line was double track throughout except for a stretch of single track crossing the drawbridge onto the island. Track was entirely on private way.WThe four-lane Henry Ford Avenue, main vehicular entrance onto the island, lost two lanes for the duration. Heavy wood beams created a curb down the middle of the highway, behind which ballast and ties were installed, the ties being installed by grouting bolts to the pavement.WThe Flint Junction-Pioneer Junction trackage is still in service for freight only, the last surviving rail memento of the Terminal Island Railway.WAt almost the same spot that once served as the terminal yard on the island, were red and yellow cars which served Los Angeles well and now have long ago been scrapped or sold to other countries. Several hundred PE and LATL cars have been dismantled on Terminal Island including: PE 950s, 1000s, 1600s, 5050 Classs cars as well as some 300s and 400s---plus LARy Standards, H-4s and other types.Return to ERHA homepage 2b1af7f3a8