page_title: History of Los Angeles
section_title: World War II: 1941–1945
hierarchical_section_title: History of Los Angeles / World War II: 1941–1945
caption_attribution_description: English: A photograph taken in Los Angeles, California, near Commonwealth Avenue, facing Wilshire Boulevard, and towards the east. Lafayette Park is visible on the left. The picture is dated 1945.
context_page_description: The History of Los Angeles began when 11 settlers established a settlement that changed little in the three decades after 1848, when California became part of the United States. Great changes came from the completion of the Santa Fe railroad line from Chicago to Los Angeles in 1885. “Overlanders” flooded in, mostly White Protestants from the Lower Midwest and South.
  Los Angeles had a strong economic base in farming, oil, tourism, real estate and movies. It grew rapidly with many suburban areas inside and outside the city limits. Its motion picture industry made the city world-famous, and World War II brought new industry, especially high-tech aircraft construction. Politically the city was moderately conservative, with a weak labor union sector.
  Since the 1960s, growth has slowed—and traffic delays have become infamous. Los Angeles was a pioneer in freeway development as the public transit system deteriorated. New arrivals, especially from Mexico and Asia, have transformed the demographic base since the 1960s. Old industries have declined, including farming, oil, military and aircraft, but tourism, entertainment and high-tech remain strong.
context_section_description: During World War II, Los Angeles grew as a center for production of aircraft, ships, war supplies, and ammunition. Aerospace employers headquartered in the Los Angeles metropolitan area like Hughes Aircraft Company, Northrop Corporation, Douglas Aircraft Company, Vultee Aircraft (later merged into Convair in 1943), and Lockheed Corporation, were able to provide the nation's demand for the war effort in producing strategic bombers and fighter aircraft like B-17s, B-25s, A-36s, and P-51 Mustangs needed to bomb the war machine of the Axis powers. As a result, the Los Angeles area grew faster than any other major metropolitan area in the U.S. and experienced more of the traumas of war while doing so. By 1943, the population of Los Angeles County was larger than 37 states, and was home to one in every 40 U.S. citizens, as millions across the U.S. came to Southern California to find employment in the defense industries.
  The Japanese-American community in Los Angeles was greatly impacted since Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor pulled the U.S. into World War II, and America feared that the fifth column was widespread among the community. In response, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, authorizing military commanders to exclude "any or all persons" from certain areas in the name of national defense. The Western Defense Command began ordering Japanese-Americans living on the West Coast to present themselves for "evacuation" from the newly created military zones. This included many Los Angeles families, of which 80,000 were relocated to the Japanese-American internment camps throughout the duration of the war.
  The war also lured a large number of African Americans from the rural impoverished Southern states to the Los Angeles area in the second chapter of the Great Migration, due to manpower industrial shortages and Executive Order 8802, which prohibited discrimination in wartime defense industries. Lonnie Bunch, a longtime historian with the Smithsonian Institution, wrote, "Between 1942-1945, some 340,000 Blacks settled in California, 200,000 of whom migrated to Los Angeles." Most of these migrants to Los Angeles came from South Central states like Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. African Americans particularly benefited from defense jobs created in Los Angeles County during the war, especially Terminal Island, where it was one of the first places of integrated, defense-related work on the West Coast. Though Jim Crow laws did not exist in Los Angeles as it had in the South, black migrants continued to face racial discrimination in most aspects of life, especially widespread housing segregation and redlining due to overcrowding and perceived lower property value during and after the war, in which they were restricted from advanced opportunities in affluent white areas and confined to an exclusive-black majority area of South Central Los Angeles.
  As with a few other wartime industrial cities in the U.S., Los Angeles experienced a racial-related conflict stemming from the Zoot Suit Riots in June 1943, in which American servicemen and local Whites attacked young Mexican-Americans in zoot suits. Many military personnel regarded the zoot suits as unpatriotic and flamboyant in time of war, as they had a lot of fabric, coupled with widespread racism against Mexicans and Mexican-Americans as unintelligent and inferior. The Los Angeles Police Department stood by as the rioting happened, arresting hundreds of Hispanic residents instead of the attackers. Riots against Latinos in Los Angeles also erupted in a similar fashion in other cities in California, Texas, and Arizona as well as northern cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, and Detroit.
  While Los Angeles County never faced enemy bombing and invasion, it nevertheless became an integral part of the American Theater on the night of February 24–25, 1942, during the false Battle of Los Angeles, which occurred a day after the Japanese naval bombardment of Ellwood in Santa Barbara, California, 80 miles from Los Angeles. Reacting to a report that enemy 
caption: Los Angeles in 1945
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