Japantown
Atlas - Southern California - Terminal Island
(AKA Higashi San Pedro or East San Pedro)
Detailed Map: Terminal Island Japanese American Businesses of 1940 (full-sized view)
Map notes repeated from Terminal Island history
page:
Our detailed map does not show [Terminal Island's] physical environment at its
[1940] peak. It's based on the 1925 Sanborn maps, with only a small amount of
information gleaned from the 1951 maps. The Sanborn Map company didn't bother
to map military bases (no business incentive, since the government self-insures)
so the post-war pages were never updated (they're blanked out), and it's hard
to know (so far) if any buildings remained on the military base, or if everything
was demolished in 1942. It's possible there are maps from the late 1930s (or
Sanborns saved at intermediate dates) that show the expanded community, but
I haven't run across them yet. For example, archival photos show a modern, 1930s
era public school, far sturdier than the wooden structures Sanborn shows in
1925, and the directories show quite a few addresses that would have been "offshore"
in 1925.
See main page for history and other notes. On this map, notice the cannery operations, and the dense grid of simple, wooden dwellings.
8/4/07