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FORTRESS
CALIFORNIA
1910-1961
FORTRESS
CALIFORNIA
1910-1961
From Warfare to Welfare
ROGER W. LOTCHIN
New York Oxford
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1992
Oxford University Press
Oxford New York Toronto
Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi
Petaling Jaya Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo
Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town
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and associated companies in
Berlin Ibadan
Copyright© 1992 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.,
200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016
Oxford isa registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lotchin, Roger W.
Fortress California, 1910-1961 : from warfare to welfare/
Roger W. Lotchin.
p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBM 0-19-504779-6
I. Defense industries-California-History-20th century.
2. United States-Armed Forces-Califor'lia-History-20th century.
3. Military bases-Economic aspects-California-History-20th
century. 4. Military-industrial complex-California-History-20th
century. 5. Cities and towns-California-Growth-History-20th
century. 6. California-Economic conditions. I. Title.
HD9743.U7C25 I9 92 338.4'76233'09796-dc20 91-21408
246897531
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
This book is dedicated with appreciation to Shelbyville, the prettiest town in the
Illinois country, and to my teachers and friends at Shelby Unit District Number
Four: Dave Anderson, Norman Arnold, G. W. Bedell, Prentice Cole, Ralph Cox,
Lucile Dintelman, May Douthit, Carroll "Red" Endsley, U. L. Evans, Carl and
Cleora Finley, Clarissa Flenniken, Clara Fox, Miriam Herron, Lucille Kelley, Beu
lah Knecht, Howard Lester, Joe McAdam, 0. H. McNelly, Ray V. Manessier,
Arthur Muns, Leon Poynter, Virginia Price, Harold Redicks, Fred Reed, Bob
Rowe, Nellie Row, Ned Schrom, June Sporleder, and Ruth Thomas. By any mea
sure, their service to education has been outstanding.
.................................
Preface
I have written this book with one special end in view-to diversify the approach of
urban and other historians to their subject matter. The field of urban history has
always been a lively one, punctuated by various controversies. In large measure
these arguments have centered on questions of methodology and interpretation.
The recent Chicago Historical Society Conference on "Modes oflnquiry for Amer
ican City History" serves as a typical example. I have no quarrel with either of these
approaches. Yet I remain convinced that most of the progress in the discipline of
urban history in the last three decades has been achieved through topical diversifi
cation into new or relatively uncharted areas, regardless of methodological or con
ceptual-theoretical orientation. In addition, I regard nearly all of these methods and
theories as eminently legitimate; and so I have little interest in joining in the con
troversies about them. Although I have proposed a new interpretation of urban his
tory, I have not tried to give it "interpretive hegemony" beyond the field ofmy own
inquiry. For those who believe that a new interpretive paradigm is the panacea for
the discontents of urban historians, I have no argument. Let us have the paradigms,
and we will see if they can be substantiated through testing. I have been more inter
ested in creating a new topical frontier for the field than in finding a methodological
or theoretical orientation that would dominate the thinking of urban historians in
the manner that the frontier thesis or the consensus school once dominated the field
of American history.
Rather, I have insisted in this book on the importance of the relationship of war
and defense on the one hand and urbanization and urbanism on the other. For sev
eral thousand years, war and urbanization have been outstanding features of civi
lized societies. And in the twentieth century, they are even more so, since both are
hyperdeveloped. Moreover, war and urbanization have been consistently more
important than many of the other influences that historians often stress. Industri
alism was once the great panacea for city boosters and later for historians in search
of interpretive lift. Still, the era of industrialism is long gone and we are now sup
posedly in an epoch of post-industrialism. Likewise labor has waxed and waned
over the years, peaking in the years between 1933 and 1960 and now declining.
Even Marxist historians write of the decline of class consciousness since the Great
Depression. Racial, religious, sexual, and ethnocultural bias have gone the way of
industry and unions, although not into such pronounced decline. The United
States has long since lost its frontier character, and to give but one more example,
there is reason to hope that the Cold War is over. All these supposedly constant
influences on American society have come and gone, substantially declined, or fluc
tuated wildly. Yet cities and war have not. Throughout the twentieth century cities
have grown (as metropolitan areas more recently rather than center cities), wars
