San Luis Obispo a Lot like Lompoc

In advance of the San Luis Obispo Obon Festival, to which I have been invited by Heritage Source booksellers to speak and sign books, I have done a bit of research to compare San Luis Obispo County to the Lompoc area. Here's what I've found.

On at least one score, call it the Nikkei index, World War II-era San Luis Obispo was a lot like Lompoc. After Pearl Harbor much of the town turned against its Asian residents. The city council even changed the name of Eto Street to Brook Street before the Nikkei community was bussed away to intermountain “internment” camps in April 1942. 

By 1945 most camps were scheduled to close, in November. The Department of the Interior’s War Relocation Authority (WRA) was charged with assisting Japanese-Americans in resettling. They were free to leave camp beginning in the spring and many wanted to return to their pre-war hometowns. But fear kept the vast majority either in camp until they closed, or led them far afield to cities like Chicago, Cleveland and Philadelphia, none of them near California.

The WRA agent for San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties was Eric H. Thomsen, whose previous experience in relocation was with the Tennessee Valley Authority and then with the Resettlement Administration which assisted Dustbowl Refugees.

Thomsen considered public officials in his area to be allies in his agency’s efforts, with a few exceptions. SLO Sheriff Murray C. Hathway was one of them.

Thomsen’s reports to his superiors in Los Angeles pulled no punches. Thomsen labelled Hathway a “Nippomaniac.” He was, Thomsen wrote in August 1945, “of less help to us than any other public officer in the district.” Thomsen reports numerous examples, some involving Hathway, others business people or neighbors of would-be returnees, all of which contributed to statistics almost as dramatic as Lompoc’s.

TO BE CONTINUED NEXT WEEK