Part III of the Not so Great Depression and World War II Come to Logan Heights
By Maria E. Garcia
The Depression and the advent of World War II brought social and economic change to Logan Heights. Residents who lost their jobs and savings during the Depression found a scapegoat for their anger and fears in the form of their neighbors of Mexican descent.
These residents, many of whom who had been actively recruited by American business owners, ranchers and farmers in the early twentieth century were now seen as job stealers and a burden to the welfare system. They were denied employment, dropped from the welfare rolls and actively repatriated to Mexico. Sixty percent of the repatriated individuals were American citizens.
Several men that I have interviewed told of their mothers crying when they heard we were at war. Men were enlisting and being drafted. The whittling away of the Logan Heights population which first occurred during the repatriation, became even more apparent when so many of the men, often the household’s primary breadwinner, went off to war. An unprecedented number of women entered the workforce in the canneries and defense industry as a result.
But there was an influx of a new group in Logan Heights–sailors. The 32nd Street Naval Station, not very far from Logan Heights, was the center of heightened activity during the war years. Sailors, many from Texas and New Mexico, would stop by the USO located in a building behind the Neighborhood House. Dances were held there on Sunday afternoons.
During the course of my interviews in 1973-4, I recorded an unidentified woman who remembered losing her class ring to a sailor who had asked her to dance. He had asked to see her ring. She lost track of him that night, along with a high school ring that she so dearly loved. Both the sailor and the class ring were gone and never to be seen again.
Emma Araujo Lopez, whose parents owned the Neighborhood Café, remembers sailors coming by and having their pictures taken in front of the café. Sailors provided an economic boost to Logan Heights businesses and participated, often on a here today gone tomorrow basis, in the social life.
The Zoot Suit riots, which occurred in Los Angeles in June 1943, had a ripple effect in San Diego, creating a tension with sometimes violent outcomes between sailors and local police and the Mexican American youth sub-culture that defined itself as pachuco. Critics decried the pachuco counter-culture behavior reflected in their zoot suit clothing as delinquent at best and criminal at worst.
A San Diego Union article from June 10, 1943 reported that the San Diego Police were ordered to search suspicious individuals who “appeared to be members of a Pachuco gang…” The resulting racial profiling was considered a justified law enforcement response. Sailors and the local police beat up the pachucos. The Logan Heights’ Cherry Gang beat up sailors in retaliation.
Children grew up during these years in Logan Heights, responding to the demands around them and indulging in childhood’s distractions and entertainment. The young people that were not old enough to go to war or work in the canneries remained in school. Logan Heights kids continued to attend Memorial Jr. High and San Diego High School.
One diversion was at the Stop Café, located on Imperial Ave. Today this would be considered a ranchero or country western bar. It had swinging doors and ice cream cones were sold right inside those doors. Kids would go in and order an ice cream cone which had a slip of paper on the bottom of the cone with the word ” yes” or “no” written on it. If you were lucky enough to get the ice cream cone with a “yes,” your ice cream was free.
The pickle factory supervisors would walk the workers to the café for their break at ten and at two as required by the union contract.
There was also a magazine rack inside where the girls would read about the various movie stars. This browsing went on until the owner would tell them to get out. The Stop Café also became the site of the mandatory coffee break for workers at a nearby pickle factory. The pickle factory supervisors would walk the workers to the café for their break at ten and at two as required by the union contract. The workers stood out because they were dressed in traditional Mexican white peasant attire.
These workers may have been participants in the Bracero Program which began during World War II. The reduction in the workforce in the early 30’s because of the Repatriation program and then the induction of so many men into the military left San Diego and much of the country without a steady supply of semi-skilled and unskilled labor. The Bracero Program enabled the temporary migration of Mexican nationals as contract labor, largely in farming. It is likely but not confirmed that they also worked at the pickle factory in Logan Heights.
Neighborhood kids were not adverse to working and earning money to help their families. Some of the neighborhood boys would work at the canneries when extra help was needed. This required a note from the principal saying it was O.K. to miss school. It seems these notes were produced on a regular basis and boys skipped school to work at various locations.
Some of the boys also found part time work cutting brush. This was a job they all wanted. The first reason was that they were paid the minute they got on the bus to be transported to Lake Barrett, forty miles away. The second reason was that they were fed so well and could eat as much as they wanted. Tony “Tono” Núñez remembered that they served steak. Steak was not part of the diet of most families in Logan Heights.
A few of the boys became successful entrepreneurs. They would “borrow” flowers from various gardens and sell them at the Spreckels Theater downtown. Sailors anxious to impress a girl would purchase a bouquet of flowers to give to the young lady they had just brought to the movies or had met at the movies. The main flower vendor had the nickname of Mosquito.
They also profited from selling Doublemint gum and candy to newly drafted service men staying at the Pickwick Hotel downtown near the Greyhound bus station. They stumbled on the selling of candy and gum by accident. There was a store where they were able to purchase gum for a minimal amount of money. They would then walk to the Pickwick Hotel and sell it to sailors that were waiting to be shipped out or to be transferred to the Navy Training Center.
Soon service men were coming up to them asking them if they had any more gum or to find out the source of their supply. They did not reveal their source but were quick to replenish it and return, restocked, to the Pickwick Hotel. This was one of their more profitable ideas.
During the war the boys continued to help their families by shining shoes or selling newspapers. Tono says he sold the most newspapers on Aug 6, 1945, the day the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. On that day he was selling the San Diego Examiner on the corner of 5th and E Street. As people got off the bus they ran to buy the newspaper. Tono said the newspaper “sold like hot cakes.” It was a also a busy day in May of 1945 when the war in Europe ended and on August 15, 1945 when Japan signed surrender papers.
My travieso friends even outran the military police one time. The military police were in charge of patrolling the bay. One day the boys “borrowed” a kayak and crossed the bay to enjoy their little outing. On their return trip they were seen by the military police who were patrolling the bay. Over the loudspeaker came the command to “stop.” Knowing they would be in serious trouble if they were caught the boys decide to outrun the patrol boat. They rushed to Caquita Beach, so named for its proximity to a sewage outfall, jumped out of the kayak and scattered in different directions. They were not caught.
In an earlier article about Depression life in Logan Heights, I wrote about two different families–the James Kenniston family and the Leyba family. There is more to their stories. Isabel Montejano, whose family repatriated to Ensenada, Mexico, returned to Logan Heights in 1946. She married Mr. Rupert Leyba in 1947. Prior to the war Mr. Leyba worked on a tuna boat. After the war he worked at the San Diego Fish Market which was located where the Embarcadero is located today.
During the war Mr. Leyba was drafted and went into the Navy. On December 7 1941, he was in a hospital in Pearl Harbor being treated for malaria when the bombing of Pearl Harbor occurred. His daughter, Gloria Padilla, says he lost many of his friends at Pearl Harbor and felt guilty because he wasn’t there with them. She also said he never spoke about the war. Like many of the other men from that generation, he kept this memory to himself and did not share it even with the family he so loved and cared about.
In the book “Chicano San Diego” authors Jacobo and Griswold del Castillo write “As many historians have noted, as a group, Mexican Americans earned seventeen Congressional Medals of Honor, the nation’s highest award for bravery and valor, more than any other racial/ethnic group.” They go on to say “Even after the war many veterans preferred to keep silent about their experience.”
The end of the war brought the GI Bill. The GI Bill was used to educate many of the boys who had left Logan Heights to fight on foreign soil. The GI Bill also provided a means for veterans like James Kenniston to purchase a home.
There was also a change in the women’s role. To paraphrase another line, how are you going to keep them in the house after they’ve seen the canneries or aircraft plants, and most importantly, earned their own money?
The complete History of Neighborhood House in Logan Heights series is available here.