Terminal Island, historically known as Isla Raza de Buena Gente, is a largely artificial island located in Los Angeles County, California, between the neighborhoods of Wilmington and San Pedro in the city of

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, largest city in the U.S. state, state of California and the List of United States cities by population, sec ...

, and the city of

Long Beach Long Beach is a city in Los Angeles County, California. It is the 42nd-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 466,742 as of 2020. A charter city, Long Beach is the seventh-most populous city in California. Incorporate ...

. Terminal Island is roughly split between the Port of Los Angeles and

Port of Long Beach The Port of Long Beach, also known as the Harbor Department of the City of Long Beach, is a container port in the United States, which adjoins Port of Los Angeles. Acting as a major gateway for US–Asian trade, the port occupies of land with ...

. Land use on the island is entirely industrial and port-related except for

Federal Correctional Institution, Terminal Island The Federal Correctional Institution, Terminal Island (FCI Terminal Island) is a low-security United States federal prison for male inmates in Los Angeles, California. It is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a division of the United Sta ...

History

Before World War II

The island was originally called Isla Raza de Buena Gente and later Rattlesnake Island. It was renamed Terminal Island in 1891. In 1909, the newly reincorporated

Southern California Edison Southern California Edison (or SCE Corp), the largest subsidiary of Edison International, is the primary electricity supply company for much of Southern California. It provides 15 million people with electricity across a service territory of ap ...

Company decided to build a new steam station to provide reserve capacity and emergency power for the entire Edison system and to enable Edison to shut down some of its small, obsolete steam plants. The site chosen for the new plant was on a barren mudflat known as Rattlesnake Island, today's Terminal Island in the San Pedro Bay. Construction of Plant No. 1 began in 1910. The land area of Terminal Island has been supplemented considerably from its original size. In 1909 the city of Los Angeles annexed the city of Wilmington. During this time the "Father of the Harbor" Phineas Banning, held deed to roughly 18 acres of land on Rattlesnake Island. Phineas Banning was instrumental in bringing innovative changes to San Pedro Bay and made the first steps towards expansion. Once annexed with the city of Los Angeles the expansion was completed. In the late 1920s, Deadman's Island in the main channel of the Port of Los Angeles was dynamited and dredged away, and the resulting rubble was used to add to Terminal Island's southern tip. In 1930, the

Ford Motor Company Ford Motor Company (commonly known as Ford) is an American multinational automobile manufacturer headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan, United States. It was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. The company sells automobi ...

built a facility called Long Beach Assembly, having moved earlier operations from Downtown Los Angeles. The factory remained until 1958 when manufacturing operations were moved inland to Pico Rivera. In 1927, a civilian facility, Allen Field, was established on Terminal Island. The Naval Reserve established a training center at the field and later took complete control, designating the field

Naval Air Base San Pedro Naval Air Base San Pedro, NAS Terminal Island was a US Navy World War II 410-acre airfield on Terminal Island in San Pedro, California part of the City of Los Angeles. Before the Navy took control of the airfield, the airstrip was the civilian ...

(also called Reeves Field). In 1941, the Long Beach Naval Station was located adjacent to the airfield. In 1942, the Naval Reserve Training Facility was transferred, and a year later NAB San Pedro's status was downgraded to a Naval Air Station (NAS Terminal Island). Reeves Field as a Naval Air Station was disestablished in 1947, although the adjacent Long Beach Naval Station continued to use Reeves Field as an auxiliary airfield until the late 1990s. A large industrial facility now covers the site of the former Naval Air Station.

Japanese American fishing community

Starting in 1906, a thriving Japanese American fishing community became established on Terminal Island in an area known as East San Pedro or Fish Island. Because of the island's relative geographical isolation, its inhabitants developed their own culture and even their own dialect. The dialect, known as "kii-shu ben” (or "Terminal Island lingo"), was a mix of English and the dialect of

Kii Province , or , was a province of Japan in the part of Honshū that is today Wakayama Prefecture, as well as the southern part of Mie Prefecture. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005). "''Kii''" in . Kii bordered Ise, Izumi, Kawachi, Shima, and Yamato Prov ...

, where many residents hailed from. Prior to World War II, the island was home to about 3,500 first- and second-generation Japanese Americans. On February 9, 1942, following the Japanese attack on

Pearl Harbor Pearl Harbor is an American lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. It was often visited by the Naval fleet of the United States, before it was acquired from the Hawaiian Kingdom by the U.S. with the signing of the R ...

, the FBI incarcerated all of the adult

Issei is a Japanese-language term used by ethnic Japanese in countries in North America and South America to specify the Japanese people who were the first generation to immigrate there. are born in Japan; their children born in the new country are ...

males on Terminal Island. On February 19, 1942, immediately after the signing of Executive Order 9066, Terminal Island's remaining inhabitants were given 48 hours to evacuate their homes. They were subsequently sent to

internment camps Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simpl ...

, and the entire neighborhood was razed. The Japanese community on Terminal Island was the first to be evacuated and interned en masse. Terminal Island Memorial Statue

After

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, the Terminal Islanders settled elsewhere. In 1971, they formed the Terminal Islanders Club, which has organized various events for its members. In 2002, the surviving second-generation citizens set up a memorial on Terminal Island to honor their parents.

World War II and beyond

During World War II, Terminal Island was an important center for defense industries, especially shipbuilding; the first

California Shipbuilding Corporation __NOTOC__ California Shipbuilding Corporation built 467 Liberty and Victory ships during World War II, including ''Haskell''-class attack transports. California Shipbuilding Corporation was often referred to as Calship. The ''Dictionary of Ame ...

shipyard was established there in 1941. It was also, therefore, one of the first places where African Americans tried to effect their integration into defense-related work on the West Coast. The San Pedro yard of

Bethlehem Steel The Bethlehem Steel Corporation was an American steelmaking company headquartered in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. For most of the 20th century, it was one of the world's largest steel producing and shipbuilding companies. At the height of its succe ...

was also located on the Island. 26 destroyers were built there following the mobilization of the warship industry by the

Two-Ocean Navy Act The Two-Ocean Navy Act, also known as the Vinson-Walsh Act, was a United States law enacted on July 19, 1940, and named for Carl Vinson and David I. Walsh, who chaired the Naval Affairs Committee in the House and Senate respectively. The largest ...

of July 1940. The yard was the third largest of the kind on the West Coast, behind the

Seattle-Tacoma Shipbuilding Corporation The Seattle-Tacoma Shipbuilding Corporation (also operating as Todd Pacific) was an American corporation which built escort carriers, destroyers, cargo ships and auxiliaries for the United States Navy and merchant marine during World War II i ...

(''Todd Pacific'') in

Puget Sound Puget Sound ( ) is a sound of the Pacific Northwest, an inlet of the Pacific Ocean, and part of the Salish Sea. It is located along the northwestern coast of the U.S. state of Washington. It is a complex estuarine system of interconnected ma ...

and Bethlehem's own San Francisco yards (

Union Iron Works Union Iron Works, located in San Francisco, California, on the southeast waterfront, was a central business within the large industrial zone of Potrero Point, for four decades at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries ...

). Also in the Port of Los Angeles (but not on the Island) was the Wilmington yard of Consolidated Steel. In 1946,

Howard Hughes Howard Robard Hughes Jr. (December 24, 1905 – April 5, 1976) was an American business magnate, record-setting pilot, engineer, film producer, and philanthropist, known during his lifetime as one of the most influential and richest people in th ...

moved his monstrous Spruce Goose airplane from his plant in Culver City to Terminal Island in preparation for its test flight. In its first and only flight, it took off from the island on November 2, 1947. Brotherhood Raceway Park, a mile drag racing strip, opened in 1974 on former US Navy land. It operated, with many interruptions, until finally closing in 1995 to be replaced by a coal-handling facility. Preservation of vacant buildings earned the island a spot on the top 11 sites on the National Trust for Historic Preservation's 2012 Most Endangered Historic Places List. In mid-2013, the Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners approved a preservation plan. The trust cited the site as one of ten historic sites saved in 2013.

Current use

The west half of the island is part of the San Pedro area of the city of

, while the rest is part of the city of

. The island has a land area of 11.56 km² (4.46 sq mi), or , and had a population of 1,467 at the 2000 census. The Port of Los Angeles and the

are the major landowners on the island, who in turn lease much of their land for container terminals and bulk terminals. The island also hosts canneries, shipyards, and

United States Coast Guard The United States Coast Guard (USCG) is the maritime security, search and rescue, and law enforcement service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the country's eight uniformed services. The service is a maritime, military, mu ...

facilities. The

, which began operating in 1938, hosts more than 900 low security federal prisoners. The Long Beach Naval Shipyard, decommissioned in 1997, occupied roughly half of the island.

Sea Launch Sea Launch was a multinational—Norway, Russia, Ukraine, United States—spacecraft launch company founded in 1995 that provided orbital launch services from 1999–2014. The company used a mobile maritime launch platform for equatorial lau ...

maintains docking facilities on the

mole Mole (or Molé) may refer to: Animals * Mole (animal) or "true mole", mammals in the family Talpidae, found in Eurasia and North America * Golden moles, southern African mammals in the family Chrysochloridae, similar to but unrelated to Talpida ...

that was part of the naval station. Aerospace company SpaceX is initially leasing from the Port of Los Angeles on the island at Berth 240. They will refurbish five buildings and raise a tent-like structure for research, design, and manufacturing. SpaceX has been building and testing its planned Starship crewed space transportation system intended for suborbital, orbital and interplanetary flight in Texas. The new SpaceX rocket, too large to be transported for long distances overland, will be shipped to the company's launch area in Florida or Texas by sea, via the

Panama Canal The Panama Canal ( es, Canal de Panamá, link=no) is an artificial waterway in Panama that connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean and divides North and South America. The canal cuts across the Isthmus of Panama and is a condui ...

. The site was used for shipbuilding from 1918, and was formerly operated by the

Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation Bethlehem Steel Corporation Shipbuilding Division was created in 1905 when the Bethlehem Steel Corporation of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, acquired the San Francisco shipyard Union Iron Works. In 1917 it was incorporated as Bethlehem Shipbuilding C ...

and then the Southwest Marine Shipyard. The location has been disused since 2005.

Bridges

Terminal Island is connected to the mainland via four bridges. To the west, the distinctive green

Vincent Thomas Bridge The Vincent Thomas Bridge is a suspension bridge, crossing Los Angeles Harbor in Los Angeles, California, linking San Pedro with Terminal Island. It is the only suspension bridge in the Greater Los Angeles area. The bridge is part of State R ...

, the fourth-longest suspension bridge in California, connects it with the Los Angeles neighborhood of San Pedro. The

Long Beach International Gateway The Long Beach International Gateway is a cable-stayed bridge that carries six lanes of Interstate 710 and a bicycle/pedestrian path in Long Beach, California, west across the Back Channel to Terminal Island. The bridge replaced the Gerald Desmond ...

, the longest cable-stayed bridge in California, connects the island with downtown

to the east. The

Commodore Schuyler F. Heim Bridge The Commodore Schuyler F. Heim Bridge was a vertical-lift bridge in the Port of Los Angeles. Dedicated on January 10, 1948, the bridge allowed State Route 47 (the Terminal Island Freeway) to cross over the Cerritos Channel. Named after Schuyler ...

joins Terminal Island with the Los Angeles neighborhood of Wilmington to the north. Adjacent to the Heim Bridge is a rail bridge called the

Henry Ford Bridge The Henry Ford Bridge, also known as the Badger Avenue Bridge, is a bridge located in Los Angeles County, Southern California. It carries the Pacific Harbor Line railroad across the Cerritos Channel to Terminal Island from San Pedro, to serve t ...

, or the Badger Avenue Bridge.

In popular culture

Terminal Island is the setting at the start of '' The Terror: Infamy,'' season 2 of the ''

AMC AMC may refer to: Film and television * AMC Theatres, an American movie theater chain * AMC Networks, an American entertainment company ** AMC (TV channel) ** AMC+, streaming service ** AMC Networks International, an entertainment company *** ...

series,

The Terror The Reign of Terror (french: link=no, la Terreur) was a period of the French Revolution when, following the creation of the First Republic, a series of massacres and numerous public executions took place in response to revolutionary fervour, ...

,'' before the Japanese American residents are relocated to internment camps following the bombing of

, and at the end. Terminal Island is also the setting of the first truck heist scene in the film

The Fast and the Furious ''Fast & Furious'' (also known as ''The Fast and the Furious'') is a media franchise centered on a series of action films that are largely concerned with street racing, heists, spies, and family. The franchise also includes short films, ...

. The Tri-Union Cannery on Terminal Island was featured in ''Visiting... with Huell Howser'' Episode 422. A scene in American writer Neal Stephenson’s science fiction novel '' Snow Crash'' (1992) takes place on Terminal Island.

References

* *

External links

Furusato – The Lost Village of Terminal Island Website

* ttp://www.floodgap.com/roadgap/47-103/ The Bridges of Terminal Island (CA 47, CA 103) {{authority control Islands of Los Angeles County, California Los Angeles Harbor Region Neighborhoods in Long Beach, California Neighborhoods in Los Angeles South Bay, Los Angeles Tourist attractions in Long Beach, California Islands of California Islands of Southern California