Terminal Island: Lost Communities on America’s Edge is the joint effort of two authors, Naomi Hirahara and Geraldine Knatz, whose backgrounds and talents are as different as the cultures that called the island home over its many years. Hirahara and Knatz have sewn together a story as compelling as any documentary or historical epic, tracing the history of Terminal Island through its beginnings as a resort area for the wealthy, to its time as the center of the LA fishing industry where a Japanese community struggles with the implications and repercussions of World War II.
Terminal Island, traces the history of a sheltered spot in the Pacific Ocean that once served as a resort for wealthy Southern California landowners, as a refuge for its artists and writers and scientists, and eventually a community of Japanese families who made the island their own. This community was at the heart of one of Southern California’s most important businesses: the fisheries. World War II devastated the community, with the internment of Japanese Americans removing the entire population of Terminal Island into internment camps. Terminal Island: Lost Communities of Los Angeles Harbor tells the story of this small place, the people who lived there, and the huge impact they had on the history of Los Angeles.