American men and women, in particular, secured more jobs in San Diego’s military industrial complex. Still, they were often the last hired, were rarely promoted once on the job, and were among the first to lose their positions after the war. As the city morphed into a powerful military metropolis, thousands more Mexican immigrants arrived annually from south of the border to work in the region’s agricultural industry as part of the 1942 U.S. Bracero Program agreement with Mexico. Alongside U.S.-born Latinos, they were another vital labor force fueling San Diego and California’s wartime production. Twelve years later, however, more than one million immigrant workers who harvested our food would be deported under Operation Wetback when anti-immigrant hysteria was on the rise. Caught in the middle, many Mexican American citizens were also deported without cause.
On the Home Front Back on the home front, San Diego was a hotbed for aviation and shipbuilding companies that produced war supplies. Firms like Ryan, Solar, and Consolidated Aircraft Corporation, which employed more than 43,000 workers by 1943 and produced more than 33,000 planes a year during the war, made the city a key cog in wartime industry. 4 San Diego’s general population exploded as part of the economic boom, growing from 200,000 in early 1941 to more than a half million by 1944. In January of 1942, just a month following the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese, National Geographic magazine described San Diego this way: “Today her once quiet, sunshiny air is full of dust, smoke steam, zooming planes, and the roar of gunfire. Without taking thought, she sees cubits added to her stature. Transformed, she is, by the fury of men making ready to fight.” 5 Despite President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1941 Executive Order 8802 that banned discrimination by federal agencies and companies in war-related production, many employers were reluctant to hire Latinos. As the demand for labor increased, however, Mexican
Photos: The U.S.–Mexico Bracero program was launched in Stockton, California in August 1942. Mexican agricultural laborers topping sugar beets and arriving by train to Stockton in 1943.
(Photo courtesy Library of Congress • LC-USW3- 026241-D [P&P] LOT 906)
(Photo courtesy Library of Congress • LC-USW3- 026246-D [P&P] LOT 906)
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San Diego Latino Legacy – Timeline • Milestones • Stories
Chapter 3 – Service To America, Struggles With America
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