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I want to explore in greater detail what I mentioned in a post awhile back regarding the government’s use of Torrance Municipal Airport, then known as the Lomita Flight Strip, to house Japanese Americans returning from internment camps following World War II.

During the war, the government owned the Lomita Flight Strip, and had been using it for training Army Air Corps pilots. Barracks for trainees had been built on its western end.

The Army left at war’s end and the government gave the site to the city of Torrance, but retained control of the airstrip temporarily.

The return of the more than 110,000 relocated Japanese Americans from internment camps posed a variety of logistical problems for the U.S. government. Houses, land and possessions had been taken from many of them, and some of them were ill.

The agency in charge, the War Relocation Authority, had to find temporary quarters for the internees, more than half of whom were U.S. citizens, while they were attempting to re-assimilate back into society.

The WRA decided, in September 1945, to house about 125 Japanese American internees from about 78 families in the barracks at the flight strip. They were returning from Camp Granada in Colorado, the first internment camp to close. All the camps had been ordered closed by Oct. 15 because of government budget cuts.

The Lomita Flight Strip encampment was the first of 16 regional relocation centers in the greater Los Angeles area to be used for resettlement staging.

Leslie Lahr, commander of the Lomita post of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, protested immediately. The VFW felt that all available temporary housing, including the flight strip, should be used for returning U.S. servicemen instead.

Regardless of the objection, the first families moved into the barracks on Oct. 8, 1945. Only families in good health were accepted; those who were ill, aged or indigent were referred to local welfare agencies.

Life in the barracks wasn’t all that different in some ways than life in the camps had been. The grounds were secured at all times by armed guards, for example. But this time, they really were there to protect the former internees from unauthorized visitors.

A San Pedro News Pilot article from Oct. 8, 1945, described the accommodations as follows:

“The flight strip barracks, set aside by the WRA, are essentially unchanged from army quarters. Carpenters have divided the empty barracks into partitioned cubicles. These have been furnished with army cots and mattresses. Cooking will be done army style, with the families eating in mess halls. Washing will be done in a community wash room equipped with hot water boilers and wash trays. It is expected that barracks will be heated with oil stoves.”

For this, the internees had to pay monthly rent, as well as pay for meals.

Over the next few months, families arrived from former internment camps all over the West, including the Colorado River camp near Poston, Arizona; the Tule Lake camp in California, near the Oregon border; and the Hart Mountain camp in Wyoming.

Additional trailers were brought in to handle the overflow at the temporary camp, which grew to more than 1,000 residents by early 1946. About one-third of the residents were children, who were placed in area schools.

Most went to Walteria Elementary at first before being moved to different schools to reduce crowding. Walteria had to hold classes in the auditorium and eventually build two additional classrooms to handle the initial rush of students.

The WRA brought an employment counselor on site to help the able-bodied find work. Some returned to agricultural jobs on South Bay and Palos Verdes Peninsula farms, while others found work as domestics or in local industries.

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Residents of the Lomita Flight Strip temporary camp head to the mess hall for a meal. The camp provided trailer and barracks-type quarters for returnees while they were locating jobs and permanent homes. Photo by Tom Parker, November 1945. (Credit: Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley via Online Archive of California

The numbers of those remaining at the camp began to dwindle during the spring of 1946. The WRA announced it would close the facility by July 1. Many families eventually were moved to the Winona Housing Project trailer camp, at Hollywood Way and Winona Avenue, in Burbank.

The last families left the flight strip barracks on June 28, with some going to on-site training centers at Cal-Sea Food Co. in Harbor City and the rest to flower grower Fred H. King’s farm in Torrance.

With the barracks now empty, James Caldwell, head of the Torrance Area Veterans Service Center, began his fight to allow returning war vets to use the barracks as temporary housing.

After initial resistance from the Torrance City Council, he succeeded. Veterans began moving into the barracks in August 1947, using them as temporary housing until they could find jobs and places to live.

After that, Torrance’s National Guard units occupied the barracks and additional ones trucked in from Fort MacArthur, while they were based at the airport temporarily from 1948 to 1950, before the permanent National Guard armory in Torrance was built.

The often-used buildings finally were removed in favor of new hangars after the city of Torrance took control of airport management on April 1, 1958.

Sources: “Correspondence on Resettlement Assistance,” Department of Social Welfare – War Services Bureau, California State Archives Exhibits; Daily Breeze files; San Pedro News Pilot files; Torrance Herald files; Wikipedia.

LOMITA, Calif. — For the last seven years, Lomita resident Brenda Stephens has been advocating for better, locally sourced tap water.

"It’s nice to be able to turn it on without having it smell really bad," Stephens said. "My plants like it."

What You Need To Know

According to Stephens, the smell and taste of the water has been off-putting for years.

"When I would turn on my kitchen faucet or I would run my washing machine, I had to open all the doors and windows because it smelled like sewer. It smelled like some of the, like, the toilet had backed up and just sat there for months."

Following a long history of water quality issues, plus the detection of benzene in 2019, the city of Lomita’s Cypress Water Production Facility has remained offline. The city currently outsources its water supply. For Stephens, it’s been a break from water issues.

“It is really important to be able to go to my faucet and pull a glass of water that I feel confident and safe drinking,” she said.

In late 2019, Stephens and other Lomita residents took part in a CWPF tour that showcased how a new filtration system will alleviate the city’s locally-sourced water problems and bring the facility back online, safely. The city of Lomita received a $2 million grant from the Water Replenishment District’s Safe Drinking Water program.

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Crews are now beginning to install the long-awaited filtration system. If everything goes as planned, City Manager Ryan Smoot believes the CWPF could be back online by spring 2022.

"For a small community to be able to control its future with a regard to water is a really, really big thing," said Smoot. "And this project allows us to do that. It allows us to be drought-resilient. It allows us to not have to rely on imported connections and produce safe healthy drinking water for decades to come."

Now serving as a planning commissioner with the city, Stephens hopes this will be the answer to Lomita's water problems.

“I think it’s a great thing for this city if, in fact, this new system does what it’s supposed to do, and we can be assured that we have quality drinking water,” she said.

Until then, Stephens remains hopeful that she’ll finally be able to enjoy clean, locally sourced water — straight from the tap.

LOMITA, Calif. — More than 37 lemonade stands featuring custom drink menus, props and even a chicken mascot named "Lemon" popped up all across Lomita on Aug. 7.

The sweet business venture is part of a program to help youths in the area learn more about what’s needed to build their own business. One of the young entrepreneurs is Brianna Garcia who, with the help of neighbors, received both donated and freshly squeezed lemon juice to create her stand, Bri’s Frozen Lemonade. She might have also had the perfect selection for the hot summer day.

What You Need To Know

"I have frozen lemonade in four different flavors," Brianna said. "We have strawberry, mango, peach and original."

Each lemonade Brianna sold helped her learn what it takes to start up her own business. She also learned pretty quickly that it wasn’t as easy as she first thought.

“They need money to keep growing like every business, and that a lot of them might not have money,” she said. “But that changes when they grow into a bigger business.”

Brianna is one of about 50 young entrepreneurs who took part in the first annual Lemonade Day led by the Lomita Chamber of Commerce in partnership with the City of Lomita. The program taught her and other youths how to pitch for a micro loan, market their product and learn about business expenses.

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Many stands opted to donate some or most of their proceeds to specific causes. Heidi Butzine with the Chamber of Commerce was hopeful that this will be an inspiration for future small businesses in the city.

“They are learning these entrepreneurial and business principles that any business owner would need to know in order to start a business and keep it running,” Butzine said. “So I’m just excited that the Chamber can inspire this in our young people.”

That day, Brianna wasn’t sure how much she would sell. But her final total came out to more than $1,500 worth of lemonade.

“It feels pretty good because I get more money to donate to the Marine Mammal Care Center, and I absolutely just love animals,” she said.

After making up for business expenses and her hard work, Brianna donated over $700 to the center. While she might not be ready to open her own full-time small business just yet, the experience is helping her see the sweet side of one day being her own boss.

LOMITA, Calif. - Recently, some Lomita residents have been thinking twice about the water they drink and the air they breathe. Seth Brownlie is one of them.

“I grew up in Michigan around Flint. So, it definitely gets me thinking of that. I don’t want Lomita to become the situation they are dealing with,” Brownlie said.

That’s probably why he also sticks to bottled water.

Brownlie’s home is near the source of a groundwater and soil vapor contamination site in Torrance that spread east to the City of Lomita. The groundwater that’s contaminated isn’t the same source that the city uses for drinking water. But the odorless soil vapors could impact the air residents breathe in the vicinity of 245th Street to 250th Street, extending to Pennsylvania Avenue.

This area is just a short drive from Brownlie’s home.

“You have to breathe air and if there’s problems with the ground contamination or the vapors and things like that, then it’s definitely concerning,” Brownlie said.“You have to breathe air and if there’s problems with the ground contamination or the vapors and things like that, then it’s definitely concerning,” Brownlie said.

The Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board required the industrial Hi-Shear Corporation to collect more samples and data to understand how far these contaminants have spread.

Here’s what the water board knows so far.

The contamination stems from high levels of TCE and PCE — two compounds that were used by the Hi-Shear Corporation in the past to degrease metal. Stephen Van Der Hoven is a hydrogeologist consultant for Hi-Shear, he said the contaminants haven’t been used by the corporation in decades.

However, the compounds have contaminated the groundwater flowing toward the City of Lomita, but it’s not the same source as the city’s drinking water. Plus, the water is currently being imported from another area. Officials with the water board said the water is safe to drink.

Officials are also investigating six other industrial sites along Skypark Drive that might have used the same chemicals as a contributing factor. Renee Purdy is an executive officer on the water board. As she described a map of the contamination areas, she explained how there are many unknowns regarding how far the contaminants have spread.

“It’s fairly well known in the area of the site itself but what these dotted lines mean is that we don’t yet know the extent of the contamination laterally into the City of Lomita,” Purdy said.

Officials believe the source of the contamination is coming from the Hi-Shear site. Hoven said Hi-Shear has removed over 100,000 pounds of contamination from the Torrance site so far and they continue do so.

But the cleanup on-site and in the communities will be ongoing as they continue to negotiate a permit with the City of Lomita to install soil probes and groundwater well monitoring sites throughout the city to understand the depth and distance the contaminants have reached.

“We’re moving forward as quickly as we can. The investigative phase that we are just about to conduct will take about three to four months to complete and then from that, we will then take appropriate actions, in terms of, do we need to do additional investigation? Do we have enough information to now start cleaning up the site? But it’s going to be on the order of years,” Hoven said.

According to the Centers For Disease Control, moderate to large amounts of exposure from TCE could result in dizziness, headaches, coma, and more severely, death. Since these chemicals are travelling as a gas, water board officials said residents in these areas could ventilate their homes as they gather more information on the contamination and assess cleanup sites.

For residents like Brownlie, that could be another three to four months before samples are fully analyzed.

“I think we’ll wait and see how this plays out. I’ll definitely be following it closely. We’ll see what happens,” Brownlie said.

The Hi-Shear corporation and the L.A.Water Board are currently creating a mailing list and fact sheet which will detail the events of the contamination and known impacts to residents living within 500 ft. of the contamination area.

That fact sheet will be made available to residents within the next month.

Hot water plays an important role in your everyday life. From showering to laundry to dishwashing, your water heater keeps working all day to meet your requirements for hot and warm water for different purposes. If something goes wrong with your water heating unit, you should immediately get it checked. Many times, water heaters are old, have consistent issues, or become inefficient due to aging. We at California Air Conditioning Systems are licensed and insured heating and air conditioning repair and replacement specialists in Lomita, CA that can assess your unit to guide you on the right course of action.

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