Terminal Island facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Terminal Island Isla Raza de Buena Gente Rattlesnake Island
Terminal Island. Former Gerald Desmond Bridge is visible in the right-center background.
Terminal Island Location in Southern Los Angeles
Country	United States
State	California
County	Los Angeles
Cities	Los Angeles (Wilmington) and Long Beach
ZIP Code	90731

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, and the city of Long Beach. Terminal Island is roughly split between the Port of Los Angeles and Port of Long Beach. Land use on the island is entirely industrial and port-related except for Federal Correctional Institution, Terminal Island.

In this night-time aerial photograph of Los Angeles, San Pedro is in the center and right foreground, including part of the brightly lit Terminal Island. The dark peninsula to the left of San Pedro is Palos Verdes.

History

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 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 Long Beach Harbor. Construction of Plant No. 1 began in 1910.

In 1930, the Ford Motor Company 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 (also called Reeves Field). In 1941 the Long Beach Naval Station became 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 would continue 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.

The island was home to about 3,500 first- and second-generation Japanese Americans prior to World War II in an area known as East San Pedro or Fish Island. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, all of the adult Issei males on Terminal Island were incarcerated by the FBI on February 9, 1942. Immediately after the signing of Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, the rest of the inhabitants were given 48 hours to evacuate their homes. They were subsequently sent to internment camps, and the entire neighborhood was razed. The Japanese community on Terminal Island was the first to be evacuated and interned en masse.

Because of the relative geographical isolation of the island, the citizens developed their own culture and even their own dialect. After World War II, 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.

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

In 1946, Howard Hughes 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.

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 National Trust for Historic Preservation cited the site as one of ten historic sites saved in 2013.

Geography and demographics

The west half of the island is part of the San Pedro area of the city of Los Angeles, while the rest is part of the city of Long Beach. The island has a land area of 11.56 km² (4.46 sq mi), or 2,854 acres (11.55 km²), and had a population of 1,467 at the 2000 census.

The land area of Terminal Island has been supplemented considerably from its original size. For instance, 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 62 acres (0.097 sq mi) to the island's southern tip.

The Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach 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, Coast Guard facilities, and a federal correctional institution.

The Long Beach Naval Shipyard, decommissioned in 1997, occupied roughly half of the island. Sea Launch maintains docking facilities on the mole that was part of the naval station.

Bridges

Vincent Thomas Bridge

Terminal Island is connected to the mainland via four bridges. To the west, the distinctive green Vincent Thomas Bridge, the fourth-longest suspension bridge in California, connects it with the Los Angeles neighborhood of San Pedro. The Gerald Desmond Bridge connects the island with downtown Long Beach to the east. The Commodore Schuyler F. Heim Bridge 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, or the Badger Avenue Bridge.

Images for kids

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  Street scene on Terminal Island, the day after the Pearl Harbor Attack. The residents were "evacuated" to inland internment camps soon after and the village was demolished.

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  Bronze statues of Japanese fishermen, within the Terminal Island Memorial Monument