Learn More--World War II in the San Francisco Bay Area: A National Register of Historic Places Travel Itinerary

[graphic] World War II In the San Francisco Bay Area

[graphic] images of San Francisco Bay Area

By clicking on one of these links, you can go directly to a particular section:

Links to Lesson Plans on World War II
Links to San Francisco Bay Area History, Tourism and Preservation Websites
Links to Websites of Places Featured in this Itinerary
Selected Bibliography for World War II in the San Francisco Bay Area
Children's Literature

Links to Lesson Plans on World War II

The Bay Area is the ideal learning laboratory to bring the lessons of the World War II era home to students in a tangible way. Numerous schools and diverse populations exist in close proximity to places of interest in terms of the social, ethnic and military stories of the time. Many of the places included in this travel itinerary make ideal field trips that reinforce the lessons of the classroom. Whether you are able to visit the actual places or their websites, the lesson plans highlighted in this section offer excellent ways to bring meaning to the era by association with tangible places. They also provide an opportunity to emphasize important subjects, such as the wartime internment of Japanese Americans that are not yet well represented by places listed in the National Register located in the Bay Area. So whether you are looking for specific activities to teach politics, social trends, economics or military history, these lesson plans offer a sample of the very best the web has to offer.

Teaching with Historic Places
This program uses properties listed in the National Park Service's National Register of Historic Places to enliven history, social studies, geography, civics, and other subjects.
The War Relocation Camps of World War II: When Fear Was Stronger Than Justice
Attu: North American Battleground of World War II
The Battle of Midway: Turning the Tide in the Pacific
Remembering Pearl Harbor: The USS Arizona Memorial

Organization of American Historians
Several lessons were published in a past issue (available online) of this organization's Magazine of History. Their Wartime Production lesson plan is also available separately.

Smithsonian National Museum of American History
A More Perfect Union: Japanese Americans and the U.S. Constitution

California Military History Educational Project
Curriculum Guide and Teacher Resources for the Implementation of a Thematic Unit on California's Contribution to World War II

Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
Module on World War II

Links to San Francisco Bay Area History, Tourism and Preservation Websites

National Parks in the San Francisco Bay Area
Locate the National Parks in California and the San Francisco Bay Area highlighted in this itinerary, including Golden Gate National Recreation Area (including the Presidio of San Francisco), San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park, Rosie the Riveter--World War II Home Front National Historic Park (see also the Rosie the Riveter Trust), and Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial. Further afield is the Manzanar National Historic Site--the best preserved Japanese American internment camp from World War II.

[photo] Logo for the National Trust for Historic Preservation

National Trust for Historic Preservation
Learn about the programs of and membership in the oldest national nonprofit preservation organization.

Historic Hotels of America
A feature of the National Trust for Historic Preservation's Heritage Traveler program that provides information on historic hotels and package tours in the vicinity of this itinerary.

San Francisco Public Library
The San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection contains photographs and works on paper of San Francisco and California views from 1850 to the present.

Organization of American Historians
Learn more about the largest learned society devoted to the study of American history.

California Office of Historic Preservation Department of Parks and Recreation
Preserving and enhancing California's irreplaceable historic heritage as a matter of public interest so that its vital legacy of cultural, educational, recreational, aesthetic, economic, social, and environmental benefits will be maintained and enriched for present and future generations.

San Francisco Bay Area Travel and Tourism Information
Tourist information on lodging, dining, events and attractions in the Bay Area from the California Travel and Tourism Commission.

San Francisco Bay Seacoast Defenses 1776-1974
Learn more about these seacoast defenses that span more than 200 years of history and were constructed by three different nations.

Museum of the City of San Francisco
Virtual exhibit on internment of San Francisco Japanese

National Japanese American Historical Society
Dedicated to the preservation, promotion and dissemination of materials relating to the history and culture of Japanese Americans.

Una Storia Segreta: The Secret History of Italian American Evacuation and Internment during World War II

California Military Museum
The official military museum and historical research center of the State of California. Their website provides further information on California and the Second World War and the Harbor Defenses of San Francisco.

National Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers
The professional association of the State government officials who carry out the national historic preservation program as delegates of the Secretary of the Interior pursuant to the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, as amended.

Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record (HABS/HAER)
The HABS/HAER program documents important architectural, engineering and industrial sites throughout the United States and its territories. Their collections, including a number of places highlighted in this itinerary, are archived at the Library of Congress and available online. You can view these by clicking on the link above and entering search terms such as the name of the town or specific site.

World War II Related National Park
The National Park Service History Program presents a list of relevant World War II National Parks, and other links to information on World War II.

Northwestern University Library Government Publications and Maps
Visit the World War II Poster Collection The Government Publications Department at the Northeastern University Library, which services the Evanston and Chicago Campus libraries. Northwestern University Library has a comprehensive collection of over 300 posters issued by U.S. Federal agencies from the onset of war through 1945.

National Park Service Office of Sustainable Tourism
National Parks have been interwoven with tourism from their earliest days. This website highlights the ways in which the National Park Service promotes and supports sustainable, responsible, informed, and managed visitor use through cooperation and coordination with the tourism industry.

National Scenic Byways Program
This website, maintained by the U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, includes information on state and nationally designated byway routes throughout America based on their archeological, cultural, historic, natural, recreational, and scenic qualities. Visit the America’s Byways Route 1 - Big Sur Coast Highway website for more ideas.

Links to Websites of Places Featured in this Itinerary

Selected Bibliography for San Francisco Bay Area and World War II

The literature of World War II is vast, wide and deep. The catalog of the San Francisco Public Library contains 1,630 subject headings under the main heading of World War, 1939-1945. Wading through this literature is sometimes daunting for those looking for specific kinds of materials. The following selections highlight works that the authors used to develop this website, as well as those that offer more breadth and content for those who want different kinds of information. In terms of literature on the Home Front in the Bay Area, we especially recommend Roger W. Lotchin’s The Bad City in the Good War, Marilynn S. Johnson’s The Second Gold Rush, and Albert S. Broussard’s Black San Francisco. A little further afield, Kevin Starr’s Embattled Dreams is an excellent examination of California in the decade of the 1940s. And Richard Lingeman’s Don’t You Know There’s A War On? is a classic and lively description of the Home Front with a nationwide sweep. The internment of Japanese Americans inspired a great deal of writing in many genres: historical context, legal analysis and personal memoir. Among the best of the latter are Jeanne Watkasuki Huston’s Farewell to Manzanar and Yoshiko Uchida’s Journey to Topaz. An unforgettable novel on the subject, removed from the Bay Area geographically but still relevant, is David Guterson’s Snow Falling On Cedars, which demonstrates how the internment affected all the citizens of the area, not just those of Japanese ancestry. There is no dearth of military histories of World War II, but two of those that focus on the Bay Area in fascinating detail are Brian B. Chin’s Artillery at the Golden Gate and John A. Martini’s Alcatraz at War.

Abbott, Carl. The New Urban America: Growth and Politics in Sunbelt Cities. Chapell City: University of North Carolina Press, 1981.

Anderson, Karen. Wartime Women: Sex Roles, Family Relations, and the Status of Women During World War II. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981.

Archibald, Katherine. Wartime Shipyard: A Study in Social Disunity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1947.

Berube, Allan. Coming Out Under Fire: Gay Men and Women in World War II. Free Press, 1990.

Blum, John Morton. V Was for Victory: Politics and American Culture During World War II. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976.

Bonnett, Wayne. Build Ships! Wartime Shipbuilding Photographs, San Francisco Bay: 1940-1945. Sausalito, CA: Windgate Press, 1999.

Bosworth, Allan R. America's Concentration Camps. New York: W. W. Norton, 1967.

Boyd, Nan. Wide Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.

Broussard, Albert. Black San Francisco: The Struggle for Racial Equality in the West, 1900-1954. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993.

Buchanan, A. Russell. Black Americans in World War II . Santa Barbara, CA: Clio Books, 1977.

Campbell, D'Ann. Women at War with America: Private Lives in a Patriotic Era. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984.

Casdorph Paul D. Let the Good Times Roll: Life at Home in America During World War II. New York: Paragon House, 1989.

Chin, Brian B. Artillery at the Golden Gate: The Harbor Defenses of San Francisco in World War II. Missoula, MT: Pictorial Histories Publishing Co., 1994.

Daniels, Douglas Henry. Pioneer Urbanities: A Social and Cultural History of Black San Francisco. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1980.

Fabry Joseph. Swing Shift: Building the Liberty Ships. San Francisco: Strawberry Hill Press, 1982.

Foster, Mark. Henry J. Kaiser: Builder in the Modern American West. Austin: University of Texas, 1989.

Fox, Stephen. The Unknown Internment: An Oral History of the Relocation of Italian Americans During World War II. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1990.

Greenberg, Milton. The GI Bill: The Law That Changed America. West Palm Beach, FL: Lickle Publishing Inc., 1997.

Hartmann, Susan. The Home Front and Beyond: American Women in the 1940s. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1982.

Hoopes Roy, ed. Americans Remember the Home Front: An Oral Narrative of the World War II Years in America. Berkeley: Berkeley Pub Group, 2002.

Houlihan James. Western Shipbuilders in World War II. Oakland: Shipbuilding Review Publishing Association, 1945.

Johnson, Marilynn S. The Second Gold Rush: Oakland and the East Bay in World War II. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

Kennedy, David M. Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945. (Oxford History of the United States, Vol 9). New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Kinnaird Lawence. History of the Greater San Francisco Bay Region. New York: Lewis Historical Co., 1966.

Lemke-Santangelo, Gretchen. Abiding Courage: African American Migrant Women and the East Bay Community. Chapell Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.

--- .“Women Made the Community: African American Migrant Women and the Cultural Transformation of the San Francisco East Bay Area.” African American Women Confront the West, 1600-2000. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003, p. 254-275.

Lingeman Richard R. “Don't You Know There's a War On?” The American Home Front, 1941-1945. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1970.

Lotchin Roger W. Fortress California , 1910-1961: From Warfare to Welfare. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

--- . The Bad City in the Good War: San Francisco, Los Angeles, Oakland, and San Diego. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003.

--- . The Way We Really Are: The Golden State in the Second Great War. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2000.

Love, Edmund. Arsenic and Red Tape. Harcourt, Brace & Company: New York, 1960.

Martini, John A. Alcatraz at War. San Francisco: Golden Gate National Parks Association, 2002.

Moore, Shirley Ann Wilson. To Place Our Deeds: The African American Community in Richmond, California, 1910-1963. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.

Nash, Gerald. The American West Transformed: The Impact of the Second World War. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985.

Pollenberg Richard, ed. America at War: The Home Front, 1941-1945. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 1968.

Rogers, Donald I. Since You Went Away: From Rosie the Riveter to Bond Drives, World War II at Home. New Rochelle: Arlington House, 1973.

Starr, Kevin. The Dream Endures: California Enters the 1940s. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

---. Embattled Dreams: California in War and Peace, 1940-1950. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Takaki, Ronald. Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans. New York: Little, Brown, 1989.

Taylor, Quintard, and Shirley Ann Wilson Moore, eds. African American Women Confront the West, 1600-2000. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003.

Terkel, Studs. "The Good War:" An Oral History of World War Two. New York: Ballantine Books, 1984.

Wakatsuki Houston, Jeanne, and James D. Houston. Farewell to Manzanar: A True Story of Japanese American Experience During and After the World War II Internment. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1973.

Wise, Nancy Baker, and Christy Wise. A Mouthful of Rivets: Women at Work in World War II. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1994.

Wollenberg, Charles. Golden Gate Metropolis: Perspectives on Bay Area History. Berkeley: Institute of Governmental Studies, 1985.

---. Marinship at War: Shipbuilding and Social Change in Wartime Sausalito. Berkeley: Western Heritage Press, 1990.

Children's Literature

Adams, Simon. Eyewitness: World War II (Eyewitness Books). New York: DK Publishing, 2000.

Ambrose, Stephen. The Good Fight: How World War II Was Won. New York: Atheneum, 2001.

Colman, Penny. Rosie the Riveter: Women Working on the Home Front in World War II. New York: Crown Books for Young Readers, 1998.

Panchyk, Richard. World War II for Kids: A History with 21 Activities. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2002.

Stanley, Jerry. I am an American: A True Story of Japanese Internment. New York: Crown Books for Young Readers, 1996.

Tanaka, Shelley. Attack On Pearl Harbor. New York: Hyperion Press, 2001.