If the Thirties were tumultuous, the Forties were cataclysmic. War brought serious upheaval to the City of Salinas which had a population of 11,586 in 1940.

In August of 1940 the Salinas Tank Company, active since 1895, went to Fort Lewis, Washington for induction; and Secretary of War Henry Simpson notified the city that the Army would immediately develop the new Salinas Airport as an Army Air Corps defense base due to “military necessity.” After leasing the airport, the government began work on the Salinas Army Air Base. Four two - story barracks plus a control tower, an administration building, a mess hall, and classrooms were ready in 1941.

In August of 1941 thirty - nine members of the Tank Company were home on a visit before being transferred to Angel Island and deployed to the Philippines in September of 194 1. As part of the 149th Tank Group, the 194th Tank Company defended central Luzon and then the Bataan Peninsula, engaging the invading Japanese 14th Army.

That October ground was broken for the construction of the first permanent USO building in the Uni ted States. The $93,000 facility, opened just two days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, has been in continuous use since, first as a USO, later as a recreation center and for a while, a children’s library. The first blackout in Salinas was that same December.

On February 19, 1942 President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 which allowed exclusion of any or all persons from a declared military area and permitted removal and internment of the Japanese living in the Central Coast. Public Law 503, sig ned on March 21, 1942 made it a criminal offense for a person excluded from a military area to refuse to move.

When Bataan fell in April of 1942, the Salinas Tank Battalion was one of the units captured and subjected to the infamous march of death. Only 47 of the original 107 who left Salinas would return, but Salinas did not forget its heroes. An M - 5 tank is now at the Garden of Memories in their honor [The Salinas Tank Battalion used the lighter M - 3 Tank. ] and the Monterey County Historical Society dedicated a Bataan Memorial on April 8, 2006 at their site.

That same April 600 Salinas residents were sworn in as air wardens. Some residents volunteered as plane spotters, scanning the skies with binoculars for enemy aircraft. Virginia Hosford sometimes accompanied her mother on her shift. She described the location of the tower as east and north of Salinas on a ranch. The building was four sided with windows all round and a telephone. The top where pictures of enemy planes were posted for reference was reached by ladder.

The Salinas Rodeo Grounds were appropriated for use as the Salinas Assembly Center. Some 3,586 Japanese Americans from the Monterey Peninsula, Watsonville, Salinas, Gilroy and San Benito County were detained there before being transferred to internment camps away from the coast. Many held at the Salinas Assembly Center were sent on to the Poston internment camp in Arizona. Following their transfer, the rodeo grounds became the Salinas Garrison of Fort Ord.

The internment of Japanese residents was particularly difficult for the Salinas High School Class of 1942. Forty - six seniors were unable to attend their own commencement ceremonies. Two faculty members, Gertrude Waterman and Ruth Wing, traveled across town to see that the seniors detained at the Assembly Center received their diplomas. Though appreciated, one graduate later said it did not make up for being “in prison.”

In August of 1942 the United States and Mexico entered an agreement setting forth conditions for recruitment of Mexican labor for wartime employment in agricul ture. Workers were paid transportation and subsistence en route; they were provided with better camps than in 1918, as well as given medical care, accident insurance, and minimum earnings. Ten percent of a worker’s earnings was deducted by the government and transmitted to Mexico City for deposit in an account for that worker. The FSA was in charge of the program through July 1, 1943 and the agency scrupulously followed all terms of the agreement.

However, when the program was transferred to the War Food Administration, Carey McWilliams found the wage guarantees “farcical.” [North from Mexico: The Spanish - Speaking People of the United States , Carey McWilliams, 1948, 1990] On the other hand, McWilliams felt the agreement was an improvement over the 1918 “experiment” when the Mexican government investigated complaints of the Mexican workers about labo r rights abuses.

After the war, the first of the Japanese - American families to return to Salinas found their once beautiful Yamato Cemetery overgrown with weeds and with goats tied to the few remaining cherry trees. By 1948 ten to fifteen percent of the original Japanese returned to the area. [Yamato Cemetery History: 1908 - 1976 , James Y. Abe, [1976]] They reactivated the Salinas Valley JACL [Japanese American Citizens League] with James Abe as its first post - war president. The JACL proceeded to act upon land escheat cases and to restore the cemetery.

The close of World War II brought other changes to Salinas. Discharged soldiers returned to town and with the help of the G.I. bill many veterans attended Hartnell College. Returning veterans also sparked a building boom in the greater Salinas area.

Other Salinas milestones following the armistice were: closure of the Salinas Army Air Base and return of the airport to the city; repair and return of the Salinas Garrison to the Rodeo Grounds in time for the 1947 Rodeo, though without Sgt. Fitz Truan, the Salinas cowboy champion killed at Iwo Jim a; the 1947 opening of the first store at the first planned shopping center in California, the Valley Shopping Center; the end of the farm labor importation program on December 31, 1947; the opening of the Skyview Drive - In; and the visit of Marilyn Monroe to promote diamond sales for Carlyle’s Jewelers at 362

Main Street. Some 1,000 - 1,400 photographs of Miss Monroe were given out over the week of her 1947 visit. The crowds were so large that the Salinas Police Department assigned two patrolmen in order to direct traffic in front of the store.

In 1948 Salinas Junior College was officially named Hartnell College, and the Salinas Californian moved to its new building on West Alisal Street. Sculptured bucking broncos above the newspaper building’s main entrances are a tribute to the town’s long association with the California Rodeo. In 1949 the Alisal area voted “no” on annexation to Salinas, while the Airport and Rodeo tracts in the north part of town launched another annexation drive.