WAR COMES TO THE MIDDLE KINGDOM: California’s...

WAR COMES TO THE MIDDLE KINGDOM: California’s Central Coast Enters World War II, Volume 1 1939-1942, edited by Stan Harth, Liz Krieger and Dan Krieger (E Z Nature Books: $10.95). This engaging, if sometimes amateurish, oral history examines how World War II transformed a sleepy stretch of the California coast into an important military training center. Reporter J. Neil Moses describes the rescue of several crew members from the Union Oil tanker Montebello, which was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine off the coast of Cambria in 1942. Harold Gill, who sold newspapers to the soldiers at the newly built Camp San Luis Obispo, recalls how the news of Pearl Harbor charged the previously relaxed atmosphere of the base. In a chapter devoted to the relocation of the area’s Japanese-American families, Dan and Liz Krieger note that the San Luis Obispo City Council changed the name of Eto Street to Brook Street in their efforts to erase all evidence of the former nisei presence. A second volume covering 1942-1945 is scheduled for publication later this year.