Earlier this week I had the pleasure of giving one of my talks, “Homefront San Diego in World War II,” for San Diego OASIS. I spoke at the Linda Vista Library. That was an apt location for the talk, as the Linda Vista neighborhood was created as a result of San Diego’s incredible growth during the war years.

The neighborhood began with a massive housing project that got under way in late 1940, with the motto, “3,000 houses in 300 days.” This was part of the effort to accommodate the influx of defense workers and military personnel that saw the city of San Diego’s population grow almost 200 percent between 1940 and 1943.

Here’s one of the slides from my talk, showing part of a trailer camp set up to accommodate people who were moving into San Diego at the rate of 1,500 a week. The photo is courtesy of the Library of Congress:

I’ll be giving this talk and more for OASIS later in the year, and I’m available to give talks for other groups as well, on a variety of historical topics. To find out more, click on the “About” tab on this website.