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Early edition of the February 27, 1942 San Francisco Examiner stand at 14th and Broadway proclaims the removal of Japanese Americans to not-yet-existant interior facilities. Racism and fear swept the West Coast after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Mounting Allied losses in combat, unexpected and humiliating, added to the tension. On February 23, a night attack on the Ellwood oil fields in Santa Barbara by Imperial Japanese Navy submarine I-17 (Commander Kozo Nishino) created a sensation the next day and sparked a new wave of hysteria. Los Angeles was supposedly attacked by air in a false alarm on February 24.
The West Coast media had agitated for removal since Pearl Harbor, fueled by the white owners of agribusinesses who wanted to dominate Japanese-owned farms. Columnist Harry McLemore wrote in the Examiner on January 29: "Herd 'em up, pack 'em off and give 'em the inside room in the badlands. Let 'em be pinched, hurt, hungry, and dead up against it...Let us have no patience with the enemy or with anyone whose veins carry his blood.