Wartime Claremont: The 1940s at Home

There is a decade missing from most Claremont streets. Look at the assessor's build years along a block near the Village and you will often see the 1920s, a few 1930s, then almost nothing until 1946 or later, when the dates come in a rush.

Wartime did that. Building materials went to the war effort, civilian construction was restricted, and for roughly four years American towns simply stopped making houses.

What Claremont's war looked like

This was not a defense-industry town. The aircraft plants and shipyards were closer to the coast and to the central basin. Claremont's war was quieter and, in some respects, more agricultural: groves that still had to be picked, packed and shipped while the men who did that work were drafted or drawn to better-paying defense jobs.

The result across California's citrus belt was a labor crisis, and the response was a set of programs that brought in workers — including, from 1942, a bilateral agreement with Mexico that supplied contract agricultural labor across the Southwest. That program touched the citrus valleys directly and shaped who lived and worked in this region for decades afterward.

The colleges, meanwhile, hosted military training programs, as most American campuses did. Enrollment patterns changed, buildings were repurposed, and the institutions came out of the decade positioned for enormous postwar growth.

For Claremont-specific detail — which units trained where, which groves used which labor programs, who served and who did not return — the sources are the colleges' archives, Claremont Heritage, the city and the Claremont Courier's back files.

The removal, and why it belongs in a real estate history

In 1942 the federal government forcibly removed people of Japanese ancestry, most of them American citizens, from the West Coast and confined them in incarceration camps. Southern California's agricultural communities included Japanese American families who farmed, worked in packing and ran businesses.

Those families lost property. Some sold under duress at whatever price they could get. Some left possessions and land in the care of neighbors and returned to find them gone. Others did not return at all.

This is real estate history, not just social history, because it moved land and businesses from one set of owners to another under coercion, and because the record of it exists in deeds, leases and county files.

What we should not do is invent specifics. For an accurate account of Japanese American families in Claremont and the surrounding valley — who was removed, what happened to their property, who returned — go to archival collections, oral history projects and the colleges' libraries. That research exists and it is better than anything a summary can offer.

Why the housing gap matters to buyers today

Practical consequences of the wartime construction halt show up constantly in Claremont transactions.

Pent-up demand produced the postwar wave. Four years of unbuilt housing, plus returning veterans, plus new federal lending, produced the largest single building era in the town's history. Whole Claremont neighborhoods date from that release. See the postwar boom.

Wartime-era alterations are often undocumented. Houses were subdivided into rooms for rent, garages were converted, and repairs were improvised with whatever materials were available. Some of that work is still in place, under later finishes, without permits. On any house predating 1950, treat the permit record as incomplete until proven otherwise.

Material substitutions exist. Wartime and immediate postwar shortages produced unusual choices in framing, hardware and finishes. An inspector who works on older Southern California housing will recognize them; a general home inspection may not comment.

The groves survived the decade, then did not survive the next two. Claremont's agricultural land came out of the war largely intact and was gone within a generation, converted to housing. Understanding that timing explains why so many Claremont lots have deep, mature landscapes and unusual soil: they were groves. See the citrus years.

What survives from the 1940s in town

Physically, less than you would expect from the first half of the decade and a great deal from the second. The late 1940s houses are the leading edge of the postwar pattern: single story, simple massing, modest square footage, detached or attached garage, front lawn.

They are frequently excellent buys precisely because they are unglamorous. Solid framing, straightforward layouts, and lots that in Claremont are often generous enough to accommodate a thoughtful addition or an accessory dwelling unit under current state and city rules. Confirm the current rules with the city for a specific address; they have changed repeatedly.

The decade's quieter legacy: who came, and stayed

The war moved Americans around on a scale nothing before it had. People who had never seen Southern California saw it in uniform, on a train, or on the way to a shipyard, and a large number of them decided to come back.

Claremont received a version of that migration filtered through its institutions. Veterans arrived with federal education benefits, enrollment at the colleges expanded, and the faculty and staff needed to teach and support them arrived with families that needed housing.

That is the demand side of the postwar building wave, and it is why the houses that went up here in the late 1940s and 1950s skew toward a particular buyer: educated, salaried, planning to stay, interested in a yard and a garage and a walk to campus. Claremont's mid-century stock reflects that client, which is a large part of why it has aged better than comparable housing in towns built for a different demand.

Questions worth asking on a mid-century-or-older Claremont house

• Is there permit history for the garage, and has it ever been converted?
• Does the assessor's square footage match a current measurement?
• Has the electrical panel and wiring been fully updated, or only partly?
• What is under the current flooring and finishes — and was any of it done without permits?
• If the lot backs onto a former grove parcel, what does the soil and drainage look like?

For the decade before, read Claremont in the Great Depression, and for the full arc start at the Claremont history hub.

Anthony Grynchal has been licensed in California since November 2009.