can anyone confrim that San Bruno Ca Tanforan Shoping Center was actually a Japanese Concertration Camp and not a Racing track?

-- sanfranciscan (tap2send@aol.com), August 08, 2004

Answers

It was both. Tanforan was a long-established race track that was pressed into service in 1942 as a temporary "assembly center" where thousands of Japanese Americans lived for as long as six months while permanent WWII concentration camps were being built elsewhere. In a stunning insult to a proud people, many Japanese were actually forced to live in horse stalls. A Google search on "Tanforan" will result in quite a bit of information.

-- John Martini (jamartini@slip.net), August 08, 2004.

It was also the site of the first live bomb-drop from a Wright Bros. airplane at a 1911 airshow by a brother of Dana Crissy.

Regards from Crissy Field!

-- Wolfgang Schubert (sutrohistory@schubert.ws), August 13, 2004.

Wolfgang, you're close! The bomb was droped[u]next[/u] to Tanforan racetrack at 'Camp Selridge", an empty area adjacent to the airfield Selridge field. The bomb was indeed droped by Lieutenant Myron Crissy, U.S. Army Air Corps but the plane was piloted by Parmalee. Here is a bio on another aviator (navy) that stole the show that day....the bomb droping was merely a footnote! (and a cool on at that! Thanks)

http://californianavalaviation.homestead.com/ EugeneBEly.html

Another highlight of the International Air Meet (1911) included members of the Second Battalion of the Thirtieth Infantry who were to take part in field exercises. When these soldiers established their camp in the fields near the Tanforan Racetrack, they promptly named it "Camp Selfridge" and appropriately named the adjacent airfield "Selfridge Field" in honor of Lieutenant Thomas E.Selfridge of San Francisco, one of the Army's earliest fliers, who had been killed in a flight with Orville Wright in 1908. Parmalee, in a Wright areoplane, also took part in these military tests when he and Lieutenant Myron Crissy, U.S. Army Air Corps, succeeded in dropping the first explosive aerial bomb from an aircraft in flight. The result was a four-foot by three-foot hole in the ground. But it was Eugene Ely who would steel the headlines at this meet by making his second very notable, and undoubtedly most historic flight.

-- strange (stranger@yahoo.com), August 13, 2004.

Wow! you guys answer the question in deep detail VERY educational thanks!!

-- sanfranciscan (tap2send@aol.com), August 14, 2004.