Oil for the Lamps of China

"Oil for the Lamps of China." That used to be a sort of town motto for Carbon Harbor. It started after 1935, after the movie of that title, starring Pat O'Brien and directed by Mervyn LeRoy. The movie had been loosely based on the book of the same title, by Alice Tisdale Hobart.

Back then, back before the war, the city fathers liked the ring of it. Lamps meant light and light meant progress and Carbon Harbor was doing everything it could to help light the world.

We were an oil town, back then. Not the biggest one, by any measure, here in Northern California, but our beautiful bay and harbor was the major export facility in the region. The town was small, even then, though not nearly as small as it is today, but, after the Port of Los Angeles, we were the second largest oil exporting facility in the state, and the primary shipping facility for Associated Oil. We even had some wells and fields of our own, but mostly we had storage and shipping facilities as we were connected via a network of pipelines and railroads to all of Associated's oil fields on the West Coast.

Associated merged with Tidewater Oil of New Jersey. It was an of on and off affair that started in the late 1920s, but it all was finalized in 1936 and the official name of the company, at that time, became Tidewater Associated Oil. The headquarter offices were in San Francisco, but we considered our town to be the "Home of the Flying A," which was the logo for Flying A gasoline from the original Associated Oil company. That logo had been designed by an illustrator who lived here in Carbon Harbor and who now nobody even remembers the name of. But the town was proud of the fact that the merged Tidewater Associated Oil company had decided to adopt and incorporate the Flying A logo of Associated's products and gasoline stations, for their Tydol gasoline stations and Veedol oil products -- the Flying V -- back East.




Carbon Harbor had many things to be proud of back in those days. We felt as though our small town was a small, miracle center of world progress. The original name of the town had been a Spanish name, Centinela, after the mountain island that sits just outside of the bay, standing watch over the town like a Sentry. The earliest shipping industry in the area was dedicated primarily to exports of corn, potatoes and wheat. But things changed after oil was discovered in the region during the late 19th century, and so the town decided to rename the bay as Carbon Bay and the town as Carbon Harbor, while only the mountain island kept its original Spanish name. And that's how it was; we were Carbon Harbor, proud home of the Flying A and exporters of world progress for the sake of "Oil for the Lamps of China!"

Things changed, drastically, however. Certainly much of the downward economic changes since the 1950s and 1960s were due to the prominence of the emerging Arab oil market, but the town of Carbon Harbor had also begun to lose its proud spirit a few decades before that.

There were three key events that led to Carbon Harbor's demise: There was the "Trial of '42," along with the mid-1940s Congressional investigations by the Kilgore Committee, which was the unofficial name of the Subcommittee of War Mobilization of the Military Affairs Committee, chaired by the senior senator from West Virgina, Senator Harley M. Kilgore. Finally, much later, in 1984, there was another trial, the trial of Walter J. Sundquist.

The first two events had begun the long demise of Carbon Harbor from a central exporting facility to just another small -- though still extremely beautiful -- seaside town on the West Coast, that now serves primarily as a tourist getaway, artist's community, home of some moderately successful fishing companies and a Coast Guard satellite center for rescue operations involving giant container ships on the high seas of the Pacific Rim. The last event, though in many ways the final nail in the coffin for the Good Ol' Days of Carbon Harbor, was also the beginning of its redemption and final, peaceful acceptance of its reduced role in the world order of things.

The first and the last events, the trials, were strictly local affairs, but they struck at the heart of the Carbon Harbor's hometown pride. However, in the years between 1942 and 1984, the events concerning the Trial of 1942 had sort of faded from the town's memory, in a manner of speaking. Much of that was largely due to the natural loss of a community's memory as the towns older citizens gradually die off or retire and move away. But it was also largely due to the fact that nobody ever talked about that first trial. There was just simply more utter shame to come out of that it than the town could bear, and there had been a subtle, unspoken agreement that everyone would do their best to put it out of their hearts and minds. There was also another reason they were so quiet about it, though, but that one didn't become clear until 1984.

However, also, on the national stage of events, it was the Kilgore Committee findings that made Carbon Harbor want to forget about being known as the home of the Flying A. Even though the name of Carbon Harbor would not mean anything to most people outside of the region, the committee findings served to point out a somewhat dark secret, concerning Tidewater Associated, that many in Carbon Harbor had begun to figure out on their own, during World War II. But that also was something they didn't care much to remember, let alone ever talk about.

Now, what follows from here is largely quoted and summarized from Senator Harley M. Kilgore and Japan's World War II Business Practices
By Robert F. Maddox

You see, as World War II raged on, the Kilgore Committee had begun to examine various international cartels and their connections, relationships and impact on the war. Before the war was even over, Senator Kilgore had determined that, had our country paid more attention to these cartels back in the 1930s, we might have seen and understood our involvement in the war well before we were awakened into action on December 7, 1941. The committee had begun by focusing on Germany and the ways in which various cartels had assisted in the development of Germany's military might, but soon after the most startling revelations from the committee concerned Japan.

What the committee uncovered was the huge extent of which "a constant stream" of scientific and economic technical data of information flowed to Japan from American firms in the course of business transactions with their Japanese counter-parts, and that this information included information on "oil, aircraft, machine tools, and electronics."

These relationships had been established well before the war, when companies like Universal Oil Products, in 1928, sold access to current and future patent information to the Japan Gasoline Company of Osaka.

The early relationships were unprofitable for Japan, but they maintained them due to their keen interest learning how to produce high octane fuel, particularly the kinds needed to fuel aircraft.

During the Kilgore Committee's investigations,

Senator Kilgore pointed out that General Hap Arnold had stated Japan's "limiting factor in air defense was not the ability to build planes or to train pilots, but the capacity to produce fuel for planes."

Soon other Japanese companies desired to form similar relationships with American firms, which led, in 1930, to the establishment of the Mitsubishi Oil Company, "as a partnership involving Mitsubishi Trading Company and Associated Oil Company" of San Francisco. By 1936 Associated had merged with Tidewater Oil of New Jersey, to become Tidwater Associated, whose company president, William F. Humprhey, controlled "all but five hundred of the fifty thousand shares" given to Tidewater Associated from Mitsubishi Oil.

The companies maintained a positive relationship and they planned a joint venture in occupied China, which "would doubtless call for genuine cooperation on both sides."

Business relationships between the Japanese and American companies were strained as American sentiment toward Japan became antagonistic as a result of Japan's war with China, but Humphrey made efforts to lobby and convince Washington, D.C. that relationships between Tidwater Associated and Mitsubishi Oil were among the best of any other company in the world that they did business with. Mistubishi had even contributed added funds -- in Yen -- to help mitigate a loss in Tidewater Associated's share value due to drastic changes in money exchange rates, as American and Japanese relations worsened.

But the situation became even more dire after President Roosevelt declared an embargo which forbade "the export of plans, designs, and information that could be used in the production of high octane aviation gasoline" to Japan.

However, Japan was able to use the Mitsubishi/Associated relationship to maintain an information flow on formula shipments from Associated out of California to US Army airfields -- including Pearl Harbor -- that, in essence, allowed them to use their business relationship to spy on American military activity. Also, while Mitsubishi's representatives communicated to Japan that Humphrey and Associated were doing their best to pressure Washington that improved relations with Japan were in America's best interest, Mitsubishi Oil continued to make attempts to stimulate competing efforts between other American firms, for their business. Later, the Kilgore Committee concluded that...

American companies would give information for business, and he wondered why, with the kind of pressure brought in Washington by companies like Tidewater, the United States was surprised at Pearl Harbor. Investigations by the Justice Department revealed that Mitsubishi was the 'real spy outfit.' As the largest Japanese company operating in the United States as an agent of the Japanese government, it is no wonder that company officials destroyed sensitive files after December 7, 1941.

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Of course, back then the workings of Congress happened largely behind closed doors, particularly the committee investigations. Word got out, occasionally, through the press, but the citizens of Carbon Harbor, like most Americans, were preoccupied with the war, and those in town who might have known anything about what the Kilgore Committee was uncovering, well, many of those men were off fighting and dying in the war. A few people whispered about it, but even the whispering stopped after Walt Sundquist got back from Washington, where he had fought the war from behind a desk.

Walt had never been the kind of guy that everyone called their friend, but he was a friendly enough man, in a business-like fashion, who had always maintained a fierce loyalty to the town and civic pride of Carbon Harbor. At the young age of 30, he had become Associated's top man in Carbon Harbor and the town's main emmissary to the Associated headquarters in San Francisco. Though he never held an officially elected office, even before the war he was becoming known as the unofficial Mayor of Carbon Harbor. After the war, when Walt caught wind of some of the whispered rumors going on about town, he made it clear that it was in nobody's interest to rummage around and indulge in the past. There was no changing it. "What's been done 's been done," he used to say. "Even hindsight can't change things and we've got oil to get out on the seas."

Folks took his advice, but the home of the Flying A was never quite the same after the war. The glory days were gone, forever, it seemed. Though no one would have imagined it at the time, the long, slow decline from a mighty harbor to a quiet fishing village had already well begun.

(To Be Continued)