The aftershocks of the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor were felt keenly all over America—the war in Europe had hit home. But nowhere was American life more immediately disrupted than on the West Coast, where people lived in certain fear of more Japanese attacks. From that day until the end of the war, a dizzying mix of battle preparedness and rampant paranoia swept the states. Japanese immigrants were herded into internment camps. Factories were camouflaged to look like small towns. The Rose Bowl was moved to North Carolina. Airport runways were so well hidden even American pilots couldn't find them. There was panic on the Pacific coast: the Japanese were coming.

This work offers a history of the Pacific as a frontier of the United States using economics, politics, and culture as its central areas of consideration. While many studies have analyzed specific regions within the Pacific, this work considers the whole of this vast ocean and its coasts as a single unit of study. In broadening the scope of analysis, one of the author's primary aims is to expand American understanding of the term frontier to include the Pacific and its nations. It covers periods stretching from 1784, the year the first ship flying the American flag reached China, to 1867, the eve of the Civil War. During this period, America's presence was expanding throughout the entire ocean. It also covers the period from 1868 to Pearl Harbour in 1941, witnessing a simultaneous contraction of the area within which various American interests were active, and a gradual integration of the frontier region. Finally, World War II marks the beginning of the period which concludes in 1994, during which, Heffer argues, the entire Pacific becomes an American lake and the former frontier begins to disappear.

"The Pacific Coast region of the United States contains many distinctive natural features and much unique material for scientific research. Many of the problems presented here are peculiar to the West, but in their larger aspects they have a significant bearing upon fundamental questions of world-wide concern both in the field of natural science and in the relation of these problems to the affairs of men. However interesting western materials may be, the traveler wishing to know of them has little time for study, and sources of information which might be used are frequently scattered and inaccessible. Recognizing the need for ready information on nature and science in the West, the Pacific Coast Committee of the American Association for the Advancement of Science has considered it desirable in this year of the two expositions celebrating the opening of the Panama Canal to bring together in hand-book form concise data upon matters of general interest for the use of travelers in this region. A special committee was appointed to assemble the material and to enlist the assistance of men well informed upon the subjects to be discussed. The descriptions contained in this book have been prepared with care by specialists, and the volume is addressed to all travelers in the West who wish to know the significant features of the land through which they pass."-- c taken from Introductory Note, page v.

From the early years of the republic, many Americans anticipated a Pacific Age in world affairs that the United States would inevitably dominate, not in a territorial sense so much as in a cultural and commercial one. Despite the reality that Asia was of little real economic importance in American life until recently, a powerful image persisted in the American mind of the promises of riches to be found across the Pacific. This book provides the history of that dream, from the time of Spanish galleons to the hypersonic airplane of the future. With bewildering speed, the North Pacific region has come to rival the North Atlantic as a global center of manufacturing, trade and information, and the generation of wealth. The economic statistics show that the Age of the Pacific has truly arrived. Perry vividly shows that from the early years of the republic many Americans anticipated a Pacific Age in world affairs that the United States would inevitably dominate, not in a territorial sense so much as in a cultural and commercial one. Despite the reality that Asia was of little real economic importance in American life until recently, a powerful image persisted in the American mind of the promise of riches to be found across the Pacific. This book provides the history of that dream, from the time of Spanish galleons to the hypersonic airplane of the future. Countless books have been written about American-East Asian relations, but fewer books have addressed the importance of the Pacific Ocean to the United States. No one before has shown so comprehensively how Americans dominated the creation of trans-Pacific trade routes. This book will be of great interest to professional historians and the general public interested in the history of American-Pacific relations, the history of transportation, and the history of the entrepreneurial doers and dreamers who spearheaded American commerce with Asia.