"The mountain-chains encompassing the inhabited regions of southern California might be compared to a great wall thousands of feet in height, within whose enclosures are those fertile regions which have made the name of this state synonymous with all that is abundant in nature. These mountains, rugged and inaccessible to armies from the desert side, form an impregnable barrier except by the three gateways mentioned.
"Standing upon Mt. San Gorgonio or San Antonio one can look westward and southward down upon an endless succession of cultivated fields, towns and hamlets, orchards, vineyards and orange groves; upon wealth amounting to hundreds of millions; upon as fair and luxuriant a region as is ever given man to contemplate; a region wherein shall be based the Japanese forces defending these passes. To the north and east across the top of this mountain-wall are forests, innumerable streams, and abundance of forage. But suddenly at the outward rim all vegetation ceases; there is a drop--the desert begins.
"The Mojave is not a desert in the ordinary sense of the word, but a region with all the characteristics of other lands, only here Nature is dead or in the last struggle against death. Its hills are volcanic scoria and cinders, its plains bleak with red dust; its meadows covered with a desiccated and seared vegetation; its springs, sweet with arsenic, are rimmed, not by verdure, but with the bones of beast and man. Its gaunt forests of yucca bristle and twist in its winds and brazen gloom. Its mountains, abrupt and bare as sun-dried skulls, are broken with cañons that are furnaces and gorges that are catacombs. Man has taken cognizance of this deadness in his nomenclature. There are Coffin Mountains, Funeral Ranges, Death Valleys, Dead Men's Cañons, dead beds of lava, dead lakes, and dead seas. All here is dead. This is the ossuary of Nature; yet American armies must traverse it and be based upon it whenever they undertake to regain southern California. To attack these fortified places from the desert side is a military undertaking pregnant with greater difficulties than any ever attempted in all the wars of the world."
Now after so easily taking California away from us because we stolidly refused, like the English people, to heed repeated warnings, what would the Japanese do? Southern California they would simply occupy with a military force and continue to occupy it. Its irrigable lands in the coast basin are already all reclaimed and densely populated.
