From "Nuestro Pueblo - Los Angeles, City of Romance" Copyright 1940, by Charles H. Owens and Joseph F. Seewerker SHINTO TEMPLE AT FISH HARBOR Fish Harbor on Terminal Island, San Pedro, is not an easy place to visit. For the population is chiefly Japanese, industrious fishermen who spread drying nets for miles along the main thoroughfares. They mend nets in the streets, also, and the luckless automobile that comes close to the precious meshes rouses ugly scowls. There is color and picturesqueness everywhere at Fish Harbor, if the seeker can endure the reek of fish in a thousand forms and stages, making one tremendous smell. Fish enough are canned daily at Fish Harbor to supply an army for a month. The odor indicates to the stranger that all such statistics are gross understatements. One of the most interesting places is the tiny Shinto temple where Japanese fishermen worship. For more than thirty years they have padded up and down the steps, until the treads are worn and grooved like warped ship planking. Within, priests in the brocaded robes and strange headgear of Old Japan conduct ancient rituals. Outside, the canneries clank; inside, priest nor worshiper heeds the sound. For a fisherman’s life is dangerous, hard, often poorly paid. They pray earnestly.