The State - News from Feb. 15, 1988

Invitations to a four-day party are going out to 2.5 million servicemen who spent time at the Camp Stoneman Army post in Northern California that served as a major processing center for soldiers in World War II. Organizers of the Sept. 8-11 reunion are planning a parade, concert, military ball and memorial Mass to salute those who came through and lived at the 1,000-acre base in Pittsburg, about 40 miles east of San Francisco. Plans also call for former soldiers to march down the city’s Harbor Street to the waterfront as they did in the 1940s when they filed down to catch vessels bound for foreign battlefields. “They’ll be re-living that moment in much happier circumstances,” said Bob Jones of Pittsburg, one of the organizers. After the Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Camp Stoneman was set up as a processing center to quickly ship soldiers to the Pacific theater. The camp transformed Pittsburg from a quiet fishing village to a bustling boom town.