easy identification. Social activity at Gilroy Hot Springs was intense in this period. Bootleg liquor and slot machines drew large crowds for birthday parties, Thursday night poker games, swimming parties, Saturday night dances and local service club socials. Over 500 registrants per day would visit the resort in the peak summer season. The San Francisco Motorcycle Club had an especially notable outing here in 1920 (Gilroy Advocate, 1920). Automobile use was rising dramatically in this era, so that a frenzy of tree cutting occurred in the early 1920s all along Gilroy Hot Springs Road to accommodate the burgeoning auto arrivals. Yet at the end of the decade, the Great Depression caused resort activity to dwindle. Accelerants to the decline were the death of William McDonald and foreclosure by Roop. By 1934, the Gilroy Hot Springs Post Office was closed, and in 1935, the Southern Pacific Railroad ended its auto stage service to the resort. Beginning of Japanese influence On September 15, 1938, "Japanese Capitalist Buys Famed Gilroy Hot Springs Resort" read the headline in the Gilroy Advocate. Kyuzaburo Sakata, a successful local Japanese lettuce grower in Watsonville, announced he would build a Japanese garden to be designed by Nagao Sakurai, of the Imperial Palace, who was involved in the Japanese exhibit at the 1939 Golden Gate Exposition at Treasure Island in San Francisco. Gilroy Hot Springs was a microcosm of the successful struggle of Japanese Americans to attain full ownership in the American Dream. Unlike other cultures of immigrants who, encountering discrimination, withdrew into enclaves, Japanese settlers fought within the system to obtain a stake. Gilroy Hot Springs became a powerful symbol to Americans of Japanese ancestry, especially because the hot springs recalled similar physiographic features of their native land (Seido, 1941). World War II and aftermath After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Sakata and the considerable Japanese American population of Santa Clara County were imprisoned in Internment Camps. Caucasian business partners of Sakata carried on the resort operations during the war at a lessened state of grandeur. After release from the Internment Camp, Sakata returned to be an owner and manager of the resort. He invited his fellow Japanese Americans to join him "in the blessing nature created in Hot Springs in our search for the power of healing". It served as a gathering place where Americans of Japanese ancestry intermingled and relaxed with their European American counterparts. Modern