You're walking the stretch of harbor that anchored the American war effort in the Pacific from 1941 to 1945. When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, San Diego transformed almost overnight into the primary staging ground for US operations across the Pacific Theater. The Naval Training Station processed hundreds of thousands of sailors.
Consolidated Aircraft — later Convair — built B-24 Liberator bombers at Lindbergh Field just north of here. The harbor was thick with warships being outfitted, repaired, and resupplied around the clock. Hundreds of thousands of troops passed through San Diego on their way to Guadalcanal, Midway, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa.
Many never came back. Those who did often stayed, swelling the city's postwar population and fueling a construction boom that spread subdivisions across the inland mesas. World War II remade San Diego permanently: it accelerated the Navy's already-deep relationship with the city, established the aerospace and defense industries that still anchor the local economy, and fundamentally diversified the population as workers from across America arrived to fill the wartime factories.