By the middle of the 1970s, the New York docks were mostly a memory. Lighters carried a grand total of 129,000 tons of freight to waiting ships in 1974—less than one-tenth of the load moved in 1970, one-fiftieth as much as in 1960. Some shipping remained in Brooklyn, but Piers 6, 7, and 8, fully rebuilt in the late 1950s and known as “Little Japan” for their tenants, emptied out as five Japanese carriers moved to New Jersey.
