The "Register" was founded by a consortium as the "Santa Ana Daily Register" in 1905. It was sold to J.P. Baumgartner in 1906 and to J. Frank Burke in 1927. In 1935 it was bought by Raymond C. Hoiles, who renamed it the "Santa Ana Register." After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hoiles was one of the few newspaper publishers in the country to oppose the forced relocation of Japanese and Japanese-Americans to camps away from the West Coast. Hoiles reorganized his holdings as Freedom Newspapers, Inc. In 1950, the name was changed to Freedom Communications. The paper dropped "Santa Ana" from its title in 1952.