The “War”

World War II formed the backdrop of my early recollections.  I confess that I remember Pearl Harbor, the day that the Japanese attacked our navel forces in Hawaii.  This may be my imagination, but my father would take me over to the Placer College (now part of Placer High School) campus where I could ride my tricycle on the large concrete patio.

My godfather, Sam Babcock, and his wife, “Aunt” Vera lived on Orange Street across from the College.  We always parked in front of my godfather’s house, and as we departed for home, the next door neighbor was listening to his car radio and said, “The Jap’s have attached Pearl Harbor.”  Being only three, this didn’t mean a lot to me, but I remember us rushing home to tell my mother.

Whether on not I actually remember this incident is a mystery to me.  My parents occasionally talked about Pearl Harbor, so I might have reconstructed the event from bits and pieces of memory.  We certainly went to the college on Sundays enough times for me to superimpose what I do remember with what I heard.  That said, however, I do actually believe that I remember that day, even though I was only three.

The next four years are not a continuous memory, but a collection of remembrances that punctuated the times.  For example, I remember the “Buy War Bonds” posters that were ubiquitous in storefront windows.

We had food and gas rationing.  We got a sticker that we put on the windshield of our 1937 Chevy.  I think it was a “B.”  That meant that we were nobody special, and that we got a certain amount of gas per week.  Since my father worked only a few blocks from home, and there wasn’t much to do or spend your money on, so this worked out fine for us.

I frequently went grocery shopping with my mother.  The routine was invariably the same.   She would work on her shopping list being careful to make our money go as far as possible.  Then we were off to the Cardinal, Safeway and Purity markets.  My mother knew the best buys at each market, so we bought some things here, some things there.

Food rationing was in effect, so every so often, we got new rationing books filled with little stamps for various kinds of rationed products like sugar, meat, vegetables and dairy products.  These stamps were fun because they had military equipment on them such as tanks and artillery for different food items.  We also had red and blue tokens for meat and dairy products.  In all, I know we never went hungry, and I don’t ever remember being denied desserts or any other inconveniences.  Our country was a vast agro-industrial empire.  We never suffered hunger or inconvenience like our Allies and the enemy.

We also saved our bacon grease and turned it in for the “war effort.”  I never figured out why bacon grease was a strategic material.

The War came home to me more directly through two activities.  My mother was a volunteer airplane watcher.  Living on the West Coast there was a fear that we would be attached or even invaded by the Japanese.  A lot of people who didn’t live through these times put this down to panic and racial prejudice toward the Japanese.  I’m sure there was this, but there was also genuine concern

Me in my “class A” uniform standing on the front porch, circa 1943.

about attack.  What with the American Pacific Fleet taken out of action, and the invasion of the Philippines where American forces were killed or captured, it was easy to consider the possibility.  Additionally, the war in Europe was not going well. Britain was beleaguered, and the Nazi expansion into Russia looked unstoppable.  We accept without much thought today that the Allies defeated the Axis in World War II, but nobody was very certain going into 1942.

I digress.  My mother and I would go to a lookout post that had been built on the roof of someone’s garage.  There was a telephone inside that was directly connected to a central location to coordinate the sighting of airplanes.  The lookout walls were covered with posters showing silhouettes  of American and Japanese airplanes.  My mother had a pair of binoculars, and we would scour the sky looking for threats.  Occasionally, and only occasionally, we would spot a plane.  Typically, they were distant and hard to identify but my mother would report the plane’s direction and estimated altitude.

We also went out to a second observation post at the Cranston’s ranch.  This was the same routine; pretty boring for a preschooler.  I did give those silhouettes a lot of my attention, though.  I wanted to be ready if I saw a Jap Zero boring down on me, machine guns blazing from its wings decorated with big, red “meatballs” signifying the rising sun.

Me and my war dog “Mischief” fighting on the home front, Summer, 1944

In the end, the “invasion” came down to a Japanese submarine lofting a few shells into some oil tanks on the coast by Santa Barbara.  There were some reports of the Jap’s trying to send balloons with incendiary devices attached to burn our forests.  I think there was some evidence of this, but nothing ever came of it.

Lastly, Japanese planes were reported over Los Angeles on one occasion.  This gave the Army Artillery Corp. the opportunity to fire off every anti-aircraft weapon they had in Southern California.  There were no enemy planes, but it underscored the belief that there could be.

The second set of “incidents” were the air raids.  On several occasions the air raid sirens sounded at night, and we went down into the basement to wait out the “raid.”  I don’t remember being scared, but I was always waiting for the sound of airplane engines.  Thank goodness we never had real raids.

There were other things to remember.  My memories of the War are like a set of haphazardly posted notes on a bulletin board.  There were fireside chats on the radio from President Roosevelt and reports from London from Edward R. Morrow.  Life Magazine brought the War home in pictures like the dead American soldier lying facedown in the sand of some faraway island beach.  The newsreels at the movies brought us filmed accounts of the kind of stories that we take for granted now on the evening news.

In all, however, the War was something far away for my daily life.  My Uncle Marden, my mother’s brother, was in the Aleutian Islands off Alaska, but I don’t think he saw any combat.  My Uncle George, my mother’s sister’s husband, drove a jeep for a colonel in Missouri, so no one in my family was killed or saw terrible combat.

The War brought change to Auburn.  During the later stages in 1943-44, a large Army hospital was built north of town about halfway to the Cranston Ranch of Highway 49.  I recall going to the open house when it was completed.  It was empty then, and my understanding was that it was built not only to handle the existing war wounded, but also the anticipated casualties when the Japanese home islands were invaded.  After the War, the hospital was transferred to the State of California and turned into a mental hospital.

DeWitt Hospital when completed in 1944.

I do remember with certainty the end of the War on VJ Day, August 15th, 1945.  The War had ended earlier in May in Europe, but it wasn’t until after dropping two atomic bombs that Japan surrendered.  My father and I were on a walk in the woods down by the ditch and the hobo camp.  I remember my mother shouting from the house that the War was over.  Immediately, we could hear sounds of fireworks and guns being shot into the air, and whistles going off.  It was a grand day and a day of great relief for anyone with a family member in the service.

The end of the War brought back the local Japanese Americans who had been interned in the relocation camps during most of the wartime period.  There must have been some animosity toward them, because I can vividly remember signs in some of the barbershop windows saying, “No Japs.”  I guess I was too young to dwell on the significance of this kind of antipathy toward these loyal Americans.  What I do know was that the Japanese American children suddenly appeared in school without a word being said.  They were quiet, orderly, and studied hard.  As kids we readily accepted them as if they had been there all along.