Part 9 -- WAR!


SUNDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1942:


Henry and Bill Day came out to the ranch to ride. We were in the stable yard saddling our horses when Marry leaned out the door and called to us from our house on the hill above. "Come and listen," she shouted, "The Japanese are attacking the Hawaiian Islands!" From that moment our lives forever changed, in barely noticeably ways at first, then definitely, permanently, dramatically.


Henry was visibly shocked. As we rode up the mountain trail together that morning, somber in the thick silence between us, Henry spoke. "They were making such progress in tooling up their production of real goods. They were on their way up and now we will have to set them back a hundred years. I have sold them scrap iron and tools for a long time, and they are wonderful people to work with. There was never a hint of such a thing as this. This sneak attack will weld us together into a singleness of purpose that will drive us until Japan is beaten to her knees."


Days, weeks, and months followed as our country dedicated itself to overcoming the painful indignity Japan had imposed upon our nation. Our sense of fairness had been outraged, and we discovered in ourselves a spirit of vindictiveness that had not been our long accustomed manor of acting towards our world neighbors.


A total blackout imposed along the full length of the Pacific coast made night time travel prohibitive except for absolute emergencies. The only lights permitted on cars traveling at night were from small slits peeking through taped over parking lights. Factories were splotched with green, brown and gray paint in irregular patters of camouflage so that from the air they might better blend in with surrounding woodlands.


Reports of Japanese submarines patrolling our coastal waters were often heard from a variety of sources. Such reports were generally received with a suspicion that they were imaginary or alarmist in nature, made for the sake of dramatic effect. However news reports of nuisance shelling in some coastal areas had apparently been authenticated by officials in high positions, so we felt it unwise not to remain thoroughly cautious. Reports of balloons carrying deadly germs and riding the winds across the Pacific from Japan to America came from Oregon and Washington.


One of the first acts our government took was to round up all the Japanese in the United States, both native born U.S. citizens as well as immigrants, and place them in security detention camps. Some of our nations finest farmers were instantly put out of business losing all they had worked for and owned by this wartime act. That however was the mood of our country at the time, and trusting the Japanese was not something we were prepared to do, not even native born American citizens.


Often while riding trail on the high ranges overlooking the Pacific I found myself watching for strange landing craft or shore activity. Never once did any such thing become evident. Daily flights of American planes honed their combat skills overhead, diving and firing on patches of offshore kelp. As time passed following the attack on Pearl Harbor one developed an increasing sense of security should any invader, imaginary or real, seek to do us further damage.