Panic on the Pacific

General John DeWitt’s dire warnings in the immediate aftermath of Pearl Harbor had created an atmosphere of fear and anxiety up and down the Pacific Coast. His Christmas message did little to dispel it. DeWitt promised that “the relaxation which usually characterizes Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in the Army has been superseded by additional restrictions on admission to Army posts and establishments, by the doubling of guards and by other precautions.”

On Christmas Day, the first convoy bringing evacuees from Hawaii sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge. It had been a nerve-wracking, six-day voyage, zig-zagging across the Pacific to avoid Japanese submarines.

Those injured in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor came off the ships first, on stretchers or as “walking wounded,” bound for stateside military and naval hospitals. For the Red Cross workers and volunteers who greeted these men, they were a powerful reminder of what had happened in Hawaii, and what could happen in San Francisco.

Next came the wives and widows of military personnel who had fought or died at Pearl Harbor, along with scores of often-frightened children. They scanned the crowds on the pier, looking for someone they knew among the throngs looking back and hoping to see family or friends. Then came the members of the San Jose State and Willamette University football teams who had arrived in Hawaii before Pearl Harbor to play a demonstration game in Honolulu on Christmas Day.

The evacuees not met by friends or relatives were taken under the wing of the American Women’s Voluntary Services (AWVS) and given meals and temporary shelter and medical care by various San Francisco organizations and institutions, such as the California School of Fine Arts, the Jewish Community Center, the Western Women’s Club, the Women’s Athletic Club, and the YWCA.

In the last week of December, a cold front brought chilly temperatures to the coastal cities, and heavy snow to the mountains. In California, nearly five feet of snow fell overnight at Donner Pass, three feet in Yosemite Valley, and even the higher elevations around Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area were white with snow.

As the San Francisco Chronicle reported, the city “played New Years Eve as an indoor sport,” largely heedful of police admonitions to avoid the large outdoor gatherings which so concerned John DeWitt. The Los Angeles Times reported that “along the Sunset Strip . . . all the nightclubs frequented by filmland’s great and not-so-great are sold out for the evening [but] many motion picture stars will greet the New Year from the seclusion of their own homes. . .Hotels and nightclubs were sold out to capacity merrymakers, some of whom had paid as much as $18.50 plus federal entertainment tax, per person to make whoopee on their premises.”

It was good escapism that night, but as the people of the Pacific Coast looked westward across the whitecaps on the old, gray Pacific on the morning after, there wasn’t much cause for a celebratory “Whoopee.”

The news from the Far East had become increasingly grim. After Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox returned from his inspection tour of Hawaii on December 16, he revealed the true dimensions of the losses at Pearl Harbor in a bombshell press release. All of the battleships were out of action, and casualties were not in the hundreds, but in the thousands.

A week later, the Marines on Wake Island who had mounted a gallant defense against overwhelming odds surrendered. On Christmas Day, Hong Kong also fell to the Japanese.

Before the war, it had been said that in the worst case scenario, it would take an invader a year and a half to drive south through the entire Malay Peninsula to Singapore. By New Year’s Eve, the Japanese 25th Army had already marched two-thirds of that distance in less than three weeks.

On New Year’s Day, the news came from the Philippines that Manila had surrendered, and the last American and Filipino defenders had been pushed into the Bataan Peninsula and Corregidor Island in Manila Bay, where they would make their last stand—unaided and unreinforced.

On the Pacific Coast, there was no way of knowing that the last Japanese submarine attack on December 28 was the last one for two months. And the sobering words of Admiral Chester Nimitz, who took up the role of commander of the battered Pacific Fleet from the disgraced Husband Kimmel on New Year’s Eve, made them seem imminent. “It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that Japanese submarines operating off the West Coast of the United States may attempt to lay their shells into cities before they leave. The ocean is too big to obviate such possibility. . .Japanese captains desire to make the utmost use of their weapons when there are no targets for their torpedoes.”

On December 27, Attorney General Francis Biddle had ordered enemy aliens to surrender their radios and cameras to local police. On January 2, DeWitt topped him, issuing orders banning the use of cameras by anyone to take pictures of military installations and personnel. It was a good thing that this had come after Christmas, when people had posed with their family members in the service.

To his list of prohibited subjects, DeWitt added airplanes, ships, and other military equipment. He also forbade photographs of bridges, railroads, reservoirs, seaports, and tunnels as well as any radio, telephone or telegraph facilities.

Another more ominous New Year’s greeting came a week later—from Japan. On January 9, The Japan Times in Tokyo reported, in an item broadcast over short wave, that when Japanese armies landed on the North American continent, “it will be a simple matter for a well-trained and courageous army to sweep everything before it . . . the contention that the United States cannot be invaded is as much a myth as that the Maginot Line could not be taken, or that Pearl Harbor or Singapore are impregnable . . . it will be for us to say when, where and how we will strike.”

On New Year’s Day, Pasadena was incongruously quiet, with DeWitt having ordered the cancellation of both Tournament of Roses Parade and the Rose Bowl Game—at least at the actual Rose Bowl. In fact, there was a Rose Bowl Game that year, but well away from Southern California. Duke University had generously offered to host the game at its stadium in Durham, North Carolina. Although favored by fourteen points, Lon Steiner’s Blue Devils lost a close 20–16 game to Wallace Wade’s Oregon State Beavers. At least that was something which the Pacific Coast—and certainly those in Oregon—could celebrate. This win, by the way, stands as Oregon State’s only Rose Bowl victory.

Applying the same fearful thinking that had prompted him to cancel the Rose Bowl, DeWitt decided to shut down California’s lucrative horse racing industry. On January 5, he summoned Charles Strub, the general manager of the Los Angeles Turf Club, to the Presidio. There, Strub was told by Colonel D. A. Stroh—DeWitt was otherwise occupied—to scrub the season. Strub objected, explaining that around 4,300 exercise boys, grooms, jockeys, parimutuel clerks, ticket sellers, trainers, and veterinarians would suddenly be out of a job if the season were cancelled.

Stroh was unmoved. He explained that DeWitt had decreed a ban on large public gatherings, like the Rose Bowl, and horse racing drew large numbers of people.

A devastated Strub returned to Santa Anita to break the bad news to owners, jockeys, and others. It was the same story at Bay Meadows and Tanforan, south of San Francisco, and other tracks across California.

Faced with devastating financial losses, horse owners and track officials agreed to attempt an end run around DeWitt and take the matter directly to Governor Culbert Olson, who agreed with them completely. In turn, on January 28, Olson invited DeWitt to Sacramento.

During the closed-door meeting, the governor pointed out that Southern Californians were traveling in droves to watch and wager upon the races at the Agua Caliente Racetrack in Tijuana. Olson argued that if they were clogging California highways to travel to Mexico, they might as well be spending their money in California.

DeWitt angrily replied that they should not be clogging California highways at all, and that it was Olson’s duty to obey orders and to assure that the roads remained unclogged. After two hours, Olson at last bowed to the will of the emphatic general. “Attention is called to the serious condition caused by horse racing at Agua Caliente,” the beaten Olson conceded sheepishly after his audience with DeWitt. “Thousands upon thousands of Californians are congesting the highways with traffic in going to and from these races—highways in the combat zone, which are needed every day in the movement of military forces and war supplies. I take this occasion to ask Californians during this emergency not to use the highways in going to and from the races in Agua Caliente . . . if this is not voluntarily discontinued, then steps will be taken by international arrangements to prevent the crossing of the Mexican border for this diversion.”

It was an impressive display for DeWitt’s power and influence as was how the California Railroad Commission reacted to his imperious demand that it approve—without public hearings—the discontinuance of various passenger trains for the purpose of making the railroad equipment available for DeWitt’s needs. “We have and do insist that the railroads meet our demands,” he told the commissioners. “These demands undoubtedly have and will cause the curtailment of railroad service to the general public.”

In response, Commission President C. C. Baker meekly told the general that his request would be granted without delay.

Not all went poorly for horse racing on the rest of the West Coast, however. In Washington, governor Arthur Langlie asked Joseph Gottstein, the owner of the Longacres Race Track, to cancel the 1942 season at his facility in Renton, outside Seattle on Lake Washington. Gottstein flatly refused. Instead, the track owner donated three days’ worth of the parimutuel handle to the Army Relief Fund, the Navy Relief Fund, and the Red Cross.

However, horse racing was not the paramount concern on the West Coast at the beginning of 1942. In San Francisco, the Civil Defense system was an apparent state of disarray. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the city “was in an uproar over the status of Civil Defense.” There was a pervasive sense that the city fathers were merely fiddling while the Japanese threat was growing.

Within a week of Pearl Harbor, San Francisco had thirty thousand Civil Defense volunteers, and by Christmas, there were forty-four thousand, but there was no program to train them. On December 30, Eric Cullenward, whom San Francisco mayor Angelo Rossi had appointed to serve as his first director of Civil Defense, resigned without warning. The Chronicle called it a “bombshell.” Cullenward told the mayor that “undoubtedly you realize I have been constantly hampered in my efforts properly to carry out the functions of my office.”

“I appointed Mr. Cullenward to represent me and carry out my orders,” Rossi told the press. “There could not be any misunderstanding about that. . .There is nothing to get excited about. Everything will go along as usual.”

The following day, as Cullenward’s resignation became the talk of the town, Rossi announced that he would look for and appoint a “strong man” as a coordinator of Civil Defense. In the meantime, Rossi himself would be the strong man, and he would assume the title of director.

Unfortunately, Cullenward’s departure came on the same day that Police Chief Charles Dullea was called to active duty with the Navy. Rossi immediately contacted Admiral Greenslade at the Twelfth Naval District and asked him to defer Dullea’s call-up. The admiral granted the mayor’s request. The Chronicle editorialized that Rossi made this move “despite the fact that inquiries and reports fail to indicate that the chief has done anything toward assisting in preparations for national defense. Training of auxiliary policemen has bogged down.”

To get out of both conundrums, Rossi appointed Dullea, who also was a personal friend and important political ally as well as twenty-seven-year veteran of the department, to the now-vacant post of Civil Defense Coordinator, and announced that he would hold that position in addition to that of police chief. The Chronicle saw politics in this move, tartly observing that the appointment gave Rossi “a member of [the mayor’s] political family in the job” rather than someone from the private sector who, if he were successful, might become “a well-publicized opponent at the next [mayoral] election in 1943.”

On his first day on the job, January 2, Dullea moved to consolidate the city’s numerous Civil Defense organizations—scattered all over town—into a single location near City Hall, and to reinvigorate the long-languishing training program for the city’s civilian volunteers. Although there were 50,786 of them, in early January, only 6 percent of the volunteers had yet been trained. The city’s emergency communications system was still a work in progress. An auxiliary pumping system for the fire department, recommended in August 1941, had yet to materialize, and the city’s ambulance fleet was not equipped with blackout lights. Those lights would have come in handy the following evening, when there was a blackout.

DeWitt’s headquarters reported unidentified aircraft eighty miles offshore, but thousands of people did not hear the sirens and, therefore, did not turn out their lights. Meanwhile, Civil Defense officials failed to show up at City Hall as they were supposed to, Dullea most conspicuous among them. To make matters worse, no one on his staff had any idea where he was.

When he finally appeared several hours after the all clear had been sounded, Dullea explained his absence. “I was up on Twin Peaks looking at the blackout. It looked good.” Twin Peaks is the highest point in the city reachable by car, and thus he was out of reach. “I wish I could have gone up in a plane,” the chief continued calmly. “I could have gotten a better look. I hope to take a plane up during the next blackout.”

When questioned by reporters about the wisdom of having the city’s police chief and civil defense coordinator sitting on a mountain top for several hours at the height of an emergency involving eighty enemy aircraft, Dullea said, “Remember, I’ve only been in charge for a couple of days. I’ll get the wrinkles out as soon as I get things under control. The big job now is to get that central communications center functioning. We’ve been all right. If bombs had started falling, we would have turned on the lights and gone to work.”

It may have been his first day on one job, but Dullea had been a member of the police department since 1914.

The Chronicle reported that the citizenry was “shocked and a little frightened by the complete collapse of the Civilian Defense set-up. . .The mayor may have been satisfied, but the people of San Francisco were not.”

Rossi shot back. “The Japanese can withdraw all their spies from San Francisco if they want to. The Chronicle will keep them informed of our weak spots.”

“What are you worrying about—no bombs fell—did they?” Mayor Rossi asked reporters. “The Civilian Defense program is in good shape. There’s no question about that. It always had been in good shape.”

Juliette Hauck asked in a letter to the editor, “Do we have to have bombs dropped on us to get some action on our civil defense?”

The San Francisco Call rose to the defense of its rival newspaper, issued its own pointed barb: “Mayor Rossi is an astute politician. We just don’t happen to need or want a politician at this time. It isn’t just the newspapers, Mister Rossi: It’s the people who have no confidence in you or your political moves. Who was apathetic about civilian defense before Pearl Harbor, Mister Mayor, the public or YOU? Seattle wasn’t asleep at the switch. Los Angeles wasn’t dozing in politics corner. No, Mr. Rossi, it was YOU who were asleep and apathetic.”

A groundswell of support for a recall election ensued, but the San Francisco Chronicle insisted that “a recall is not the answer. . .Enemy planes or fifth column saboteurs will not wait, while we gather and verify signatures and go through the formalities of a recall election.”

In time, the demand for a recall election would dissipate, but the woes of the San Francisco civil defense organization endured. As late as March 5, it was revealed that the only item of equipment that the city had ordered for its air raid wardens and auxiliary police were 30,000 police whistles. A January 14 request by civil defense staff for 27,500 surplus helmets, a like number of “blackout type” flashlights, and 7,500 first aid kits had never been processed by the organization’s leaders.

For his part, after his solitary evening atop Twin Peaks had raised questions about his competence, Chief Dullea rolled up his sleeves and got to work. Whether deliberately or not, he reinvented himself somewhat in the image of General DeWitt, complete with lurid warnings of looming disaster and a firm determination to bend others to his will. On January 28, Dullea chose a luncheon of the San Francisco Advertising Club to deliver his first formal Civil Defense report to the people of his city.

“There is no reason to think we are immune,” he began. “We are in a combat zone, and you’ve got to add two and two. I don’t want to alarm you unnecessarily, but I am thoroughly confident of this. The danger is grave and it’s imminent. We must be conscious all the time that it’s confronting us. Use the reasoning power that God gave you. We’ll depend on the Army and the Navy to take care of the fighting—but we must protect ourselves.”

The following night, as though on cue, a four-alarm fire exploded in a building on San Francisco’s Van Ness Avenue that housed an automobile warehouse and showroom, doing several millions of dollars in damage. Sabotage was eventually ruled out, but the conflagration made San Franciscans even more jittery.