Early World War II In Napa

By Jim Ford

On Dec. 7, 1941, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and the advent of what was to be four long years of war, my family was living in Los Angeles. Just four months later we would pick up stakes and move to Napa.

I was just six days from celebrating my 12th birthday and like so many, I remember that “day that will live in infamy” vividly.

It was a beautiful Sunday morning in L.A. and my uncle, who was in the Army stationed in the area, was spending the weekend with us.

At about 10 a.m., we had our radio on when they announced that Pearl Harbor Hawaii was under attack by aircraft from the Empire of Japan. We thought it was some sort of cruel Orson Welles joke, but it was for real and, a good portion of the U.S. Pacific fleet had been damaged or destroyed and many thousands of our military had lost their lives.

Every radio station in the area carried a general announcement for all military personnel to report to their duty stations immediately. We drove my uncle back to his base not knowing if we would ever see him again.

There were lots of stories of Japanese forces landing on the mainland and Japanese submarines operating all up and down the Pacific coast. Most of them were false but we thought that they were true.

In the Los Angeles area, preparation for war began immediately. Along the coast, blackout curtains on windows facing the ocean were mandated. Citizens living along the coast were asked to actively monitor the sea for enemy boats and for enemy landings. To protect sensitive areas from low flying enemy aircraft, barrage balloons were tethered to the ground and floated a few hundred feet in the air and anti-aircraft searchlights were a constant sight over the city at night.

By early April 1942, the family decided to move to Napa where my stepfather had just taken a job at the newly established Basalt Rock Company shipyard south of Napa. At the time Basalt was busy gearing up for their wartime mission of building small cargo ships.

So, during Easter vacation of that year, my mother, my grandparents, who had driven down to help us move, and I packed up our worldly belongings and headed north.

While the wartime activities in the Napa area were not as noticeable as in Los Angeles, they were still as important. Anti-aircraft units were set up around the military bases in the area. Service personnel were required to wear their uniform all of the time. There was a marked increase in the military convoys on the highways and a lot more fighter aircraft flying around the area out of Hamilton Field in Marin County.

On a regular basis, buses loaded with Napa’s young men who had enlisted or were being drafted departed for induction stations in San Francisco and other areas. Gasoline, sugar, rubber, shoes and a lot of other things were rationed.

Patriotic posters were everywhere. We were advised that “Loose Lips Sink Ships.” Regardless of ethnicity or background, patriotism was rampant.

The newspapers and radio reported on the war and kept us abreast of what our fighting forces were doing. In the first few weeks of the war, the Pearl Harbor raid by the Japanese occupied most of the news. Then came accounts of the Japanese forces moving across the Pacific to the Philippines where General Douglas MacArthur commanded our outmanned and outgunned military forces. Soon came the fall of Corregidor and MacArthur’s famous “I shall return” as he was forced to leave the Philippines.

The news told of the daring feats of our military forces. On February 20, 1942, in the South Pacific, Naval Aviator Lt. Cdr. Butch O’Hare was a lone flier returning to the aircraft carrier USS Lexington. He accidentally encountered a formation of Japanese aircraft en route to strike at the American fleet. He dove his aircraft into the formation and quickly downed several aircraft. When he ran out of ammunition he repeatedly dove into the enemy aircraft trying to clip wings or tails and, eventually, the Japanese turned tail and left.

After he successfully landed, O’Hare’s gun cameras showed that he had downed five Japanese aircraft. He was the first Naval “Ace” and the first to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Later, at the age of 29, O’Hare was killed during aerial combat. Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, America’s busiest, was named for this great hero and there is a statue of him prominently displayed on the airport.

America needed heroes badly and Americans were rising to the times.

Napa Valley Register Copyright © 2009