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Phantom Japanese Raid on Los Angeles During World War I
Anxiety about a possible Japanese invasion of the West Coast caused anti-aircraft crews guarding Los Angeles to shoot first and ask questions later.
By Donald J. Young A few minutes after 7 p.m. on February 23, 1942, the Japanese submarine I-17 surfaced a few hundred yards off the Barnsdall Oil Company's mile-long row of shoreline derricks 10 miles north of Santa Barbara, California. Moments later it opened fire on the giant Richfield aviation fuel storage tanks on the hill behind the beach. The 20 or so shots, for the most part, were wild, one landing more than a mile inland. The closest shell exploded in a field 30 yards from one of the tanks. No coastal defense units were within 100 miles of the area to shoot back, so after its ineffective cannonade the Japanese sub slipped away without incident.
If U.S. coast and anti-aircraft defense units were on edge before, the incident of February 23, just a few months after Pearl Harbor, considerably heightened their tension. In fact, what happened that night 10 miles north of Santa Barbara contributed to what followed the next night in the skies over Los Angeles.
At 2:25 a.m. on February 25, air raid sirens blared throughout parts of the "City of Angels." It was not the city's first air raid alert of the war. The most recent warning had been in effect earlier that night. None of these warnings, however, had ever gone beyond the yellow-alert stage. Yellow alerts were sounded when unidentified aircraft were detected. Of the dozen or so instances when yellow alerts had been announced, only two had gone to the red stage. Red alerts were serious business. Not only did they trigger air raid alarms, blackouts and radio silence, they sent some 10,000 air raid wardens and auxiliary police onto the streets. Anti-aircraft guns were manned and searchlights turned on.
When an air raid defense radar picked up a mysterious contact shortly before 2 a.m. on February 25, the unknown contact was approximately 100 miles southwest of Los Angeles. By 2:07 it was officially declared an "unidentified aircraft approaching the coast" and a yellow alert was called. Fifteen minutes later, the blue alert signal was given. This indicated that presumed enemy aircraft were bearing down on the coast. Three minutes later, with the aircraft still unidentified, the red alert was given. Air raid sirens immediately began to sound, and wardens donned their white helmets and grabbed their flashlights. Two minutes later, radio silence was ordered. At 2:32, anti-aircraft and searchlight crews were at the manned-and-ready position. At 3:05, San Diego was given the red-alert warning, and radio communication between the two cities stopped five minutes later. The Los Angeles air raid was on.
Anti-aircraft guns from the IV Interceptor Command opened fire at 3:16 a.m., fired steadily until 3:36, stopped, then resumed at 4:05 for another 10 minutes. During their 30-minute fusillade, the command's guns hurled 1,440 rounds of 3-inch and 37mm ammunition into the night sky above Los Angeles. Not counting unofficial shots, 48 shells were fired per minute. And almost 10 tons of expended ammunition fell somewhere on the city during the supposed raid.
According to the Los Angeles Examiner, "shrapnel-strewn areas took on the appearance of a huge Easter-egg hunt, [as] youngsters and grownups alike scrambled through streets and vacant lots, picking up and proudly comparing chunks of shrapnel fragments." Some of the 3-inch anti-aircraft shells had failed to explode in the air and hurtled back to earth.
Young Mary Perez and her two brothers, walking through a familiar vacant lot on the way to school the next morning near Hawthorne, noticed two small craters that had not been there the day before. In just five minutes the two boys picked up more than a dozen jagged pieces of shrapnel and the detonators from two faulty 3-inch anti-aircraft shells that exploded when they hit the ground less than 100 yards from the Perez home.
At the home of Mr. and Mrs. Hugh Landis a single faulty 3-inch shell blew up only when it hit the concrete driveway in front of the garage. When the shooting started, Mrs. Landis woke up her sister, Blanch Sedgwick, and 14-year-old niece, Josie, who were sleeping together in the guest bedroom, telling them to "come see what was happening." Seconds later the anti-aircraft shell hit the driveway, blowing out the windows of the garage and sending deadly chunks of shrapnel into the house--luckily just missing Sedgwick and her daughter. "When we went back into the bedroom," said Mrs. Landis, "we found one fragment of shell had cut clear through the blanket and mattress where my sister and niece were sleeping just moments before."
A second shell exploded between two houses just east of the Landis home. Two pieces of jagged hot metal were blasted into the bedroom occupied by Selas Sakellaris' son, shattering the doorframe and striking the bed occupied by the boy. A third fragment crashed through the window of his daughter's bedroom, and a fourth ripped through the side of the garage, blowing out a tire on the family car.
At Fred Watson's home in Santa Monica a shell hit the concrete driveway and, according to Mrs. Watson, "made a thunderous rumble, a terrific jar, and sounded like the screeching of a thousand wild animals" before burying itself 3 feet underground.
The next morning the Army had the entire street roped off, with a large sign at both ends warning "UNEXPLODED BOMB." After explosives expert Sergeant C.M. Weathers dug up the unexploded shell, a newspaper photographer asked, "Could you dust it off a little bit so I can take a picture?" "Would you like us to put a little sandpaper on it and blow us all to hell?" asked Weathers. "Never mind," said the photographer as he backed away, "that'll do just fine."
Even when the anti-aircraft shells went off where they were supposed to, fragments of various sizes fell all over the city, including at shipyards and aircraft plants where late-night shifts were at work. According to the Los Angeles Examiner, 5,000 workers in the Calship Yard in San Pedro "scrambled to safety...when a sudden rain of anti-aircraft shell fragments showered down over the yards."
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