[Dixielandjazz] "1941" (was PBS series "The War")

[Don Robertson]

The Movie 1941 was loosely based on a real incident in Southern 
California.  It really happened in Feb, 1942 after Pearl Harbor.  I was 
living in Long Beach, CA and was 7 years old.  There were occasional air 
raid alerts with sirens and searchlights etc.  There was also some kind 
of Army installation in a vacant field behind my school 6 or 7 blocks 
away.  One night I was awakened by what turned out to be Anti Aircraft 
Artillery  (AAA)  in this Army installation  going Kaboom Kaboom  into 
the sky.  I could see the flashes from my upstairs bedroom window on 
which my mother quickly closed the curtains.  It then became a fully 
blown air raid with sirens and searchlights. 

We had a hunting dog in a pen in the back yard.  He was so panicked by 
the noise, he jumped the fence and roamed around the neighborhood.  
After that we could not keep him in and he eventually was hit by a car 
and died.  The incident became known as the battle of Los Angeles (see 
link below), and was apparently triggered by some weather balloons that 
spooked some National Guard outfit and they began shooting  and so did 
everyone else.  However, I don't think John Beloshi was flying around in 
his P-40 shooting his guns.  There was at this time or shortly 
thereafter a Japanese sub spotted off Santa Barbara.  Which inspired  
the incident in the movie where the guy blew his house away with the 
field gun the Army left there.

See:
www.sfmuseum.net/hist9/aaf2.html

Don "I wuz there" Robertson