[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