War Hysteria
A man on horseback galloping through the streets of an American city shouting warnings of the approaching enemy -- Boston 1775? No, Seattle 1941. Rather than redcoats, the fear was Japanese bombers. The first weeks and months of World War II on the Pacific Coast produced a war hysteria that ranged from the comic to the tragic, and in the end left a legacy of shame.
Two thousand four hundred miles separate Hawaii from the West Coast of the United States, but after the Pearl Harbor attack Pacific Coast residents felt the distance might as well have been two miles. By the evening of December 7, 1941, a good case of war hysteria gripped Oregon, Washington, and California. Stars in the sky or lights off the coast became Japanese air armadas or invasion fleets. Lee Kennett in his book For the Duration... wrote, "In every war there is an initial, nightmarish phase in which the measure of the enemy has not yet been taken: his strength and capabilities are not known and consequently are often exagerated."
Many West Coast residents remembered a popular 1909 book The Valor of Ignorance by Homer Lea. The author, who claimed to be a Chinese general, predicted a Japanese American war that would start with Hawaii's conquest by Japanese immigrants living in the Hawaiian Islands. Japan would then send 100,000 troops from Hawaii to invade California, Oregon, and Washington. Thirty years later this fanciful prediction haunted the minds of many people whose imaginations were more highly developed than their knowledge of the practicalities of warfare.
The Japanese had no plans to invade the continental United States, but the Pearl Harbor attack proved the Japanese navy could make carrier raids on land targets. On night of December 7, San Francisco endured three separate air raid alerts. According to the official statement, U.S. Army Air Force planes pursued 30 enemy planes over the city. Since no hostile planes flew over San Francisco that night or any other night, the army planes probably chased each other. The next day the commander of the Western Defense Command, Lieutenant General John L. Dewitt, exploded at the press, "There are more damned fools in this locality than I have ever seen....These planes were over our community for a definite period. They were enemy planes. I mean Japanese planes.... I don't think there's any doubt the planes came from a carrier."
Up the coast in Seattle the situation on the evening of December 7th turned ugly when a crowd of 1,000 decided to enforce the blackout on their own. A neon sign at a busy intersection stayed lit after the blackout went into effect; so the crowd began throwing things at the offending sign. Eventually the light went out on both the sign and everyone's common sense; the crowd became a mob that destroyed a six-block area.
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