10:00 pm
February 26, 1942
North Long Beach, California
World War II

Shortly after the air-raid sirens sounded, the entire Los Angeles basin was dark.

Being thirteen years old at the time, I joined our neighbors in the streets to see what was going on. Search lights were scanning the ski and six blocks away at Houghton Park, an army anti-aircraft battery joined many others blasting shell after shell at the alleged enemy aircraft. All hell seemed to break loose with the noise and pieces of shrapnel falling in the streets. We didn’t see any airplanes and therefore thought it was a false alarm.

However, Gerry Casey and other trained pilots staying at the Circle Inn near the infamous traffic circle southwest of the Long Beach Airport (see Steven Speilberg’s film “1941”), claim they saw a flight of “13 airplanes, composed of four flights of three V-formations - all centered upon a single, huge, four-engined bomber,” a one-of-a-kind Douglas B-19.

Douglas B-19

All of the anti-aircraft shells were exploding below the formation of aircraft which was heading east. Fourteen hundred and thirty rounds were fired that memorable night killing two Los Angeles civilians by falling shrapnel.

Secretary of War Henry L. Stimpson was quoted as saying, “People in Los Angeles were seeing things. There was no raid, no airplanes, nothing. It must have been a case of mass hysteria.”

I think the event was was staged by our government to cover-up what really happened that night - the shelling of Hollywood by a Japanese submarine operating just off the end of the Santa Monica Pier.

Captain Toshiro Mifune

Director Steven Spielberg

LA Times Front Page, February 22, 1942

LA Times Front Page, February 24, 1942

Found in the Coast Defense Exhibit at the Cabrillo National Monument in Point Loma December 25, 2009