The heavens were clear the evening of February 24, 1942, but Los Angeles, California was on high alert.
The Japanese enemy was lurking in the waters off shore, somewhere.
At this point during World War II, the Japanese forces had swept through Asia, Burma, into parts of Borneo, with the Philippine Islands swiftly falling. Japan appeared to have the upper hand, with little resistance. Eight Japanese submarines had spent much of December 1941 scouring the waters along the West Coast of the United States, destroying ships and killing six men.
The night before, on February 23, as President Roosevelt gave one of his many fireside chats to America, the Imperial Japanese Navy submarine, 1-17, surfaced to shell the Ellwood Oil Field, just over one-hundred miles to the north of L.A. More nerve wracking, an eye witness of the attack on Ellwood claimed the submarine, and its fire power, headed south, more than likely to the larger target, the City of Angels. [Read more…] about World War II – The War Over Los Angeles
As the 353 Japanese aircraft rained death and destruction across the Island of Oahu, Takeo Yoshikawa, using his alias of vice-counsel Tadashi Morimura, was hurriedly burning his implicating files inside the Japanese Consulate on Nuuanu Avenue. The 13,400-square-foot grounds of the Japanese consulate, in a well-to-do neighborhood, displayed a gold imperial chrysanthemum crest outside the two-story main building where the smoke billowed from the chimney, as the pile of incriminating evidence was destroyed.
