This article was published in the daily newspaper The Daily Breeze, of Torrance, California, USA and on their web site on http://www.dailybreeze.com/content/bln/nmlivinghist9.html on Wednesday, February 12, 2003.
Other documents and information on the LA 1942 case are here.
By Dennis Johnson
DAILY BREEZE
Just as they likely did early Feb. 25, 1942, armed guards stood watch Saturday over Fort MacArthur's Battery Osgood-Farley in San Pedro.
An MP manned the guard shack at the entrance to the modern-day military museum, while two others walked the rampart above the massive concrete installation. A World War II-era searchlight stood at the ready below.
Dorothea Evans remembers back to that day when Los Angeles went into self-defense mode, sure the Japanese were looking for a new target, three months after they attacked Pearl Harbor.
As a teenager living in Los Angeles, she remembers hearing the sirens and looking outside to see spotlights throwing their beams miles into the sky while the big guns boomed, raining flak down on cars, people and buildings.
"I took one look at it and fainted I'm embarrassed to say," said Evans on Saturday. "It was a tad too realistic for me."
What Evans remembered was the Great Los Angeles Air Raid of 1942, when unidentified flying objects caused the entire city to go on alert while coastal defense guns fired 1,440 anti-aircraft rounds into the air. The raid resulted in three deaths, attributed to traffic accidents, but no enemy craft were ever found.
What helped her were volunteers at the Fort MacArthur Military Museum's monthly living history program, an event aimed at drawing real historical events out of the books and into the here and now.
Through authentic period clothing and restored military items, the program can present the information to people in a performance art-like setting, said Steve Nelson, the museum's director. The idea is based on more famous living history installations such as Colonial Williamsburg or the Plimoth Plantation.
"There certainly is no reason we can't create the different eras represented by this hill," he said. "We want to be on the leading edge by taking the last century and bringing it to life for the current generation."
For example, next month's event on the Nike Missile program will include information on the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis, he said. Nelson hopes that the museum and Fort MacArthur will one day be viewed as less of a park and more of a historical site.
Find out more: For more information about Fort MacArthur Military Museum's monthly living history program, call 310-548-2631 or log on to, www.ftmac.org.
"The right to speak, and the right to print, without the right to know, are pretty empty." Harold Cross -the father of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
