Charles Phillips: Memories for Memorial Day

Photo: Philip Liborio Gangi

The gun batteries south of the Golden Gate Bridge are more than 60 years old.

It was May 27, just before Armistice Day in 1941, when the test firing of the 12-inch coastal defense guns at Fort Barry in the Marin headlands "lit up the evening sky."

Then, on Sept. 5 of the same year, more batteries limbered up their guns - the test firing rumbled the ground; shocks that were felt all over town.

With impending war winds sweeping across the globe, the War Department authorized the construction of an anti-submarine net to be strung across the Golden Gate on Sept. 15.

On Dec. 5, our harbor defenses were placed on full war alert and troops were issued 40 rounds of small arms ammunition each. Meanwhile, the Fourth Air Force began an air defense exercise that was to continue from Dec. 6 to Dec. 11.

World War II had been raging in Asia for more than six years and in Europe for more than two. The country had already begun mobilizing its industries and building up its armed forces. Planes, tanks, ships and submarines were being cranked out in record numbers while all across the land the Army, Navy and Marine Corps training camps were doing a "land office business."

Still, when Dec. 7 dawned and the Japanese Empire attacked Pearl Harbor the nation and the City were shocked and stunned.

Out here on the west coast, on the day the world war came to San Francisco, thousands of folks gathered at Ocean Beach and peered out to sea as soldiers of the recently activated state guard took up positions on the Golden Gate Bridge.

It wasn't just the civilian population and our military forces that were looking out over the Pacific. In fact, Lt. General John L. Dewitt, Fourth Army commander at the Presidio, seemed to have discovered a lax attitude by city leadership. After a Dec. 8 blackout drill, which had not gone particularly well, Dewitt tried to mobilize the city's leadership by telling Mayor Rossi, "Japanese war planes flew over San Francisco last night. You people do not seem to realize we are at war. So get this: Last night there were planes over this community. They were enemy planes - I mean Japanese planes!"

Even though no such thing had happened, at least one San Francisco paper published a map detailing the routes of the attacking planes.

There were coastal defense batteries ringing the bay from the Muir Beach overlook on the north to Half Moon Bay to the south. Artillery batteries were in place at forts Cronkite, Barry, Winfield Scott, Miley and Fort Point. Some of the installations dated back to the 18th and 19th centuries. The western edge of our city was covered by gun emplacements from Battery Chamberlin at Baker Beach to Fort Funston. There was also a two-gun battery at Point Lobos; machine gun nests on Sutro Heights; Coast Guard Station 309 at the corner of Fulton Street and the Great Highway; and the Coastal Defense Base located at the Beach Chalet. There was also the "Great Highway military reservation," which, according to E.R. Lewis' "History of San Francisco Harbor Defense Installations," "occupied a small tract on Ocean Beach opposite Moraga Street. This installation, along with Fort Funston, was a key to controlling the two-mile-long Great Highway Esplanade, which is an excellent landing strip for both airborne (gliders) and parachute troops."

As the days went by, recruiting stations were overrun by eager young men, local politicians made pompous announcements and the USS Hornet sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge, headed to a rendezvous with Japan. The Hornet was loaded with 16 B-25s on their way to spend "30 Seconds Over Tokyo."

Civilian defense units were formed in the neighborhoods and air raid wardens met in the bowels of City Hall to chart out their areas on large maps. Enthusiastic young bicyclists joined the Junior Victory Army to act as couriers.

Up on Twin Peaks, a giant air raid warning siren was mounted while members of the Twin Peaks American Legion Post took up their duties as observers for the Army Air Forces Aircraft Warning Service. At the Laguna Honda Hospital on Seventh Avenue, its Community Victory Garden won an award as the "best planned and most beautiful project" in the nation.

Everyone was chipping in for the war effort. Young men and women from all over were arriving to be shipped out to fight the war in the Pacific or to work in shipyards, defense plants and the docks.

John Dos Passos, a noted author, came to San Francisco to work on an article for Harpers Magazine which appeared in March 1944. After spending some time on the Embarcadero checking out Harry Bridges and his longshoremen, he took a day off to renew a childhood acquaintance with what he called "Old San Pacos Town."

First, he climbed Nob Hill, walked through Chinatown and North Beach, then climbed Telegraph Hill and got to Coit Tower just in time to get out of a sudden rain storm. After wandering around a bit more, he asked somebody about the way to the ocean and followed the suggestion that he take a streetcar to the Cliff House. He had vague memories of the place from his childhood.

The streetcar stopped at a "decrepit barn beside a lunch counter." He went inside the Cliff House, where he saw a Marine sergeant and his golden-haired girlfriend, who was clinging to his arm with both hands on the way to play amusement machines.

In the restaurant the tables were full but the diners were quiet. Lots of family parties with old and "middle age people brooding around a young man or woman in uniform."

Dos Passos had begun to feel lonely and his food had lost its flavor. As he left the Cliff House and climbed uphill toward the streetcar line, he mused, "My coat felt suddenly out at the elbows. Everything about me felt shabby and frayed. Maybe it is that there are many things a civilian in war time feels left out of."

World War II had come to San Francisco - even though our country and our city had united to face the threat, we knew nothing would ever be the same again.