World War II brought fear -- and opportunity

Margaret “Maggie” Gee dreamed of becoming a pilot after watching Amelia Earhart land in Oakland, completing her solo flight from Honolulu.

“I read about her all the time, but actually seeing her fly a plane was like a dream come true. She was my hero, my inspiration,” Gee, now 84, said recently. “I didn’t care if it was ladylike or not, I wanted to fly.”

Gee, who became one of the first Chinese American women aviators to fly for the U.S. military, is among nearly a dozen World War II veterans and eyewitnesses featured in “California at War,” an hourlong documentary that will air on KCET on Sept. 20, three days before Ken Burns’ seven-part series, “The War.”

Told through photographs, archival footage and interviews, “California at War” paints a vivid picture of this state’s history and growth -- spotlighting such wartime phenomena as the Hollywood Canteen, the Zoot Suit riots and the so-called Battle of Los Angeles in February 1942, when the city mistakenly thought it was under enemy attack.

At first, said Bret Marcus, the documentary’s executive producer, “there was an incredible sense of denial about the war among Californians. The war was more than a continent away. Then the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and there was fear that California would be the next target.”

The fear was not unfounded.

John Sudden was 14, hunting on his parents’ ranch near Santa Barbara, when he saw a torpedo heading toward the H.M. Storey oil tanker.

“The most frightening thing I’d seen before that was looking down and maybe seeing a rattlesnake,” he recalled in the documentary.

The Storey wasn’t hit, but other ships weren’t so lucky.

Richard Quincy tells of standing guard on the oil tanker Montebello, six miles off Cambria, near dawn on Dec. 23, 1941.

“I saw a quick flash of light in the darkness, probably a flashlight,” he said. “Then the torpedo hit.”

As the 38-man crew escaped in lifeboats, they watched the oil tanker’s stern rise and then sink. Quincy recalls desperately rowing to safety while the attacking submarine lobbed shells at them.

“Using a deck gun, they shot nine rounds at us. We all survived,” said the 88-year-old, who lives in Danville, near Oakland.

But, he said, a lot of people doubted the attack had occurred, even when it was reported in the news.

Then, on Feb. 23, 1942, the Japanese attacked the California mainland, firing 13 shells from a sub at the Ellwood oil field north of Santa Barbara.

Although no one was hurt, the incident had a profound psychological effect on coast dwellers and confirmed growing public fears that Japan was capable of bringing war to America’s doorstep.

The documentary spends time on some of the war’s ugliest episodes: the evacuation and forced internment of more than 120,000 people of Japanese descent on the West Coast and the monitoring of German and Italian nationals -- some of whom were sent to labor camps.

It describes how racial tension ran especially high when white servicemen stationed and on leave in Los Angeles went after Mexican American youths.

Over 10 bloody days in June 1943, thousands of young servicemen wandered the streets of Los Angeles, beating up young Mexican males, stripping them of their baggy zoot suits and calling them unpatriotic.

“A buddy of mine and I were in downtown Los Angeles when three sailors beat us up. They didn’t do too well, but when three more joined them, we ran like rabbits,” said former zoot-suiter Rudolph Estrada, who was interviewed in the documentary.

“Sailors would come into my neighborhood,” Estrada said. “Who were they fighting? We were already enlisted in the service. They were fighting little kids. . . . I know because I was one of them.”

Local newspapers began a campaign against the zoot suit-wearing Latinos. A Times headline reported “Ban on Freak Suits Studied by Councilmen.”

The trouble ended when the military ordered a curfew for servicemen.

When Estrada turned 18, he traded his zoot suit for a uniform.

Some of the incidents recounted in “California at War” may be well known to many viewers. Others, including the explosion at Port Chicago, may not be.

On July 17, 1944, two ammunition ships being loaded at Port Chicago, just north of San Francisco, exploded, leveling the port facility and killing 320 people. Of those killed, 202 were black stevedores.

“I heard a loud boom, and thought we were being bombed,” said longtime Oakland resident Mary Tarrant, 88.

“I was so frightened, but I couldn’t see anything because it turned out to be five miles away.”

Only black sailors -- fresh from boot camp -- were assigned the deadly duty of loading ammunition onto ships bound for the Pacific Theater of the war. “They had no training. It was an accident waiting to happen,” said Tarrant’s husband, Eugene, 87, a former Navy seaman who was stationed in the Bay Area at the time.

After the blast, which left body parts strewn across the area, sailors demanded an investigation.

“It didn’t happen,” Tarrant said. “Those who refused to return to work were discharged or court-martialed and convicted of mutiny.”

The documentary also traces the many ways in which doors opened for women during wartime.

Maggie Gee did not let a ban on commercial aviation along the West Coast after Pearl Harbor dash her dream of flying. She pursued it. She moved to Nevada, where she paid $800 to learn to fly.

“I was only 18 and restless,” said Gee, a retired physicist who lives in her hometown of Berkeley. “I wanted to do something more for the war effort.”

She got her chance in 1943, when a pilot shortage propelled her to join the Women’s Air Service Pilots, called WASPs.

She was one of 1,074 women who earned their wings at a military flight school for women in Sweetwater, Texas, that offered the same training that male pilots received.

“I was a novelty. Most of my classmates were not from California and never knew any Asian women,” she said.

Hazel Ah Ying Lee, the one other Chinese American woman in the school, died in a fiery crash in Great Falls, Mont., in 1944, Gee said. Gee ended up working as an instructor at a gunnery school in Las Vegas, training male pilots in navigational skills and riding shotgun on domestic military flights.

In 1944, when the WASP program was disbanded, she returned to California and worked as a real-life Rosie the Riveter at a Richmond shipbuilding company.

“The war opened a door for me, giving me an opportunity to mix with society,” Gee said.

Like most of her female counterparts, after World War II ended, Gee gave up her defense job and moved on.

“I ended up building weapons and never flew again, except as a passenger,” she said.

--

cecilia.rasmussen@latimes.com