Light One Candle:A Survivor's Tale from Lithuania to Jerusalem by Ganor Solly

Author:Ganor, Solly [Ganor, Solly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2003-04-18T00:00:00+00:00

11

Winter 1941

The morning of December 7, 1941, a Japanese armada of thirty warships, including two battleships, two heavy cruisers, and six aircraft carriers mounting 423 aircraft, cruised toward Oahu. Diplomatic tensions between Japan and the United States had reached an impasse over Japan’s military expansion into China, and despite warnings of a possible attack in the Pacific islands, the American fleet lay quietly at anchor in Pearl Harbor. It was a brilliantly sunny Sunday morning. About a third of the crews were on shore leave, and many officers and enlisted men had spent a typical Saturday night at parties and clubs in town. The surprise was complete. Local church bells were ringing when the first bombs fell.

Air raid sirens sounded too late in Honolulu, but when word of the attack reached the U.S. mainland, sirens sounded up and down the West Coast. In Hollywood, California, twenty-year-old Clarence Matsumura was walking home from his job at a food market when he heard the news.

Like other second–generation Japanese or Nisei, Cal Matsumura gave little thought to the fact that the United States now considered the Japanese to be belligerent. He was an American, born and raised in Wyoming. He was a member of the local Congregational Church. He had graduated from John Marshall High School in Hollywood. Some of the Disney kids and other children of movie moguls and actors were his classmates. He was attending Los Angeles Trade Technical Junior College, working toward a license in the burgeoning field of radio and telecommunications. Like most American boys, he wanted a car of his own, and was holding down two part–time jobs—one at the food market, the other as a repairman at a large radio wholesaler—to earn the money. What did Pearl Harbor have to do with him?

The next evening Franklin Delano Roosevelt announced that the United States had declared war on Japan. The day after that Cal’s boss at Radio Products Sales Company called him and two other Nisei employees into his office. He had no complaints, he said, but if he did receive any complaints from customers about the Nisei working there, Clarence and his friends might have to be let go.

The West Coast was designated Defense Zone One, and was soon effectively under martial law. Rumors flew. A submarine had been captured off Santa Barbara. There were rumors of sabotage in local industries. Clarence’s parents and other Issei, or first–generation immigrants, were questioned by the FBI. Clarence’s apartment was searched for transmitters. He had no idea how the government knew he had radio equipment.

Irony of ironies, the same fear of sabotage in Hawaii had helped assure the near total destruction of American defenses there. The local command had been more worried about sabotage by Hawaiians of Japanese descent than about an attack from Japan itself. Ammunition aboard American ships in the harbor was stored in padlocked steel chests which frantic sailors had to crack open with hammers and crowbars. Aircraft at Wheeler field were lined up in tidy rows, under guard.

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