Richard Yates | Oregon Voices: Klamath Falls Goes to War: A Personal and Newspaper Reminiscence | Oregon Historical Quarterly, 107.3

OREGON VOICES

Klamath Falls Goes to War

A Personal and Newspaper Reminiscence

by Richard Yates

WORLD WAR II BEGAN FOR ME on Monday December 8, 1941, when Mrs. Hackett, my seventh-grade teacher at Fremont School, brought her radio to class for us to hear President Franklin D. Roosevelt declare war on Japan. Although we had been vicariously experiencing war in Europe and Asia for most of our young lives — we collected and traded "war cards" from chewing-gum packs, and our action figures were lead soldiers in World War I uniforms — the Japanese attack brought the reality of war home to us and would overshadow our adolescence.

On that Monday, the Klamath Falls Evening Herald reported that the Japanese fleet was now operating off the West Coast and that Japanese reconnaissance squadrons had flown over San Francisco. While these reports were later found to be untrue, the population in Pacific Coast cities and towns was galvanized into action. Civil defense agencies were mobilized, blackouts ordered from Canada to Mexico, radio stations were taken off the air, and military security measures were put in place. The U.S. Army announced that "a ring of steel sufficient to meet any threat of invasion" was in place. There was also much genuine news to cause disquiet. Japanese forces were overrunning the Far East from the Philippines to the Dutch East Indies, and by the second week of the war, it was reported that Japanese submarines were successfully attacking ships along the West Coast.

The citizens of Klamath Falls, Oregon, rose to the occasion, purchasing their share of war bonds and volunteering for military service, civil-defense positions, the ambulance corps, and the farm labor corps. The town's darker side, as in so many places, showed intolerance toward Japanese Americans and those thought not to be supporting the war effort, such as the Jehovah's Witnesses.

As the war progressed, Klamath Falls, perhaps more than any city in Oregon outside of Portland, was able to play an important part in the nation's war effort. Because of the town's proximity to vast rangeland to the east, the U.S. Navy established a base for training bomber pilots for duty on carriers in the Pacific. The altitude and cool climate was ideally suited for a major rehabilitation hospital for Marines suffering from tropical diseases acquired in the Pacific campaigns. And its close proximity to a Japanese relocation camp, with over eighteen thousand internees at nearby Tule Lake, California, made Klamath Falls a major supply point for that facility and the army base assigned to guard it.

Crowds watch the annual Buckaroo Days parade on Main Street in Klamath Falls during World War II.

Courtesy Klamath County Museum

Klamath Falls was a bright spot in depression-ridden Oregon. During that uneasy December, the U.S. Department of Commerce released figures showing that Klamath County was surpassed only by Multnomah County in manufacturing output and payroll.¹ The city, with a population of 16,497, was the fourth largest in the state.² Jobs were plentiful, and in 1940 Klamath County workers had the highest average yearly wage in Oregon at $3,337.³ The area's farms were producing substantial crops of potatoes, onions, grains, and livestock; and lumber mills, box factories, and logging operations in nearby forests offered work for hundreds of people. My dad, in search of adventure, had moved us all in 1939 from Boston, Massachusetts, to Klamath Falls, where he had easily found work as an industrial electrician servicing the mills in the area.

Evidence of the prosperity was the weekend shopping and (for many) drinking spree. I remember on summer Saturday nights the town's Main Street was alive with strolling people. Two giant beer and pool parlors, the Waldorf and the Klamath Billiards, hosted thirsty loggers, mill workers, and ranch hands. Six theaters showed Hollywood films, from shoot-'em-up westerns at the Vox, Rainbow, and Pine Tree to the more sophisticated offerings at the elegant Pelican and the newly constructed art deco Esquire and suburban Tower.

IN THE EARLY WEEKS OF THE WAR, a flurry of rumors of a Japanese fleet off the coast brought orders to prepare for blackouts. Two days after Pearl Harbor, Klamath Falls failed its first wartime test. The official air-raid signal, a blast from the Southern Pacific station, pierced the air at two in the morning, calling for a citywide blackout. Uninformed residents, wondering what was going on, switched on their lights, illuminating the entire town.⁴ With more public education, subsequent blackouts were more successful. My family lived on Jefferson Street on a hill overlooking the city. The kids on the street thought the blackouts were exciting — shades of the London Blitz, which we had read so much about. When we heard the air-raid warning, we rushed to the overlook at the end of the street to watch the lights gradually dim over the city.

The Klamath Commandos was a group of women and girls who provided hospitality to soldiers on troop trains and to injured veterans.

Courtesy Klamath County Museum

The city was divided into Air Raid Precaution Sectors, air-raid wardens were appointed, and the Evening Herald ran full-page directions on how civilians were to act in an air raid.⁵ My dad joined the police reserves, which entitled him to wear an armband and a helmet with a civil-defense logo and to possess a police .38-caliber pistol. He attended meetings that covered a full range of emergencies, from mustard-gas attacks and espionage to traffic control. In order to deprive any local Axis agents of information, participants were warned not to divulge what they learned. The police reserve motto, "Don't talk," was emphasized at the end of each meeting. At one point, a call went out for a hundred firefighter reserves. Firefighting didn't possess the glamour of air-raid wardens and police reserves, however, and weeks later only thirty-eight volunteers had showed up.⁶

Junior high school students were taught the shapes and configurations of Japanese bombers so we could become official air watchers, a job we relished. My friends and I tacked charts of silhouetted Mitsubishi bombers and Zero fighters on our bedroom walls and fantasized about them flying over the city to bomb our strategic box factories and potato warehouses.

As the weeks progressed, Klamath Falls began to receive government allocations for civil-defense materials. Over fifteen thousand gas masks were earmarked for the city, which caused the local newspaper to complain that while most of the people who lived in the city would be protected, another ten thousand people outside the urban area would be vulnerable. Klamath High School received fifteen Indian water-back pumps to fight incendiary fires, and many students and an occasional faculty member received unexpected showers during practice runs on the new equipment.⁷

For those of us in Boy Scout and Cub Scout troops, scrap drives became our major contribution to the war effort. On weekends, our scoutmaster commandeered a truck for us to carry the donations we received. We set out for residential neighborhoods and went door-to-door — one weekend requesting aluminum pots and pans, another time scrap metal, rubber, rags, or paper. Few houses turned us down, and people gave generously. We all had visions of our aluminum being turned into fighter planes and our scrap metal into tanks. In our home, I saved tin foil and pressed it into large balls. My mother saved cooking fat. I was fascinated to learn that Lucky Strike cigarettes had donated the green dye on their packages to the war effort. "Lucky Strike Green has gone to war" became one of the era's most successful advertising slogans, as the familiar red-and-green packages faded into memory.

With the war in its fourth month, Klamath Falls residents received the unwelcome news that a Japanese relocation camp would be built at Tulelake, thirty-five miles south of the city. Newspaper and chambers of commerce from both towns expressed resigned opposition to its construction and hoped it would be built on nonagricultural land and that no internees would be allowed to remain in the area after the emergency. By March, construction on the camp began in earnest. Hundreds of workers were recruited to build a thousand barrack buildings within a month. By the end of April, the camp was ready to accommodate over ten thousand Japanese internees and a contingent of army guards — larger than many Oregon cities. On my way to school, I remember seeing trainloads of bewildered and uprooted Japanese Americans waiting on sidings for transportation to the camp. Local residents labeled it the "Jap Camp" and grumbled about it throughout the war, unfairly claiming that the residents received special treatment.⁸

A 105mm howitzer, used in drives to sell war bonds, sits on Main Street in Klamath Falls.

Courtesy of the author

Hollywood joined the war effort by providing stars to promote bond drives throughout the nation. My friends and I were thrilled to learn that Klamath Falls would not be overlooked. Motion picture star Johnnie Sheffield, accompanied by an army tank, was coming to town for a bond rally. Johnnie wasn't exactly Bogart or Gable, and the fact that he was only eleven years old didn't diminish his luster. Kids knew who he was — he was Tarzan's and Jane's son and had swung through the trees with them in many episodes. The town turned out for a big parade, the Scouts marching with the Salvation Army, the Red Cross, and the high school Pep Peppers rally squad, followed by Johnnie, dressed in his Cub Scout uniform, and his mother riding in the town's only Lincoln convertible. The tank brought up the rear. Johnnie stopped at Main and South Sixth streets, jumped up on the tank, and gave an enthusiastic pitch for war bonds.⁹ Over the course of the war, many other stars would come to town — Eddie North, Big Boy Williams, and Russell Hayden — all destined for obscurity but at the time looking great as they waved to us from the back of our community convertible. The stars were usually accompanied by an assortment of military hardware. My favorite was the jeep, and for the price of some war-savings stamps you could get a ride down the hill from Jefferson Street to Pine and back up again. Many of us made the trip over and over until our money ran out. One month, the chairman of the war-bond drive reported that enough rides had been purchased to buy a bomber and enough gas to get it to Tokyo. If the next month's quota was met, they could purchase five pursuit planes to go with it.¹⁰

In July 1942, the Herald & News reported that city officials believed that a new campaign for moral uplift would help the war effort. The local bordellos were the first target, and for a few weeks police raids were the fashion. Illegal gambling was next on the list, but unhappily for officials there was little illegal gambling visible in the city — that is until their eyes fell on Louie Polin's establishment. Louie was a downtown merchant who ran a convenience-like odds-and-ends store on a strategic corner of Main Street. In it was a pinball machine, and it was rumored that there was a payoff for winners. Louie was hauled off to court, charged and fined, and with press photographers, state and local officials, and police in attendance, the pinball machine was sledge-hammered to pieces. Later, as support for the campaign, the Pine Tree Theater ran lurid advertisements for a film entitled Marijuana with the subtitle "Sower of Seeds of Passion that Reaps a Harvest of Madness." Unfortunately, the youth of the city were denied the opportunity to see the film. It was only showing at midnight, well past our curfew hour.¹¹

The war was brought closer to us in June when a Japanese submarine shelled the Oregon coast and in September when a Japanese bomber flew over Brookings, our nearest coastal town, and then up the Chetco River, where it dropped an incendiary bomb in the forest. The fire it started was observed by a nearby lookout and quickly extinguished. Later, we learned that the plane may have been launched from a submarine.¹²

ON SEPTEMBER 21, 1942, THE Jehovah Witness riots broke out in downtown Klamath Falls. Because their beliefs barred them from saluting the American flag or serving in the armed forces, the Witnesses were accused of being un-American, of working against the war effort, and, by some, of being Nazi sympathizers. To the dismay of many residents, the Witnesses chose Klamath Falls for their western convention that year, and for a number of days before the riot the eighteen hundred convention-goers were engaged in an active campaign of proselytizing. Scores of Witnesses fanned out through the city, knocking on doors, passing out literature, and posting placards. On Sunday, a thousand angry people gathered around the convention hall to protest. Sensing an opportunity to sell some war bonds, a local service group set up a booth and used a loudspeaker to urge people to buy. They did a thriving business with crowd members but not the Witnesses. Inside the hall, the Witnesses' national leader was about to address the convention over a telephone line from Cleveland, Ohio. Outside, at the back of the hall, someone in the crowd climbed up to the telephone cable and began to cut it. The Witnesses rushed from the building with clubs and rocks, setting off a wild melée of fist fights, with people clubbing each other and overturning cars. Outnumbered, the Witnesses retreated into the convention and the crowd moved to the front of the building. Women emerged from the hall with pamphlets and records, which were seized and burned. The crowd tore down Witness posters and tossed stinkbombs into the building.

The chief of police, attempting to restore order, fired tear gas and managed to gas both sides of the conflict, while speakers urged calm over the loudspeaker. City police, volunteers, and, later, state police worked well into the night to put down the disturbance, while the women's ambulance corps carried wounded to the hospital. The next day, with the situation now quiet, the Witnesses righted their overturned cars and left town. It was rumored that leaders of the group were summoning lawyers from San Francisco to sue the city, but I can find no record of them following through with the threat. Editorial writers blamed both sides for the conflict and urged people to respect the right of everyone to freely express their views. The Herald & News urged readers to just "ignore them," while the Oregonian observed that Klamath residents had a history of being "direct activists."¹³

WITH RESOURCES AND MANpower flowing into the war effort, the city experienced shortages of many basic items. Of most concern was the food supply, and to combat the shortages the government began to ration sugar, meat, dairy products, and canned goods, with heavy penalties for those caught hoarding. As the food supply diminished, the government urged citizens to start Victory Gardens to supplement their rations. In July, there was a beer shortage, and "Beer less Thursday" was inaugurated. To supplement the national shortage of rubber, the area was selected to run a forty-acre test project for the growing of Russian dandelions, which could be used for synthetic rubber. When the first crop was ready, schoolchildren were sent out to harvest it. The editor of the Herald & News attended a dinner at Saris restaurant where the main meat course was muskrat or, as the locals called them, "marsh rabbits." He heartily recommended the cuisine, citing how tasty and clean the locally abundant vegetarian rats were.¹⁴ One item that seemed to be in good supply was Spam. For breakfast, we often ate Spam and eggs, for lunch Spam sandwiches, and for dinner Spam casserole.

The manufacture of new cars ended, and rationing of gas and tires was put in place. On the day before gas rationing, lines of Klamath car owners with jugs, milk cans, and anything that would hold liquid crowded into gas stations.¹⁵ Clothing took the next hit with the introduction of the cuffless, pleatless, lapelless "victory suit." The fat-tired, heavy-fendered Schwinn bikes we were so used to were replaced with the stripped-down "victory bike." I spent my summer earnings to purchase one. The copper penny was the next casualty, replaced by one made of steel, which many tried to pass off for dimes. On the whole, few of us felt deprived. Kids my age had lived our entire lives during the Depression, and we could stretch a nickel in all sorts of ways.

In August 1943, the Pelican Theater, the town's most elegant movie house, was scheduled to play This Is the Army, starring Lt. Ronald Reagan and George Murphy. The first night was a gala evening affair, with the band from Camp White providing background music. By then, blackouts had become a thing of the past, and I remember watching searchlights in front of the theater crisscrossing the sky and giving it the flavor of a Hollywood premier. Many people were aghast at the admission price, an astounding $3.50. The film ran for four days.

The Tule Lake internment camp, where thousands of Japanese were held during World War II, was about thirty-five miles from Klamath Falls.

Courtesy Klamath County Museum

I was an avid newspaper and magazine reader, moved pins on my wall maps to reflect every allied advance and Axis retreat, and I looked forward to the annual Time magazine current-affairs test administered in my high school social studies class. The headlines in the Herald & News were geography lessons unto themselves. Each day's headline, usually in two-inch type, announced happenings in exotic places — "Reds Circle Smolensk" or "Marines Advance in Guadalcanal." The war stories were often accompanied by maps, with Axis powers shown in black and emblazoned with swastikas or rising suns. At the movies, there was always a Movietone newsreel, where announcers in stentorian voices backed by dramatic music reviewed the latest war happenings.

In October, discontent with the nearby internment camp began to surface. Many thought the internees were being treated better than Americans, even though the majority in the camp were U.S. citizens. High school students were convinced that a shortage of soda pop could be attributed to the camp. Outrage mounted when it was learned that a truck hit by a train near the camp was full of meat, part of a black-market operation run by a camp manager. Governor Charles Sprague complained publicly about the camp and the residents' reluctance to engage in farm labor. He advocated deportation after the war of those who refused to work in the harvest.

This U.S. Marine Corps barracks and hospital located near Klamath Falls helped boost the town's wartime economy.

OHS neg., CN 006512

In mid October 1943, eight hundred Japanese farmworkers went on a protest strike in the middle of the harvest, unhappy with the public burial of a worker killed in an accident. Tensions grew as workers from other camps were brought in to break the strike and were paid higher wages than the strikers had been. While mediation was proceeding, a group of young hotheads broke into the infirmary and assaulted the medical officer. By early November, the camp was virtually under the control of the protesters, and their leaders called for the resignation of the hospital staff and the camp administrators. They also broke through a barrier fence that had been constructed around the administrative and medical area and surrounded the director's home. Martial law was declared, and over three hundred protesters were placed in a stockade. By mid January 1944, things had quieted down at the center; the strike was over, and the army had turned over control of the camp to the War Relocation Authority. In the meantime, staff members on leave had spread tales in Klamath Falls of the "Jap Riots," and newspapers on the coast were reporting that the camp was out of control. Congressional committees began an investigation and called for administrators to be dismissed. In Tokyo, the Japanese government threatened to review its treatment of American internees in Japan.¹⁶ By February, however, all was quiet, and the Herald & News noted that Japan had sent sixteen barrels of soy sauce to the Tulelake camp through the International Red Cross.¹⁷

DURING 1944, THE HERALD & News, like newspapers throughout the nation, regularly ran stories about local residents who joined the armed forces, as well as longer articles on those who distinguished themselves in battle and those killed in action or taken prisoner. The demands of the armed forces created serious labor shortages throughout the nation, particularly in places such as Klamath County, where there were mills to run, trees to log, and crops to harvest.

The construction of the large Marine Barracks hospital and the ever-expanding Naval Air Station called for a steady supply of construction workers, but the most critical labor was needed in agriculture, especially during the fall harvests. A program to bring Braceros into the U.S. was inaugurated, and Mexican workers became a common sight on Klamath Falls' Main Street. Schoolchildren were put to work, and many of us have memories of painful weekends picking potatoes or onions. Later, a Women's Land Army was organized to harvest crops. Women over eighteen were eligible to join and were outfitted in snappy uniforms (costing $6.20 each).¹⁸ The government also brought German and Italian prisoners-of-war to Klamath to work in the fields. Italian prisoners were first sent to Tulelake to build a POW camp there, and it was reported that they, unlike the Germans, were not security risks.¹⁹

During the summer fire season, boys from Klamath High School were recruited to fight fires. During my junior year, I was assigned to the Klamath Forest Protective Association and was sent with a dozen others to a camp north of Chiloquin. We were assigned a war-surplus truck painted in olive drab with a large white star on the side. Riding off to fight fires, I felt I was part of the war effort. Squads of conscientious objectors were also employed for firefighting and distinguished themselves by their efforts.

In February 1944, my family received word that my mother's younger brother, Louis, had been lost on a bombing run over Germany. Within months, the happy news came to us that he had parachuted to safety and was a prisoner-of-war in a German Stalag. He had been a non-flying maintenance officer for the Eighth Air Force, and it seems he had begged a ride on a bombing mission only to be shot down his first time out. I remember the first heavily censored letter we received from him assuring us he was safe, was being treated well, and was living on a diet based heavily on potatoes.

As the war stretched into 1944, Klamath Falls took on the characteristics of a wartime boom town. While military bases were being closed in Medford, Corvallis, and Bend, Klamath added them. Thousands of marines filled up the new hospital, which authorities told citizens to call the Marine Barracks because the patients were usually not bedridden. The Naval Air Station expanded rapidly, and we heard navy torpedo bombers at all hours, flying in formation over the city on their way to practice ranges east of the city. One day, I watched a mock air battle take place as a formation of Liberator bombers made a dummy bombing raid on Klamath Falls and our local aviators went up to intercept them. It was exciting to watch the dogfight with bombers and fighters taking aim at each other.²⁰ The toll on the novice pilots during their weeks of practice was alarming, and hardly a week went by without news of a pilot crash-landing in a field, the forest, and even Klamath Lake. Not too far away, at Army Camp Tulelake, over a thousand military police guarded the Japanese Relocation Center and the temporary Italian and German pow camp. The War Relocation Administration announced that the population of the Tulelake camp in early September numbered 18,689 — more people than lived in Klamath Falls.²¹

With the creation of the new bases, recently arrived dependents and workers faced an acute housing shortage, forcing the government to construct new housing units and trailer parks. On the streets of Klamath Falls, the usual throngs of loggers, cowboys, and mill workers seeking weekend recreation were joined by marines, naval aviators, soldiers, and Braceros.

At school, we respected those high school graduates who returned to visit after basic training, wearing their tight-fitting sailor suits or marine greens while awaiting orders that would send them to the various theaters of war. We knew that if the war continued, many of us would join them after our graduation. Our more immediate concern was the influx of marines, sailors, and soldiers stationed at the nearby bases. We agreed with the Herald & News that girls should be cautious and entertain their servicemen dates in their homes, where parents could keep an eye on them.²² We hoped, of course, that the warning didn't apply to us. In an underhanded way, some boys sought to stigmatize girls who dated servicemen and whispered about how it wasn't an "in thing to do."

In early January 1945, the newspaper reported that some Klamath residents had seen a large balloon flying over the city. A Hellcat fighter from the naval base was sent up to shoot it down, but the fighter's guns jammed and the balloon continued flying to the southeast, eventually landing near Adin, California. Crews from the base recovered the balloon and returned it to Klamath Falls. Army intelligence determined that it was Japanese in origin and was one of many that had been sighted on the West Coast. The Klamath bomb was the first to be captured intact, and the military extended a shroud of secrecy over the entire operation. Meanwhile, news of the bomb was being spread throughout southern Oregon by word of mouth.²³ The government's secrecy policy did not prevent people from listening to Japanese propaganda broadcasts over short-wave radio, where they heard of the bombs and the horrendous damage they supposedly were incurring in North America.

The government's policy of secrecy had some tragic results. On May 5, 1945, while the Herald & News trumpeted that "Germany had Surrendered," there was also a report of a woman and five children who were killed by a mysterious explosion while they were on a church picnic east of Klamath Falls near the town of Bly. It was soon common knowledge that they had been killed by a balloon bomb — the only civilian casualties of World War II on the continental U.S. The Herald & News briefly criticized the government's news blackout after the Bly tragedy, more or less letting the cat out of the bag, and other news stories occasionally appeared on bomb sightings.²⁴

GERMANY SURRENDERED ON May 7, 1945. While there were boisterous celebrations in the East and in Europe, the Herald & News reported that "Few celebrate surrender here." Schools and stores closed, but banks and theaters stayed open. War bond sales continued. There was an awareness that the fighting and casualties wouldn't be over until the end of the war in the Pacific.²⁵

Marines celebrate V-J Day at the barracks in Klamath Falls.

Courtesy Klamath County Museum

Even after V-E Day, the main concern on the home front was still food shortages: meat, sugar, and shortening for baking. New food-and-gas rationing books were distributed. The good news was that women might be able to buy nylon stockings by Christmas and that shoe rationing would end. It was even rumored that automobile production might resume at the end of the year.²⁶

On August 8, Klamath Falls learned that the atomic bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima and, the next day, on Nagasaki. Our feelings about such massive destruction and loss of life were tempered by the daily drumbeat in the papers and on the radio about Japanese atrocities toward prisoners-of-war, the losses to the navy from Kamikazes, and the thought of how many casualties the U.S. would suffer in the upcoming invasion of Japan. It was with great relief when we learned of the Japanese surrender on August 14.

The town went wild. Mill whistles blew, church bells rang, and firecrackers went off. People emerged from their houses and spilled onto the streets as if they had been penned up for four years. As the evening progressed, a mad celebration began downtown on Main Street as cars and trucks with horns tooting and tin cans tied behind paraded up and down the street. Sailors and marines kissed girls, and people were dancing everywhere. The next day was an official holiday, and stores, bars, and liquor stores were closed. Church services took place throughout the city.²⁷

After the days of celebration, the transformation to peacetime seemed to happen with breathtaking speed. The day after the surrender, gas and can goods rationing ended, and the government announced that seven million men would be released from the armed services, six thousand of them from Klamath County. The general censorship of the press was lifted, and, to everyone's surprise, full details of the Japanese balloon bomb attacks in the Bly area were published.

The biggest question for the city fathers was the disposition of the military and wartime civilian facilities in and around Klamath Falls — the Naval Air Station, the Marine Barracks, and the Japanese Relocation Center. They quickly learned that the Marine Barracks would become a marine separation center for the Northwest. A month later, the navy announced that the Naval Air Station would close and be declared surplus. The Japanese Relocation Center would exist for some time longer, as the army processed and released the internees there and settled the problem of the thousands of people who had requested relocation to Japan.²⁸

People reacted to peacetime in many ways. Lumber workers went out on strike, joining the labor unrest that was occurring throughout the nation. Many citizens who regularly and patriotically purchased war bonds began redeeming them for cash, as it looked like there might soon be things to purchase. Hunters took to the woods and fields as ammunition became available. My classmates and I were relieved to know our chances of being in the armed services had been significantly lessened. The most exciting news was that local car dealers would soon have models of new cars in their showrooms. Balsiger Motors would have a new Ford on display (only one) in October, followed up by a Chevrolet and a Pontiac in November. And Kaiser-Fraser was seeking a dealer in Klamath for its exciting new line of cars.²⁹

The Herald & News took on a new complexion. Years of black-banner headlines announcing military campaigns, setbacks, and victories were replaced by headlines on world-series victories, national murders and kidnappings, and local events. Now we read stories about prisoner-of-war releases, the discharge of local service people, and the growing problems of finding housing and jobs for them. Editor Malcolm Epley turned his attention from scolding about sagging War Bond purchases to decrying sports fans for their unsportsmanlike actions at basketball games. We also read about Red Chinese victories over the Nationalists and Soviet intransigence in Europe, and we learned in January that the army had made radar contact with the moon.³⁰ On March 16, a banner headline — "Jap Camp Folds" — heralded the end of a shameful chapter in U.S. history and summed up the ambiguous attitude of the locals toward the camp's inhabitants.

The Naval Air Station was turned over to the city as the beginning of a much-needed municipal airport, later dedicated as Kingsley Field after an Air Corps hero. The Marine Barracks was turned into a vocational training institution, which later became the Oregon Institute of Technology. Many veterans whose names were selected in a lottery were awarded farmlands in the Tulelake area.³¹

By mid 1946, the town had returned to a pre-war normalcy as loggers, millworkers, ranchers, and shoppers thronged Main Street on weekends. Many of the cars on the streets seemed newer, and women flaunted new outfits and nylon stockings. And if we looked closely at many of the young men, we could detect them wearing a small badge with an eagle flying in a circle. Derisively called the "ruptured duck," it was the emblem of a discharged serviceman.

Notes

^1.�(Klamath Falls) Evening Herald, December 22, 1941.

^2.� Earl Snell, comp., Oregon Blue Book 1941–1942 (Salem: State Printing Department, 1941), 279.

^3.�Evening Herald, December 22, 1941.

^4.� Ibid., December 10, 1941.

^5.� Ibid., December 24, 1941.

^6.� Ibid., January 19, January 22, 1942.

^7.� Ibid., February 11, 1942.

^8.� See Andrie Girdner and Anne Loftis, The Great Betrayal: The Evacuation of the Japanese Americans During World War II (New York: MacMillan, 1969). Newspaper stories on the Tulelake internment camp were regularly published in the Herald & News from February 2, 1942, through March 16, 1946.

^9.�Evening Herald, March 6, 1942.

^10.� Ibid., June 6, 1942.

^11.� Ibid., July 22, 1942.

^12.� Ibid., September 15, 1942. As a postwar aftermath of the bombing, the pilot returned to Brookings, and apologized. The citizens of Brookings, to show there were no hard feelings, made him an honorary citizen.

^13.� Ibid., September 21, 1942; Oregonian, September 23, 1942.

^14.� Ibid., March 30, 1943.

^15.� Ibid., December 1, 1942.

^16.� See Girder, The Great Betrayal, 320–3.

^17.�Herald & News, February 9, 1944. See also Herald & News, March 16, 1946.

^18.�Herald & News, April 14, 1944.

^19.� Ibid., June 7, 1944.

^20.� Ibid., September 16, 1944.

^21.� Ibid., September 2, 1944.

^22.� Ibid., March 5, 1943.

^23.� Beginning in November 1944, the Japanese military sent hundreds of balloons over the Pacific Northwest, hoping to cause massive fires. The bombs did little damage.

^24.�Herald & News, May 25, May 31, July 5, 1945. See also Robert C. Mikesh, Japan's World War II Balloon Bomb Attacks on North America (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1973); and John McPhee, "Balloons of War," New Yorker, January 29, 1996.

^25.�Herald & News, July 5, 1945.

^26.� Ibid., May 24, 1945.

^27.� Ibid., August 14, August 15, 1945.

^28.� Ibid., September 21, 1945.

^29.� Ibid., October 24, 1945. Full production of automobiles would officially start in January 1946.

^30.� Ibid., January 25, 1946.

^31.� Ibid., March 3, 1946.

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