“The following incident happened in the early part of 1942, at that time I was a child of 7 years old. I can remember much of what happened, but my mother and father filled in the details as I grew up.

This story is verified by the Japanese I-Fleet Submarine Commander; from N.I.S. Point of View; documented in the World War II TIME-LIFE series. I have the book and the story, I wanted to send it to you but I’m afraid it is buried away.

Shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the residents who lived along the shores of the western United States were scared, jumpy as hell, and poorly defended. They didn’t know what to expect. My family and I lived on ‘the Mesa’, an area of Santa Barbara, California that is flat land, a table top rising above the Pacific Ocean. In those days, that area was sparsely populated; a few scattered homes, cattle range and a few unoccupied Japanese truck farms whose owners were very recently interned. From our house, we had an unobstructed view of the Santa Barbara Channel through the kitchen window.

One morning my mother was looking out to sea through the window, as a so’easter storm was quickly blowing in. A large kelp bed that grows in the area was perhaps 1,000 yards or less off the shore. Suddenly, just outside the kelp line, a submarine surfaced. My mother had an old fashioned telescope like mariners used to use & she focused on the sub.

My father was away doing Block Warden duty, and my mother thought it looked suspicious so she promptly reported it to the Santa Barbara Police. Her name was Val Marvin, residing at 211 Oceano Blvd, Santa Barbara, California. Then, after reporting it, she returned to her telescope, watching until the sub submerged and the so’easter closed in.

In those days, the closest military installation was San Diego, California and the Navy quickly dispatched a few CATALINA flying boats to search. As my father related to me, it took 45 minutes for the flying boats to arrive and by that time, in a storm, the search was futile. However, the CATALINAs kept at it all night, constantly dropping flares and star shells, looking for the sub. My mother was ballistic; she thought the Japanese were invading Santa Barbara.

Just a few miles north of Goleta, California was a then small but productive oil field named ‘ELWOOD’. There were a few scattered wooden oil rigs and several large oil storage tanks. The next day, the Japanese commander surfaced again, under quieter weather, just outside the kelp line, and set his deck gun sights on the storage tanks. He hammered away for half an hour, but could do little more than splinter a couple of oil rigs.

“My father, a World War I Naval veteran, said the guy was a lousy shot. ‘He was so close, you could have hit those storage tanks with a rotten apple.’ Again, the submarine withdrew.

The next day or two, he was sighted one more time off the coast of Santa Barbara, then headed north. About a week later, he was again seen near San Francisco, then he disappeared altogether, presumably headed for friendlier waters.

Very shortly thereafter, the US Army set up an artillery garrison just a couple of blocks from our house on the cliffs of ‘the Mesa’ and remained there for much of the war. As a child, I made many friends among the G.I.s.”

Many thanks to PETER for this interesting FIRST PERSON glimpse of life during the war. This story was interesting, and is one more piece of the giant puzzle of the war.

What about YOU? Do you have any FIRST PERSON memories of times during the war years? Send them here for our KTB Magazine. Any memories you have at all of something during the war years, please send them here and we’ll print them.

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