February 25, 1942: The Battle of Los Angeles

February 25, 1942: An incident called "The Battle of Los Angeles" takes place. It turns out to be a false alarm.

Following the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 7, 1941, 7 Japanese submarines patrolled the American West Coast. They sank 2 merchant ships and damaged 6 more, skirmishing twice with U.S. Navy air or sea forces. By the end of December, the submarines had all returned to friendly waters to resupply.

The Japanese government, concerned about President Franklin D. Roosevelt's radio speech scheduled for February 23, 1942, ordered a Japanese submarine to shell the California coast on that day. The Imperial submarine I-17 bombarded coastal targets near Santa Barbara, California. This was the 1st attack on the U.S. mainland since Pancho Villa's raid on Columbus, New Mexico in 1916; and the 1st sanctioned by a foreign country's government since the Battle of New Orleans in 1815.

Though the damage was minimal, the event was key in triggering the West Coast invasion scare, and influenced the decision to intern Japanese-Americans. Most of the Coast was blacked out. Schools were closed in the San Francisco Bay Area.

On February 24, 1942, the Office of Naval Intelligence issued a warning that an attack on mainland California could be expected within the next 10 hours. On February 25, air raid sirens sounded at 2:25 AM throughout Los Angeles County. A total blackout was ordered, and thousands of air raid wardens were summoned to their positions.

At 3:16 AM, the 37th Coast Artillery Brigade began firing .50-caliber machine guns and 12.8-pound anti-aircraft shells into the air at reported aircraft. Over 1,400 shells were eventually fired. Pilots of the 4th Interceptor Command were alerted, but their aircraft remained grounded. The artillery fire continued sporadically until 4:14 AM. The "all clear" was sounded, and the blackout order was lifted at 7:21 AM.

Several buildings and vehicles were damaged by shell fragments, and 5 civilians died as an indirect result of the anti-aircraft fire: 3 in car accidents in the ensuing chaos, and 2 of heart attacks attributed to the stress of the hour-long action. The incident was front-page news along the West Coast and across the nation. It was a more damaging incident than the "War of the Worlds" misunderstanding in 1938.

Within hours of the end of the air raid, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox held a press conference, saying the entire incident had been a false alarm due to anxiety and "war nerves." When documenting the incident in 1949, the United States Coast Artillery Association identified a meteorological balloon sent aloft at 1:00 AM as having "started all the shooting" and concluded that "once the firing started, imagination created all kinds of targets in the sky and everyone joined in."

It was the same story given for the incident at Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. And, for all we know, it may have been true in both cases.

Two months later, on April 18, came Colonel James Doolittle's raid on Tokyo, which shows both sides that America could hit Japan at home, too. It didn't totally eliminate the fear of a Japanese attack on America's West Coast, but it did show Japan that further attacks on the American mainland would face retaliation.

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February 25, 1942 was a Wednesday. Baseball and football were out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And no games were scheduled in the NHL. So there were no scores on this historic day.