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Tuesday, March 08, 2016

1942: A FEW DAYS AFTER PEARL HARBOR. AMERICANS LIVED IN FEAR

How well I remember "Aircraft Spotters" during the very early years of WWII. To an 8 or 9 year old boy, those scary stories that were coming to us over the radio and in the Trenton Evening Times will be with me forever   The aforementioned aircraft spotters were usually up on the roof of a flat building with their binoculars on 24 hour duty. It was really scary back there in the early years of WWII. Nazi submarines were off the Jersey coast and fifth columnists were known to have been set ashore in rubber rafts to do their dirty deeds in the industrial areas. Over on the west coast, the Japanese navy was lobbing shells into the west coast refineries. I also read the story how the Japanese sent lighter than air balloons up and let the upper air currents carry them to Oregon, Washington and the Northwest where the felll to the ground and expolded. Many stories in my hundreds of columns I have written over the years recalling life on what was known as the "Home Front." Here's an article showing the military guarding our Trenton bridge just a few days after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

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