When I was young, we had searchlights all over Los Angeles.

Usually they were to celebrate an event, the opening of a shopping mall, the delivery of the latest model at a car dealer’s, the premiere at a movie palace.

We could see the lights from across the valley, waving in the sky, beckoning us to their source. We drove to where they originated, their point of origin, parked, got out, walked over.

Other people followed them too, parked, got out, became a crowd.

“What’s the event?”

Usually it was, “New movie. Opening night. You should see it. Tickets available.”

We just came to see the searchlights. Almost always there were two of them. They came in pairs so they could cross in the sky. Each one had a handler operator, paid by the hour.

The beams swept the sky, then intersected, saying, “This is where,” like the star leading the Wise Men to baby Jesus.

The lights came from large portable reflectors, like giant kettledrums with the lid off. They were mechanisms on wheels. They were like reflector telescopes, like Palomar, only not as big, and in reverse.

Telescopes are aimed at the sky to catch the weak stellar emissions from way out there in the universe, calibrated to synchronize with the rotation of the earth so they keep their focus and catch the weak light of stars or whatever focusing to a point and shunted to an eyepiece or a camera lens accumulating an overexposure of the emulsion of a photograph so you can see what the naked eye can’t.

That’s in layman’s terms, which is all I know.

But here, with the searchlight, at the focal point, was the source of the light, a loud burning flame, you could hear it, and it made the air warm, the “dish” or “bowl” reflecting by geometry a narrow coherent beam of light into the sky like a telescope in reverse. It wasn’t trying to probe or reach the universe, and we couldn’t see if it had an end, to reach the sky was enough, better yet if it hit a cloud like a heavenly discharge drawing the attention of the earthbound audience, including us.

Where the two beams crossed, X marks the spot.

We got as close as we could to look down into the reflecting bowl, especially us kids because we’re more curious than adults who’ve already seen too much. Sometimes a wisp of smoke from the flame would float through the base of the beam of light, but we were not allowed to get too close because who knows we could go blind.

That was all just a part of history. The parallel lights probing the sky generated their own excitement and we didn’t need to spend money on anything, not even the movie at its premiere. Anyway, it would come to local theaters at regular prices, so the searchlight was excitement enough, and it was free.

The reason I mention this now is because I’m reading On Gold Mountain by my friend, Lisa See. It’s the 100 year story of her family, from China to Chinatown in its variants in Los Angeles, and the family store in Pasadena on Colorado Blvd., F. Suie One, which I’ve always noticed in passing. People said it was “high end” which means money, which I never had, so I never went inside.

Toward the end of the book, the story gets into the 1940s, my own early years, so it’s personally relevant, and I came to the passage that documents an early memory.

I was young and tiny, about 4 ½ months old. The United States had been in the War for a year, after Pearl Harbor was bombed in 1941, just weeks after I was born. I insisted I had nothing to do with it.

America was facing threats on both sides of the continent, from Germany on the east coast after it would sweep over England, and on the west coast, it was Japan, threatening California and Oregon and Washington.

I have heard stories about bunkers in the California cliffs facing west to deter a Japanese invasion. I hear that a submarine off the coast fired with that intention to pave the way or test our defenses.

If Japan had followed up on the bombing of Pearl Harbor, they would have occupied Hawaii, and staged their fleet to invade our coast.

I remember still vividly the night my Father took us out into the driveway and we faced west toward Los Angeles. There were searchlights all over the sky, sirens we could hear from miles away, the sounds of anti-aircraft fire and we saw the tracer shells shooting up into the sky.

My Daughter Kristina said, “No, Dad, that didn’t happen. Japan never invaded us or sent planes over Los Angeles.” [Kristina, the editor, points out she’s still right: Japan never invaded California or sent planes over California.]

I know I misremember some things, you can see examples in my blog, but this is a memory I’ll fight for, partly because it’s maybe my earliest, and partly because of what happened a few years later when I was in primary school.

But before I get to that, I want to quote a relevant passage from On Gold Mountain, supporting evidence like eye-witness testimony in court.

p. 254: At the end of February [1942] an unidentified submarine sent a few shells into an oilfield near Santa Barbara. The next night an unidentified airplane was spotted farther south, sending the Los Angeles air-raid system into action. The night sky was pierced by sirens, while searchlights arced across the sky. Residents panicked, turn on their lights and ran out into the streets totally invalidating the blackout. The army, meanwhile, fired 1,430 shells at the would-be attackers. No planes were hit but five people died in the pandemonium – two from heart attacks, another three in car accidents. A few garages, patios, cars, and outbuildings were destroyed when the antiaircraft shells fell back to earth. The hysteria subsided only when it was determined that the “attack” had been a false alarm.

Aha! So I was right!

But the story isn’t quite over. Just a few years later, in primary school, maybe second grade, the teacher broke from the curriculum and told the story, but with her own variations. She said, “A Japanese plane was shot down over Los Angeles. The pilot bailed out, and the Chinese community took him in, hid him, passed him from house to house, all those Asians are in collusion, and he escaped back to Japan to kill more Americans.” [No Japanese planes ever flew over California during WW II. The hysteria over imagined invasions was used to justify the incarceration of Japanese Americans, though.- editor]

The woman sounded angry and bitter. I don’t know where she got her information. I was too young to ask and answer the question: “Why is she so full of hate? Did she lose someone in the War?”