Saratoga Stereopticon

Pearl Harbor brought troops to Saratoga

By Willys Peck

The near concurrence of the East Coast terrorist attack and the 60th anniversary of Pearl Harbor calls to mind the seeming vulnerability of even such idyllic spots as Saratoga. It also calls to mind what happened here in early December 1941.

Saratoga didn't exactly become an armed camp, but it had pretty much that appearance when, three days after the Pearl Harbor attack, Battery B, 31st Artillery Battalion, 7th Infantry Division, recently of Fort Ord, moved into town for a 10-week deployment en route to other stations. I wrote about this in a Stereopticon column five years ago, but this seems an appropriate time to recall what happened back then.

There was a certain poignancy surrounding these events. On Saturday night, Dec. 6, the youth group from Saratoga Federated Church went on an excursion to Lick Observatory atop Mount Hamilton. From that eminence, we marveled at the panoply of lights extending from San Francisco and the Bay Bridge to the heart of San Jose just below. Afterward, I couldn't help but think about how, 24 hours after that time, an observer on the same spot would have seen nothing but the blackness of night.

The next day, Sunday, was bright and sunny, and after the morning service at the Federated Church, the congregation gathered outside for groundbreaking ceremonies for the first addition to the building, later named the Emrich Wing. When we went home that morning, it was to learn that the United States was going to war.

If there was anyone who knew ahead of time about the impending arrival of the troops, it certainly wasn't common knowledge. Suddenly they were here, more than a hundred citizen-soldiers transplanted from their hometowns to a rural community singularly lacking in those elements that made for what Navy men would call "a good liberty town."

Their mission was the defense of Moffett Field and Mills Field, now San Francisco International Airport. Although their 155-millimeter howitzers were in emplacements along Skyline Boulevard, the men were billeted in downtown Saratoga and other locations accessible to their artillery. I can remember they even had an anti-aircraft gun in Wildwood Park, one of the locations where they pitched their pup tents. Their other tents were in the old Blossom Festival grounds on Saratoga Avenue, where the Saratogan and Saratoga Creekside condominiums are today.

Tents are OK up to a point. But when the rains come and the creek rises, they're not much protection. That's what happened right after the sunny spell around the 7th, a real deluge that sent Saratoga Creek raging over its banks. So the men were moved to an impromptu barracks in Kane's Hall over the blacksmith shop, where the Big Basin Bistro is today. Use was also made of the Foothill Clubhouse, where the battery office, or orderly room (having nothing to do with neatness), was located. I believe some men also were quartered there.

To Saratoga's credit, the residents did what they could to make the men feel at home. A committee of women baked cakes, served coffee and arranged for the men to take showers in private homes. We got used to seeing soldiers in full-field dress standing on guard duty in the Village, and lining in ranks on Third Street for morning roll call and inspection.

What didn't become generally known until many years later was the fact that, as to actual armament in the matter of ammunition, what they had was almost negligible. The troops standing guard downtown carried no ammunition for their 1903 Springfield rifles. There was one box of cartridges in the orderly room. Even the howitzers on the mountain had only three rounds each, enough to fire one shot for effect after zeroing in. These details were described by a couple of the men who were here, 45 years after their stay.

At the end of February 1942, the men moved to an encampment near Palo Alto. Later they were sent to Attu, in the Aleutians, and Kwajalein, in the Pacific.

NO NEWS IS GOOD NEWS DEPARTMENT--Along with death and taxes, one of the certainties facing newspaper scriveners is the knowledge that their copy won't necessarily appear in print as it was written. I was reminded of this in my last column, where I referred to an article about Saratoga's industrial potential that appeared in 1871 in the San Jose Mercury. As printed, the reference was to the Mercury News, thereby anticipating a name change that was to come 112 years later.

Newspaper names do change. Today's Mercury News traces its lineage to the 1851 San Jose Weekly Visitor. Other names involving the same publication include the Times-Mercury and the Mercury Herald, which was what it was when I started work there in 1949. The San Jose News was the afternoon paper owned by the same publisher, and when the News quit publishing a separate edition, the names Mercury and News were combined in 1983

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