A quiet community

Young Chang

Nell Murbarger spent the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, sewing. In the

afternoon, she bought a “car full” of lemons and also some apples that

cost 25 cents each.

Later in the afternoon, the late Costa-Mesan heard that the Japanese

had attacked Pearl Harbor, Manila and Guam, and that 350 people were

confirmed killed that day.

She ends her Dec. 7 diary entry with, “Personally, it was a successful

day,” referring to her purchase of lemons and cheap apples.

The next day’s entry is darker. So are the pages about Dec. 8, 9, 10

and 11, which contain an updated death toll of 1,500 in Hawaii.

Murbarger’s black, leather-bound 1941 diary, preserved at the Costa Mesa

Historical Society, squints into focus the dusty memories of George

Grupe, Barton Beek and Dave Gardner.

Grupe, a longtime Newport Beach resident and historian, remembers

shaking his head on a Sunday exactly 60 years ago and coming across

others who couldn’t do much more than shake their heads too.

Beek, brother to Allan and Seymour Beek and member of the Newport

family that founded the Balboa Island ferry, remembers relatives telling

him that Pacific Coast Highway went dark almost immediately.

Gardner, president of the Costa Mesa Historical Society, recalls a

city made somber by the boldly disheartening headlines of the morning

papers.

Each of these men admitted to remembering very little minutiae about

the day Pearl Harbor was attacked and the days immediately after. But

with Murbarger’s diary entries and firsthand accounts from Grupe, Beek

and Gardner, the mood of Newport-Mesa of Dec. 7 through 11 can be summed up as somber.

Murbarger, who wrote for area newspapers, including the Costa Mesa

Globe Herald (now the Daily Pilot), began her Dec. 8 entry with,

“Everyone seems to have the jitters.”

She writes that airplanes flying overhead make her listen more acutely

than usual and that state guards patrol the waters nearby to restrict

boat activity between sunset and sunrise.

Most everyone’s fear was directed toward the shore, dreading submarine

or other Japanese vessel attacks, Grupe confirmed.

“Within a day or two they had fortified the coast in Corona del Mar

with guns, soldiers, barbed wire and trenches,” the 80-year-old said.

Beek, 77, added that the harbor was immediately closed.

“They turned off the lights so it was a blackout,” the Newport Beach

resident said.

Looking back, Grupe admits that fear of air attacks was “ridiculous,”

that such an attack would have been “impossible.” But people worried

about air strikes anyway.

Grupe’s father was so concerned about invasions via water and air that

he convinced Grupe’s grandfather to sell their Balboa Island property.

Eventually, the family sold almost all of their 16 lots throughout the

war.

“A lot of people were concerned about the value of their land after

initial attacks on Pearl Harbor,” said Grupe, who was a student at

Occidental College in 1941 but at home on Balboa Island for the weekend

of Dec. 7.

The streets, as if mourning, were also dark.

Block wardens patrolled neighborhoods to check that everyone’s drapes

were closed at night and street lights were blackened to make the city

invisible to attack.

“People who had houses along the beach, every night, they had to cover

the windows up with cardboard and plywood,” said the 72-year-old Gardner,

who lived in Costa Mesa but remembers what Newport Beach went through.

“If you had light showing in your house, they’d bang on your door and

tell you to cover it up.”

Murbarger’s diary says people were allowed to hold flashlights when

walking at night, but only with their hands covering the lens to allow

just a “rosy glow” in case of puddles.

Enforcement officials also patrolled Coast Highway and insisted

drivers use their parking lights instead of their headlights, Beek said.

The talk about town had everything to do with Pearl Harbor. Where it

was, whether it was part of the United States.

“I’d say 80%, 90% of people didn’t know where Pearl Harbor was,” Grupe

said.

People still bought groceries at Hershey’s Market on the corner of

Marine and Park avenues on Balboa Island and drank sodas at Pink’s

Drugstore in Costa Mesa. But conversations were scarce and smiles were

few. People still went fishing off of Newport Pier, Murbarger wrote, but

armed sentries guarded the water and no one was allowed too far out on

the planks.

The skies, meanwhile, rained.

Murbarger, who died in 1991 after battling Parkinson’s disease, wrote

in her Dec. 9 page: “It rained -- poured all day -- gray dismal and so

thoroughly wet.” She says she drove through dark, drenched streets and

had trouble seeing. She was on her way to meet an air raid warden. He was

going to tell her who had been selected to look out for enemy aircraft.

“It can happen here,” Murbarger wrote, with “can” underlined.

She calls Dec. 10 an “ominous” day without sunlight, without “a ray of

hope.” Ambulances passing by made her wonder about pending attacks, as

the air raid signal in those days was a siren, and she read about death

in the papers every day.

“The perfect word for those [immediate] three days is total

disbelief,” Grupe said. “We all were absolutely astounded. We didn’t know

we could be attacked.”

On Dec. 11, Murbarger writes that she is sitting at her table looking

out the window every now and then to see if the red neon sign at

Crawford’s Drug Store is still lighted.

When it extinguishes, she’ll expect a blackout.

* Young Chang writes features. She may be reached at (949) 574-4268 or

by e-mail at o7 [email protected] .