The Pittsburgh Press (January 3, 1942)
Rambling Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
SAN FRANCISCO – This city’s concern over whether or not it will be bombed by Japanese planes seems to ebb and flow with the tides of war on the other side of the Pacific.
But right now, I believe the San Francisco public mind has settled down to a resigned but firm belief that sooner or later this city will have a taste of it. It may be soon, it may not be for a year, but some day it will come – that’s what the public thinks.
Lots of people here ask me, in consequence, about bomb shelters in England, and whether they should build private ones for their homes. They’re especially interested in the famous Anderson shelter, so I guess I’ll just spout off a little about the Anderson today.
It was named for Sir John Anderson, who was Minister of Home Security at the time it was adopted as more or less the official home type of shelter. It was issued to the British public on a what-you-can-afford basis. People making below $800 a year paid nothing.
The Anderson is a corrugated iron shed shaped like a miniature dirigible hangar. You dig a hole in the ground about two feet deep, set this iron shed into it, and then cover the top of the shed with dirt a couple of feet thick.
The Anderson is big enough for about six people and is good protection against blast and flying splinters, but of course is no good at all under a direct hit (and neither is almost anything else). I have seen an Anderson absolutely unharmed by a bomb 20 feet away.
England tried the Andersons for a year and a half. but when I left in the spring she was about to abandon the Anderson idea. Of course most people who already have them won’t throw them away, but the government’s approval was switching to a different type.
They made people miserable
The main reason was that the Andersons turned out to be so miserable inside that people hated them. England is mostly low and soggy, you know, and it was almost impossible to keep water from rising and standing on the shelter floor.
Also they were cold, and if you used an oil stove, the fumes soon gave you the miseries. They were cramped and gloomy, and sitting all night in them, night after night, was terrible.
The trend when I left was veering more toward shoring up one room of your house for protection. Such as bricking up the windows in that room, and installing extra pillars of wood or steel piping to support the roof in case it decided to cave in on you.
Also, the government was toying with a heavy steel table affair which could actually be used as a table in daytime, and the whole family could sleep under it at night.
On the whole, Britain’s bombing experience showed that there are actually worse things than bombs – one of them being a distortion of life so bad it can’t be endured.
Thus, although the Anderson is on the whole a safe shelter, it is just too uninhabitable for permanent night-long living. The ideal in shelters, as in everything else under wise war conditions, is to live as near normally as you can. Live in your own hours, and hew as closely to your usual pattern as possible – that’s the answer.
The fact that Andersons are frowned on now in England does not seem to me an especially pertinent argument against their use here on the Pacific Coast. For bombing conditions here are almost bound to be much different from England.
The average London suburban family has spent at least a part of every night for months on end huddled in that lousy backyard dungeon, with the Germans actually overhead.
But few people can conceive of such a thing happening in California. If the Japs do come it will have to be hit-and-run, sporadic raiding. Maybe out one night a month. If they ever get the strength and we the weakness for them to bomb us as the Germans bombed England then we all better yell for the Indians to come quick and save us.
They’re good for short periods
So, since Californians have no reason to expect to sit in a shelter for more than a few hours a month, they could certainly tolerate a shelter such as the Anderson, which has after all proved itself good in everything but comfort.
If anybody wants to know specifically what I would do if I were a San Franciscan, here is just what I’d do, depending on where I lived (and assuming I could afford to spend a little extra money preparing for something that probably would never happen at all).
If I lived in a wooden house and had a backyard, I’d build me something approximating an Anderson shelter, and fix it up with electric lights and an electric heater and – a good system of drainage.
If I lived in a strong brick house, I’d brick up the windows of one room, provide for ventilation and heat, brace the ceiling with some steel piping, and have plenty of picks and axes so you could get out if it caved in on you.
If I lived in an apartment house, I’d get together with the landlord and other tenants and see that the basement was converted into a sound habitable shelter.
Yessir, that’s just what I’d do. But before I did that, I’d get myself the damndest array of private, home-grown fire-fighting equipment that any citizen ever stalked the streets with. For I think that if the Japs ever set out to destroy the citizens of San Francisco instead of the actual military objectives, they’ll do it with fire bombs.