The Pittsburgh Press (January 23, 1942)
Rambling Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
PORTLAND, Ore. – All up and down the coast I’ve been hearing reports of what a fine job Portland had done with its blackouts and civil defense. So I’ve nosed into the matter, and the reports seem to be true.
Portland’s good showing is due to two things – they started a long time ago, and one man, the Mayor, took the responsibility and carried the ball.
Way last spring the Mayor detached one of his battalion chiefs from the Fire Department, sent him to Washington to study up. and then made him fulltime coordinator of civil defense, responsible only to the Mayor. He is Edward Boatright, and he still holds the job.
The Mayor’s name is Earl Riley. The nice things I’m saying about him are not the result of any mesmerizing by the Mayor himself, for I haven’t met him. It’s just that everybody I’ve talked with gives him the credit.
Portland is a city that some visitors find, shall we say, unromantic. It has none of the Seven Seas personality of San Francisco; none of the hot-headedness of Seattle. It is a good staid town, with a deep New England background. And probably because of that it has something that many cities don’t have – which is unity Portlanders can pull together.
So when Mayor Riley and Coordinator Boatright started going to town on civil defense last summer, the people worked with them, and followed. Long before the summer was over all the utilities companies had their plans worked out for air raid emergency.
They’re ready for real thing
The Red Cross was busy as usual. Also women organized into what were called “Light Precaution Wardens,” the forerunner of “Air Raid Wardens.” And World War veterans started an organization which trained and grew until it was ready to be taken over en masse – it has now been – as a body of auxiliary policemen.
Then in October they had an all-out dress rehearsal – a Hallowe’en-night blackout. The Army was in on it, and they had elaborate plans. The Army was to send bombers over from various directions, interceptor planes were to try to head them off, guns brought in on trailers were to fire blanks at the sky.
Bad weather at the last minute prohibited all the flying and shooting. But the city did go ahead with its blackout. They say it was about 99.6 per cent total.
So, when the real thing came, Portlanders knew how to go about it. On the day war was declared, word came from the Army at 5 p.m. that the city must be blacked out by 6.
The Mayor went on the air and told the people what to do. All through that first week the Mayor led strongly, and the people looked to him for leadership.
He took his instructions directly from Gen. Wash in Seattle (head of the Second Interceptor Command). Every time the Mayor had any fresh news he went right on the radio. He had a microphone at his desk, all six stations were hooked together, and they butted in on any program, regardless. One little girl of 10 expressed it beautifully when she said:
“I knew what was going on and what to do, because the Mayor told us.”
The secret: Only one general
There now hasn’t been a blackout here for several weeks. But as in other cities, the civil defense program is going on ahead, getting itself enlarged and polished up.
Many people are being trained. Even before the war, 3500 auxiliary policemen and 2500 auxiliary firemen had had training. Now more are being trained, and so are air-raid wardens. As far as I can see, the eventual setup will be like London’s.
When it is all finished, there will be two air-raid wardens for every block. Half of them will be women. The women will serve in daytime, the men at night.
As for the physical evidences of war and defense, there aren’t as many in Portland as in San Francisco. No sand has been distributed yet: no buildings sandbagged; no signs put up directing the public to daytime basement shelters.
The only things you notice are occasional windows equipped for blackout, and the black-painted traffic lights in the outskirts. The downtown lights are unpainted, for they can be turned off quickly. Farther out, where it would take too long to get them off, they’ve been painted black with a cross left in the center, as in London.
The fire department already is in good shape. The Mayor is an amateur fire fiend, like LaGuardia. Going to fires is one of his hobbies. That may be the reason the fire department is so well prepared.
The only item in which Portland seems to have fallen down is the one that has stumped other cities too. Nobody can hear the sirens!
Sixteen new sirens are scattered over the city on rooftops. One certain siren can be heard eight miles away, but not in an apartment two blocks away. So now they are going to install 30 more, and put them close to the ground.
Nearly all of Portland’s business executives have worked hard on civil defense. But few of them have even had their names in the paper. It became a general policy for all responsibility to center right in the Mayor. There weren’t “too many generals,” as in San Francisco. That seems to be the secret. Maybe it would work in Washington too.