No, your grasp of local history isn’t that bad: L.A. was never a World War II battlefield. But late on the night of February 24, 1942, residents of the Greater Los Angeles area were afraid that it was.
That’s because barely three months after the attack at Pearl Harbor—and one day after a Japanese submarine fired artillery at various coastal Santa Barbara targets—as many as a million people saw an unidentified flying object over Los Angeles, which alarmed the military officials enough to order a total blackout of L.A. County and a 50-minute barrage of anti-aircraft fire that resulted in 1,400 shells shot skyward and as many as eight deaths (friendly fire, heart attacks). The event is referred to today as the “Battle of Los Angeles” or the “Great L.A. Air Raid,” even though the incident was later deemed to be false alarm.
It is hard to imagine how strange and scary was that night 71 years ago. But Friday it will be a little easier for you to do so, as the Long Beach Shakespeare Company is producing a 15-minute radio play that, according to LB Shake, “will allow guests to go back [and] experience a live old-time radio show getting interrupted by the air raid and subsequent military bombardment.”
It’s not so much a historical reenactment as a historical fiction, as LB Shakespeare the event is a unique creation LB Shakespeare creation (unlike the company’s annual reenactment of Orson Welles’s panic-inducing “War of the Worlds” broadcast) that Program Coordinator Scott Ware says showcases LB Shake’s radio-show abilities. It’s also a way to get a sense of wartime life in a different era.
Long Beach Shakespeare’s version of the Great L.A. Air Raid of 1942 will be staged five times (at half-hour intervals) on Friday, February 1 (a.k.a. Bixby Knolls First Fridays) beginning at 7PM at the Richard Goad Theatre (4250 Atlantic Blvd., LB 90807). Special guest actor: 8th District Councilmember Al Austin! Suggested donation: $1. “The attraction may be too dark and intense for some young viewers,” warns LB Shake, “and expectant mothers should not participate.”
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