You had to know San Francisco during the war years, for it was a free, open city with hundreds of thousands of teaming figures from all walks of life; from every state in the union, and from ever so many foreign nations descending upon this seaport city of deportation to the Pacific war zones.
Young, fresh pink colored cheek boys hardly out of grade school, tall strong blacks from the Deep South rushing to the west coast to work in Henry J. Kaiser’s shipyards where they built a new liberty ship every couple of days.
Smartly skirted Wacks and Waves of nurses of every description, Red Cross ladies and Salvation Army volunteers serving the canteens and recreational areas of the city which was bursting its seems to accommodate all the arrivals and departures which went on twenty four hours a day, seven days a week…San Francisco had not seen this much action since someone above Placerville called out, Gold, Gold in all the mountains…
The rush was on once again’..Uncle Sam and the red, white and blue smiled down from all the war time posters which were plastered all about the city…Uncle Sam Needs You…She. The enemy is listening….Join up now….Every wall had a different poster to fit the need and call…This was wartime in San Francisco…..
Smartly skirted Wacks and Waves of nurses of every description, Red Cross ladies and Salvation Army volunteers serving the canteens and recreational areas of the city which was bursting its seems to accommodate all the arrivals and departures which went on twenty four hours a day, seven days a week…San Francisco had not seen this much action since someone above Placerville called out, Gold, Gold in all the mountains…
The rush was on once again’..Uncle Sam and the red, white and blue smiled down from all the war time posters which were plastered all about the city…Uncle Sam Needs You…She. The enemy is listening….Join up now….Every wall had a different poster to fit the need and call…This was wartime in San Francisco…..
Hollywood’s Robert Taylor was standing at the lower bar of the Mark Hopkins Hotel awaiting to departure within a few days…George Vanderbilt was on leave from Treasure Islands Naval Base and sleeping at The Palace Hotel. He could afford the luxury away from the islands cramped quarters….Sally’s girls were working on different shifts to accommodate many of the foreign and American Officer’s passing through the city…the bars were filled with fresh young things who left the family farms to work in the accommodation business about the sinful seaport city that did not go to bed till early in the morning..The City Father’s and mostly the military orders were to close the town down until after 12 A.M. as the shipyards had to be staffed, the military back in the barracks..It was one hellava party during those war years that the citizens and visitors will never forget…”Rosie-the-riveter” worked on all the ship parts, and her sisters worked the bars and streets from Broadway to the tenderloin, to Market street, and every hotel bar and lobby…Money changed hands so fast that the paper bills started to wear thin’….Fillmore street without its Jewish haberdasher’s, kosher shops, and second-hand stores became the home and playground that the Negro Zoot-Zooteers, who took over this area after all the Japanese-American citizens were kidnapped and driven out of town to re-location centers, some called them America’s Concentration or detention camps..It was a nasty and bad time for the Japanese-Americans who deserved better, but hysteria ruled the day….Jazz, Swing and Bee bob came into the Fillmore with a vengeance, and not many of the Negro brothers and sisters who were rolling in green from ship yards knew how to save, invest, or plan for the future years ahead when the war would be over and they’d be on the bottom of the totem police once
