WHEN PATRIOTISM WAS AT ITS PEAK
A LOOK BACK AT NEWPORT HISTORY IN JULY OF 1942
BY MATT MORRISON
The summer of ‘ 42 was eighty years ago , and it remains a most patriotic time in our nation ’ s history when America was arguably never more united . It had been eighty years since the height of the Civil War , and our greatest generation was coming of age , six months into World War II . Newport Beach was coming of age too and served its role in the struggle against tyranny around the globe .
The all-encompassing conflict was still very much in doubt and would continue for another three years . With the Nazis advancing in every direction , the war in Europe was raging on three fronts . In the Pacific , the US Navy was just barely turning the tide against the Empire of Japan after a pivotal naval air victory in the Battle of Midway .
Newport Beach in July of 1942 was evolving from a sleepy coastal fishing and farming community to include a budding boat building industry and naval support depot . After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor only six months earlier , coastal residents on the mainland were on high alert for further air raids and , even more fearsome , the very real threat of aggression from unseen enemy submarines .
“ I remember my dad telling me , the Women ’ s League had rotating shifts of lookouts that would sit up in the bell tower of the church here on the peninsula and watch for Japanese and even German subs ,” recalls Mark Mowery , a native of Newport Beach and lifetime family membership holder at the Balboa Bay Club .
“ All ocean facing windows around town had to be blacked out with curtains and the Christmas boat parade had to be cancelled for a couple years ,” he noted .
Mowery is the proprietor of Allied Yacht & Ship on the Newport peninsula , an evolution of a family business his grandfather Ned Hill started when he bought Ackerman Boat Yard in 1938 . Ned and Dora Hill parlayed
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