The Verdict -- Robert Gardner

As I write this, I am looking forward to a visit from my old friend,

Lloyd Howard, with whom I served in the Navy during World War II and

without whom you and I would be bowing and kowtowing to the conquering

Japanese.

Lloyd and I were in the Navy, and not just in the Navy, in the Office

of Naval Intelligence (ONI), charged with the “accumulation, evaluation

and dissemination of information about the enemy.” Pretty heady stuff, I

must say.

Well, I must admit that my part was pretty dull. I was in Section

Three, and my main responsibility was checking on the current whereabouts

of Soto Nikishiwa, who had a curio shop on Main Street on Balboa

Peninsula. Soto had a mangy little mongrel dog with whom he took an

evening stroll every night, according to a number of his fellow citizens,

to signal all those Japanese submarines lurking off Balboa.

Lloyd had an immeasurably more dangerous assignment. He was in Section

Five, Coastal Intelligence. Every night when I was watching Soto walk his

dog, he and Tom Heffernan, our local FBI agent (and father of our current

Newport Beach City Council member), were in a small boat patrolling the

Catalina Channel, looking for enemy submarines.

There they were, armed with .38-caliber pistols, searching for vessels

armed with 5-inch deck guns. A confrontation would have been like an

earthworm going up against a hooded cobra, but every night they were out

there.

All of which reminds me of those first few days after Pearl Harbor

when the Navy sent out a man to check on our coastal defenses. We

gathered in a large room. The man from Washington asked how many

.90-caliber antiaircraft guns there were. None. He asked how many

.50-caliber machine guns. Same answer. He kept dropping his standards, to

no avail. Finally, in exasperation he said, “Does anyone here have a

gun?” I raised my hand. He smiled with relief. “And what is it?”

I said, “I have my father’s .44-caliber black powder colt, which sends

out a 3-foot tongue of flames when fired.”

With no sense of humor he snapped, “And how do you know that?”

I responded, “Well, when I was a small boy, my father decided to teach

me how to shoot, so he stood behind me, steadied my spindly little arms,

put the pistol in my fist and said, ‘Pull the trigger.’ I did, a sheet of

flames about a yard long shot out, the gun went up in the air and burned

off my father’s mustache and eyebrows.”

At least everyone else thought it was funny.

ROBERT GARDNER is a Corona del Mar resident and a former judge. His

column runs Tuesdays.