The Battle of Los Angeles revisited

Pat Carrell was 3 years old and living with her parents and baby brother in Hawthorne when she was awakened by the sound of booming antiaircraft guns in the morning hours of Feb. 25, 1942. Less than three months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the West Coast was on edge. Carrell remembers the shades being drawn, the fear in her parents' eyes, the warning to keep the lights off. After what must have seemed like an eternity to a toddler, the explosions finally stopped and daylight broke. But for years, Carrell wasn't sure what had happened during what came to be known as the Great L.A. Air Raid. To this day, no one is."