Movie 3: Scene 4: Goodbye?
The next scene begins with Pearl Harbor, December 7th 1941. This is the onset of World War II.
Raymond and Lena receive news of the attack on Hawaii, and immediately return to Los Angeles. They know that their airplane skills will be required by the government.
Though the start of World War II allows for Raymond and Lena to further their careers, it also furthers racial tensions in Southern California. Raymond and Mae’s relationship is even further “looked-down upon”. The US government paid for anti-japanese propaganda posters and films.
Raymond immediately gets a job working at the Douglas Company in Long Beach, building military torpedos and planes. “One month after Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt called on the aircraft industry to produce 180,000 warplanes within two years.[2] The numbers seemed fantastic to much of the public, but the industry was already tooled-up to produce 1,800 a month, thanks to several years of filling emergency orders from Britain and France” (Ethington/Hell’s Angels/ Air and Power in a Cinematic Metropolis). This company employed over 11,000 workers, and completed about 78 millions dollars worth of military orders by 1941
(Ethington/Hell’s Angels/ Air and Power in a Cinematic Metropolis).
While Raymond was succeeding at the Douglas Company, Lena was building Lightenings. These airplanes were built by a workforce of almost 80% women.
In 1943, Mae is sent to a Japanese Labor Camp. The US government was attempting to “clean” California of Japanese people, so as to prevent information from being sent to Japan through spies.
In the LA Time’s article on April 22nd, 1942, this initiative is explained. “Nearly 13,000 citizen and alien Japanese--5950 of them from Southern California--will be evacuated from the Pacific Coast combat area beginning Friday as the result of 13 ouster orders issued yesterday by the Lieut. Gen. John L. Dewitt...Evacuees from the los Angeles Area outlined in the Exclusion Orders No. 21 and 22 will be transported to the Santa Anita Assembly Center at Arcadia April 30 and May 1… Other areas to be swept clean of Japanese by the new batch of evacuation orders include portions of Ventura, Santa Barbara, San luis Obispo, Monterey, Santa Cruz, Alameda and large portions of Seattle” ("New...Ordered", 1942) .
This segment of the movie ends with a dramatic goodbye between Raymond and Mae, as she leaves for the labor camp that she has been assigned. Will they ever see each other again?
