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Archiver > GenMassachusetts > 2000-02 > 0951203390


From: Doris/Chuck Denton <>
Subject: [GM-L] air raid wardens
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 23:09:50 -0800


Hi: My parents were both air raid wardens. We lived in Alameda County
here in the San Francisco Bay Area. Their duties, as I recall, were to
go out during air raid warnings (with helmets and whistles) and make sure
that their particular area of responsibility was completely blacked out.
Each home had at least one room where the windows could be quickly
blacked out. Life went on inside except that all radios went off the
air. (It was usually easier to just turn off the lights and go to bed.)


As a sidelight, one summer I had a job in one of the Kaiser shipyards in
Richmond as a time keeper. On the night shifts, when there was an air
raid warning all lights were extinguished and all work stopped but no one
could leave. The workers were docked for the idle time. It was my job
the next day to change all the 8s (for 8 hours worked) on the time cards
to whatever actual time they worked - I remember the time was figured in
tenths of an hour. No computers, of course.

Doris in California

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