There is a video on Google called "The Day Called X" a CBS Television film from the late 50's narrated by Glenn Ford, shows how civil defense operations would help minimize casualties in a typical city - in this case, Portland, Oregon. There are several Portland celebrities playing themselves, including a very young Mayor Terry Schrunk, Frank Ivancie, radio personality Johnny Carpenter among others. LINK: http://tinyurl.com/vj2np

I've seen this somewhere before. Very fascinating. Over-dramaticized? Probably. Propaganda? Likely.
But this is a very well-done docu-drama that features late '50's Portland and is a must-see for any Portland historian. (Prepare for slow down-load, but it's worth it!)

Read more about this from 2004 on the pdxradio "Portland Radio History" page, in a thread called "1955 CBS News Portland H-Bomb Documentary". It's over halfway down the page.

I watched the entire thing. Had no problems with the streaming on line. High speed internet and high speed computer helps.

As far as the content....Fascinating...as Mr. Spock would say.

I downloaded a high resolution version of this video from archive.org. I've been collecting some of these Cold War films, and in my opinion, they look so much better when played on a vintage TV as opposed to a computer desktop.

In The Day Called X, the CONELRAD system is activated, and KOIN radio (nice plug there, heh heh) has to go off the air. Does anyone know, where would the CONELRAD transmitting sites have been in the Portland area? It is a bit of a mystery to me how one could have provided a usable signal strength to a metro area like Portland, yet not have the transmitter serve as a beacon to bomber aircraft.

Note that the date on this broadcast is incorrect. Because of who is mayor (Terry Schrunk) and other visual clues, the drill probably took place in fall of 1957. It was either broadcast that winter or early 1958.

Not only was Sshrunk not elected until 1957, Glenn Ford also mentions "man made moons," a clear reference to man-made satellites. The first satellite "Sputnik" wasn't launched until 1957.

I remember this well. I went to Sunset Valley grade school, which was on the northwest corner of Sunset Highway and Murray Road. (At the time both Sunset and Murray were two lane cart paths with a flashing yellow light at the intersection, no overpass.) We were sent home early that day so those of us who lived south of Sunset could get across the road before the "evacuation" started.

Funny thing how easy it is to be prepared when you know the "attack" is coming weeks in advance. Can you imagine what it would have been like if there'd actually been just three and a half hours notice?

By the way, anyone notice the way Ford pronouces noo-kyoo-ler in the closing narration?

"Does anyone know, where would the CONELRAD transmitting sites have been in the Portland area?"

Delta Park, Kelly Butte.

The confusion about the date of the documentary is because the actual drill, Operation Greenlight, was conducted 9/27/55, and the documentary was a re-creation filmed in 9/57 and aired 12/8/57. Rather than repeat it all here, see References in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Day_Called_%27X%27

It's interesting then that Terry Shrunk would "play" the mayor since Fred Petersen was mayor in September 1955.

Ahh..so that "Bunker/Studio" in the film is on Kelly Butte? I knew I'd seen it before,just couldn't place it.

Which local Radio and TV stations are presently prepared to operate programming from transmitter site (on short notice) in case their main studios bite the dust (earthquake or whatever)? Is there hardware in place to receive programming from out of area sources without using satelites?

Home bomb shelters, duck and cover drills oh the memories!

Am I the only one that thought duck and cover seemed more than a bit futile?

One look at the potential damage and the whole story is pretty grim. Wny not embrace the horror!

At least get a great view on your way out ---!

At the time, you could only pray for a "duck and cover" drill as the teacher announced a pop quiz.
Of course then, praying was not only allowed, but encouraged in school.

...those were good times. Now it's a fire drill, maybe if the kids are lucky.

Public Elementry school in the 60's:

1. Pledge of Allegiance
2. Put your hands together like a steeple (kindergarten only)
3. Atleast three recess periods to play.
4. A full hour in P.E. class
5. Lunch 30 cents, might have gone up to 35.
6. Banking Day!
7. Earthquake drills.
8. Noon siren. (Related completely to this thread!)

As the Soviet bombers approached... all U.S. commercial stations were to sign off with only the CONELRAD stations remaining on the air at 640kc & 1240kc. This prevented Soviet bomber navigators from triangulating their ground track. CONELRAD stations would then provide listeners in each city with information they needed to remain safe. So, where were the Portland CONELRAD stations' transmitters and studios? And who was lurking in the wings waiting to operate the system?

Public Elementry school in the 60's:

Don't forget about in-class CHRISTMAS parties and full school CHRISTMAS programs.

Also EASTER vacation. I dont recall hearing the term "spring break" then.

What stopped the bombers from triangulating on 640/1240?

Yes, Easter holiday became "Spring Break" sometime in the 70's, but don't nail me down. Unfortunately, spring break has taken on a new, (very unreligious meaning) in the past twenty years.

As far as Conelrad, I'm no expert, but again, wonder if this was not a PR effort to convince the citizenry that the US government had their back. How effective this might have been will never be known as the program was dismantled piece by piece in the 60's. EBS was the replacement, another example of a system that never lived up to its potential. Probably because government enforcement of the program was never extremely strong. i.e., how many EBS, (or today EAS), have actually been effective in saving lives? I'm sure there are individual cases, but 99.9% of radio listeners hear tests, not actual emergencies.

> Am I the only one that thought duck and cover
> seemed more than a bit futile?
>
> One look at the potential damage and the whole
> story is pretty grim. Wny not embrace the horror!

There was a huge discussion on the archive.org site on the validity of the film and the self-protection tactics that it tries to teach. I think that in the world of 1951, the civil defense techniques advocated by this and other films might have been reasonable because:

1) If the Soviets had dropped bombs, they probably would have focused their efforts on one or a few major cities. People in the suburbs and country might have had a chance at survival if they knew what to do.

2) Because the bombs would have been dropped from airplanes, which are slow and easily detected compared to missiles, people would have had some time to seek shelter.

Growing up in the 1980s, I remember seeing fallout shelter signs on a lot of public buildings. What I found absurd was that even though the threat of a nuclear attack still existed, our schools didn't teach us about civil defense, and I didn't know how to get into one of these shelters if I had to someday.

The duck and cover techniques lived on, though: In Ohio, which was tornado country, we would do duck and cover tornado drills.

From 62kgw:
"What stopped the bombers from triangulating on 640/1240?"

A few things I remember about this.

1. All stations used REDUCED power.

2. Transmit sites were switched in a random pattern... we were warned that some messages would be weak, but they would be repeated often.

3. 640 & 1240 were used at ALL locations, so how would the bomber identify Portland from Salem or Seattle? From a distance one might just hear a blurr of stations, much like the sound heard on the "local channels" (like 1450), at night. Would be tough to get a solid fix on this mess of hundreds of stations on the same frequency.

It was Spring Vacation as far back as I can remember but older people spoke of Easter Vacation. This and other comments make me think that it depends on where you grew up.

So... who here knows where the 640kc & 1240kc facilities were... and who was to man them?

I think it stopped being Easter vacation when it stopped coinciding with Easter.

They were the existing broadcast stations and staffs (probably augmented by any local officials who managed to scurry in). Transmitters and antenna networks were not very frequency agile, so it was a huge engineering headache, and many doubted it would work when needed. Some stations found they had to maintain a separate transmitter dedicated to one of the Conelrad frequencies.

A full (simultaneous nationwide) test of the system was only performed once, which seems to have been in the last annual CD Excercise ("Operation Alert"), in 1961, though I'd previously thought one was held in the late '50s.

In most states selected stations had underground bunkers and generators installed at government expense. Many of them remain and are used today for storage or as production rooms.

Ours was at KYMN; it had a good location (non-industrial and about 10 mi from the city center, with coverage of both metro and the valley) and I assume its assigned frequency was near enough 1240 to be tuned up on it. It was completed in about 1964 and inaugurated (with publicity) by Gov. Hatfield. I got to see it once on a tour in 1970, and others here (who worked there) have described it.

(Jimbo, who worked in the biz in those days, made a cryptic reference to "Delta Park," which I presume means KGW, which also had excellent coverage and a freq near 640, although I can't imagine that location remaining intact very long under attack.)

As to where the info was supposed to come from (this was before Cheyenne Mountain) or how it was to be passed down, I can't easily find. Most of this stuff remained classified until the 1990s, and historical archeology goes on today in e-forums of retired telco types like Coldwarcomms (where mysteries like an apparent nearly-nationwide but probably never completed net of FSK TTY on AM stations is being unearthed).

I imagine they relied primarily upon the wire service teletype networks (which is not greatly reassuring, recalling my experience with TTY loops in the 70s). Long Lines did go to great effort to harden (bury and reroute) the long distance system, but this was only completed toward the end of the 60s.

(Remember the "Dial-it-yourself discount" campaign of the '70s? Bell's subsidized LD capacity exceeded operator staffing by then, and LD became a profit center, indeed subsidizing heavily tarriffed local service. A cynic might note the breakup of Ma Bell finally occurred as soon as it was no longer needed for or subsidized by defense.)

After ICBMs and the achievement of some genuine offensive capability by the USSR in the mid-sixties, MAD became the putative defense theory, which effective civil defense would actually undermine. (However, preemptive strike remained our actual strategy through the '70s and into the '80s.)

So, CD before then was security theater (because what we had wouldn't work), and afterwards, it remained security theater (because it couldn't--or rather mustn't--work).

I went to public school and we always had Spring Break going back to 1956. My Catholic school friends usuallly got a different week off...the week following Easter...and called it Easter Break.

KSLM, when they were in West Salem also had a "bomb Shelter", and a generator that had been provided by FEMA. They also had a 1240 Khz crystal for their old Gates BC-5P transmitter. One could only imagine what it would have been like in a real emergency to have to shut the station down, swap crystals, then retune the transmitter and antenna matching unit from 1390 to 1240 Khz in a hurry. There would also have been the issue that only a studio and the generator were inside the shelter. The transmitter and most of the audio gear were not protected in the shelter.

My parents had a big thick envelop full of CD info from the 50's or early 60's. I wish they kept it. There were bunch of pamphlets and booklets about various topics, Conelrad, building a fallout shelter, etc. One I recall mentioned evacuation centers which were designated in small towns maybe 100 miles from the big cities, presumably pre-stocked with lots of food and water rations. I think the concept was that while the target itself (city center, ports, defence plants, mil bases, etc) would get wasted, the people in the surrounding suburbs that survived the initial blast would then want to get out of Dodge, thus there should be places pre-prepared to handle lots of evacuees. Presumably far enough out to be away from radioactivity, but not that far so that most could get there on a partial tank of gas.
Also the Interstate Highway system was part of that planning.

I remember a story about a bomb shelter/operations headquarters bunker located under I-5 in Seattle at about 65th street. It was built in the early 60's during the construction of the freeway. The story, as I recall in the 90's, the usefulness of the bunker was in serious question and what to do with it? Nothing, really. Instead it exists today as a relic of a very scary time in our history.

Here's the story:

http://www.historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=3705

Thanks, Edselehr. I attended 9th grade not more than a quarter mile from that site and at the time never knew it was there. I wonder how many other "secret" bunkers still exist around the country?

ALFREDO...Where in Ohio?

Well, in response to Ccullen's observation about KSLM, I'm sure the vulnerability of towers (etc.) to blast was clearly recognized by all involved. Also, EMP was (partly) predicted after the secret high-altitude Operation Argus in 1958 and certainly known since Starfish Prime (another space detonation) unexpectedly affected 1000-mile distant Hawaii in 1962 (though it may have remained classified for some time afterward).

So the bunkers were primarily for fallout protection, plus just deep enough (20 feet?) so staff would remain even if fearing a detonation near enough to demolish the rest of the station.

I remember (very dimly, early childhood) watching a live broadcast of a nuke test from a trench some distance away. The obviously nervous reporter carefully explained they could not televise the blast itself, as it would be necessary to protect the camera from the light with a lens cap. He even displayed the cap.

However, after the shot, the cap came off, but the camera was kaflooey; still had audio, but we watched a black screen. This was not explained beyond "something affected the camera," and that they didn't know why. Perhaps the TV crew were not informed this could happen, or not permitted to mention it, although they apparently expected to have post-shot video; either way, they'd told the audience to expect some, and did seem genuinely disappointed to have to end the coverage prematurely due to the loss of their sole camera on site.

I've tried to date this memory (I Googled a lot for "televised atomic tests") but simply can't, though it was probably before 1960.

Hmmm, "Security Theater"... now why does that term seem relevant to current events?

Sorry, I couldn't resist throwing that in. I still wonder whether the sham we called "Civil Defense" back then was intended to reassure or intimidate us. But that's for the "other things" side, where I don't venture; my nerves are bad enough as it is.

When I was in college a few years ago, they were cleaning out some storage and had piled a bunch of junk in the hall (I assume on it's way to the dumpster). I happened by and spied a small yellow steel box with a CD logo on it. I thought it would be cool to have and dug it out- turned out to be a geiger counter!

Doesn't seem to work, but it's still a cool conversation piece.

That's ok. There aren't many Geigers around to count. The only one I know of is Chuck Geiger in Fresno.

> ALFREDO...Where in Ohio?

This was in central Ohio--the Granville school district to be exact. When a tornado warning was issued, we were supposed to file out into the hallway, face the wall, and assume the duck & cover position. This area of the school had less glass than the classrooms did.

The account of the televised atomic test is pretty interesting. This demonstrates that vacuum tube equipment can survive the electromagnetic pulse effects of an atomic bomb blast! From what I've seen elsewhere, the image orthicon tubes used in television cameras back then were very fragile, so maybe it was the mechanical shock of the explosion that rendered the camera blind (I'm speculating here).

Trivia: the term emmy (as in the television award) was derived from "immy," which was a slang term that broadcast engineers of the day used when talking about image orthicons.

One could speculate endlessly on why the audio link survived but not the video. Separate paths (phone line v. portable microwave)? The complexity of the video vs. audio chains (dozens of tubes v. hundreds)? The portable audio may have been battery-powered, while the video would necessarily have been line-powered. Early cameras were often operated with their side-covers open to prevent overheating. Or someone upstream may have decided to flip a switch to force termination of the broadcast. Or yes, perhaps simply excessive vibration.

Yes, that explanation of Emmy is official, http://www.emmyonline.org/emmy/awards.html I wondered about Emitrons but they were all over there and weren't used beyond the '40s.

The Portland Tribune, Stumptown Stumper:

The words "lemon juice" and "applejack" were codes for a doomsday attack on Portland!

http://www.portlandtribune.com/news/story.php?story_id=117037641082443900

This is a fantastic thread and one of the many reasons I love this forum.

One of the most striking things about the video is how it compares Portland to Nagasaki. The two cities actually did have similarities. At the time, the populations were comparable. Our geography is also similar with the city growing up into the surrounding hills. Looking at photographs of the aftermath of August 9, 1945, it is easy to imagine what could have happened here.

It is also cool to see the old Portland Sanitarium on Mount Tabor. I remember watching them tear down that part of the building in the 1980s.

I had heard that Portland's population was over a million during World War II.

Did the Burnside Bums get evacuated during Operation Greenlight?

Semoochie, you may be right. At the time, Vanport was the second largest city in the state.

Jefferykopp, you have me very curious. I found this comprehensive website from the Atomic Veterans History Project. It has many photographs and video stills that might help you pinpoint the test.

http://www.aracnet.com/~pdxavets/index.shtml

That is a very interesting site, much evolved since I first ran across it. That's astonishing, as their generation is now dying out.

As there was a moratorium on testing between 1958 and 1961, I must have seen one at age 4 or before or age 6 or older. I'm guessing 1961, as by that age I was fascinated by TV (I made the rounds of all the local kiddie shows to see the studios) and intrigued by the whole "lens cap" thing; that plus the unexplained (EMP?) failure of the camera stuck in my mind.

Unfortunately the only mentions I find on-line of "televised" tests were in 1952, 1953 and 1955, which would be impossible for me to remember. However, the one I recall seeing was not actually "televised" (remember the "lens cap") but merely "reported" from a trench too near to expose the camera to the flash (and close enough to make the reporter obviously nervous; I remember him craning his neck to peer warily over the edge at the delays uprange). It may possibly have been only a regional 'cast; we did occasionally see events fed from KTLA (I remember their astonishing Baldwin Hills Reservoir flood coverage in 1963), and they (thanks to Klaus Landsberg's long-range microwave links) were the nuke-telecasting pioneers.

Intriguing question about the extent of the Greenlight evacuation. I would imagine that such a drill in 1948 would have naturally included mass transit and trains, but by 1955, if you didn't own a car, you didn't count. (Through the 60s, the operative plan was jump into the family jalopy to dash into the jam following those CD signs to take refuge in--Canby? Family wagons had 400 CIDs for neither vanity nor racing, but hopefully rapid freeway evacuation.) Perhaps a couple Rosys were thrown in for demonstration.

"Portland’s population escalated from 305,000 in 1940 to 374,000 ten years later." http://www.ohs.org/education/oregonhistory/narratives/subtopic.cfm?subtopic_ID=5 00 (It was still--or became again--about the same in 1960.) Of course, the decennial censuses widely straddled the war years; one would have to dig up an archived housing survey to get even something like an estimate.

So I can't Google up a figure for the war years, although the "the steep total population increase of about 160,000 led to inevitable overcrowding" in Portland http://arcweb.sos.state.or.us/exhibits/ww2/life/minority.htm and the population of Vanport City was "40,000 at its peak" http://www.ohs.org/education/oregonhistory/historical_records/dspDocument.cfm?do c_ID=000D77A5-C7AD-1E52-BEFF80B05272FE9F

So by my reckoning that comes out to about half a million peak Portland+Vanport. Today Portland is 556,000 and the metro total (10-mi radius) has typically run 2x city since the early 60s. My WAG is to add no more than 100K for ex-city metro in 1945.

It is hard to imagine a million in 1940s Portland unless people were sleeping in tents and in the streets, as the 'burbs were only a fraction of their density today (or even 1960). But my mother remembers the war as crowded and difficult here; many moves (Vancouver to up by Vaughn Park--went to Lincoln High with Jane Powell--to Tigard), changes in schools (she fell one credit short of graduation--but her secret was safe as Grants Pass High burned down afterwards), and long work commutes for her father.

Well, while we're digressing wildly off-topic on Stumtptown's wartime demo, it's perhaps worth mentioning that while my maternal side came out on the trail (1852) and train (in the teens), my father's side was brought here by the war. My uncle (exempt by religion plus three children) was sent from Peoria to work for Hyster. His travel trailer fell off the car in Oak Grove, some months later he managed to buy a house a few blocks away on the Interurban, the rest of the family followed, and we've been here ever since.

Great information Jefferykopp. So, if Portland had a combined population that was around say 350,000+ in the fifties when the evacuation was made, my initial thought that Nagasaki was similar is still true geographically, but they actually had far fewer residents than Portland.

"On the day of the bombing, an estimated 263,000 were in Nagasaki, including 240,000 Japanese residents, 10,000 Korean residents, 2,500 conscripted Korean workers, 9,000 Japanese soldiers, 600 conscripted Chinese workers, and 400 prisoners of war."
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/radevents/1945JAP2.html

One of the high points of the documentary to me was an eerie and unholy noise we never hear anymore -- the air raid siren.
http://www.victorysiren.com/x/main.htm

In an attempt to drag this thread back to near-topic after my reminiscing (and also a question in the back of my mind for a while):

In the later (actually scarier) cold war of the 80s, there was a remarkable Seattle-to-somewhere in Russia LIVE teleconference between high school students on KING, hosted on our side by the venerable motherly Jean Enersen. It was around 1983 and I think was a brainchild of Dorothy Bullitt called "Skybridge." (Seattleites of that day knew, due to the Trident base and Boeing Works, that they were certain goners if the "balloon went up.") It may have predated (or perhaps was the inspiration or a test-run for) the (much more tense) Congress-to-Politburo live sat exchange hosted by Sam Donaldson on ABC.

I can't find anything online about this amazing broadcast, not even on the (dismal) history page of KING's Web site, nor in King County's deeply extensive HistoryLink.org. Anyone else remember it? Was it shown in Portland?

Just to clarify, it was my understanding that during World War II, Portland's population exploded! This would be due to it being a(THE?)major shipbuilder on the west coast. When the war ended, the population dropped back down to pre-war levels.

I also heard the "million in Portland in WWII" somewhere back in the 70s. The growth was indeed explosive, but I presumed that figure was used metaphorically, and I never took it literally.

I finally found a table breaking down the years between the censuses. It shows Mult and Wash Cos at 476K and 45K in 1945, plus an isolated figure for Clark Co. of 50K in 1942. (Clackamas Co. not listed then, but elsewhere I see it didn't take off until later; the next table shows it increasing only 10K during the war.) Anyway, the metro is getting up toward 600K. http://www.hevanet.com/oti/population.htm

I saw one mention of Portland's population increasing "38% in three years" (a parole officer comparing a spike in juvenile delinquency to the greater proportional increase in population). The county's number jumps, but not so dramatically; see http://www.metro-region.org/library_docs/maps_data/pop1850-presentcounty.xls (or Google the URL for a Web view so you don't have to fire up Excel).

It shows a 1945 Portland MSA of 587K (Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington Cos.). The SMSA for that year (which includes Clark Co.) is also shown as 587K, as Clark is missing from the table on that line, so add 50K from the 1942 figure (prev. table) and we get 637K.

Surprisingly, that table shows Multnomah's population merely pausing (the other shows it dipping only slightly) in '46, and recovering by '47. This suggests there may have been a transient worker (or work-seeking) population during the peak which went uncounted.

Elsewhere (most Google results for portland +wartime +population brought back essays on or studies of black demographics), I saw references to the white shipyard workers departing after the war but the blacks remaining; the shipyards employed 100K workers but there were only 20K black, so we may be missing ~80K workers in there (plus their dependents). That could yield in the neighborhood of 700K (to the far reaches of the four counties), perhaps close enough for folks to refer to "a million."

After the spike in 42-44, the steadiest chunk of growth was the early '50s (8% across 51-54, slowing into the recession of 1959); it takes off again in the mid-60s (6% from 63-66, then sliding into another, longer recession). After that Multco stagnates (the UGB and aging housing). while the 'burbs begin to really take off (note 5% for all three other counties in the single year 1990).

The 4-county SMSA broke a mil in 1970 and the tri-county MSA in 1978.

Aside from the wartime industrial activity, Oregon's economy remained lumber-driven (despite some light-medium industry and Tektronix) until the '80s, and therefore rose and fell with the prime rate (which directly impacted housing starts). This was quite a roller-coaster (particularly for people in the ad biz, like my artist father, and would presumably include our broadcast industry--hey, I'm back on-topic).

It took a decade for industry to return in the form of high-tech (replacing the lumber industry which had overlogged itself to death; the Spotted Owl decision merely forced the inevitable to occur more suddenly), and only since then has our economy had any kind of reliable consistency.

However, the wild rise in California property values drove unprecedented migration to Oregon (the third and largest postwar "wave," following previous in-migrations of the early 50's and early '70s). Half of all new jobs created in this era are filled by out-of-staters, however, while our housing costs doubled. Meanwhile, suburban cities granted over-generous concessions to attract new industry (only to come up short for supporting the growth), and the legislature turned Republican and gutted our carefully crafted, unusually progressive state revenue system ... but now I'm into stuff for the other side of the board.

Basically, the state I remember ceased to exist in the '70s, and was transmogrified in the '90s into something I can't quite recognize today (short of the familiar geography and horizons). There remains a hearty cultural core in the central city which carries a modernized (bicycling, wi-fi'd) form of its heritage, and the far boonies have remained rangeland or largely reverted to their bucolic, pre-lumbering status. But between those two extremes, it's all changed, and could be "Anywhere."

That's either a great deal of research or you keep a lot more in your head than I do! Incidentally, if you go back 100 years or so, Portland's population was larger than Seattle.

Oh, a lot rattles around in my head; Google helps me try to pull it together.

Yep, the Denny party stayed in a hotel in Portland before going to camp out on windy Alki Point in 1851. Portland is a generation older than Seattle, a fact they are loath to acknowledge. However, the Klondike rush and milling lumber to rebuild SF swelled Seattle early on, and the cities ran neck-and-neck from the mid-1880s until the late 1940s, when Boeing pushed it ahead. http://www.publicpurpose.com/dm-uscty.htm

Actually, they're pretty close again.

In the city limits, they are about the same. However the close location of Everett-Seattle-Tacoma-Olympia has given a boost to the stretch of sprawl along I5.