The nighttime was especially dark during the early months of 1942 in Southern California—coastal blackouts deemed necessary following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Panic gripped the nation, especially on the West Coast, as the possibility of a Japanese invasion caused fear and confusion.
On February 24, 1942, a false alarm of an enemy air raid resulted in approximately 1,400 rounds of anti-aircraft rounds shot into the air, the shrapnel landing along a wide area. This “Battle of Los Angeles” resulted in no enemy casualties, just rattled nerves of those on the home front.
“They thought the Japanese were along the coast, so all the coast gunners fired,” recalls Ridge Bemis, then a 17-year-old Long Beach resident. “We got shrapnel on our house.”
Ridge, 98, now a St. George resident, remembered that night, and how it made his military future seem even more real. He graduated from high school later that year and joined the Enlisted Reserve Corps, which was soon scuttled due to manpower concerns. Instead, Ridge trained with an infantry division at Camp Roberts, California, and was in Camp Stoneman, near San Francisco, when an accident drastically changed his trajectory.
“I had a busted ankle and went to sick bay for 10 days,” Ridge remembers. “The unit shipped out without me.”
Ridge ended up in the China Burma India Theater, assigned to the 3725th Quartermaster Trucking Company.
“I was just a young kid. I didn’t know a soul,” Ridge says. “I hadn’t trained with them, but driving a truck is driving a truck. You learn in a hurry.”
The American contributions in the China Burma India Theater during World War II were instrumental in supporting and defending Chinese and British Commonwealth forces in their resistance against Japanese aggression. United States forces trucked supplies—mostly ammunition and gasoline—along the Ledo Road to air strips hacked out of the jungle.
Pilots of cargo planes such as the C-87 and C-109, loaded down with supplies, would then “fly the hump” over the Himalayas—the Earth’s highest mountain range. Once in China, those supplies would eventually benefit General Claire Chennault and the men who flew his P-40 Warhawk fighter planes, the famous “Flying Tigers.”
Just getting supplies there was an ordeal. Driving a U.S. Army 6 x 6 truck, the journey along on the Ledo Road was often perilous during monsoon season. Chunks of earth slid down the mountain, blocking most or all of the road.
“You were going 3 miles an hour—and that was good,” Ridge recalls. “You had to go around steep embankments.”
Once, a pilot sought out Ridge and a fellow soldier to commend them for doing such a great job tying down the 55-gallon drums of aviation gas in his plane. The pilot had experienced a wild flight—his aircraft nearly turned over—but the gasoline barrels stayed put.
“It’s the little stuff that stays with you,” Ridge says.
After the war ended, Ridge returned home, attended Long Beach State and transferred to UCLA for his final two years. He spent 35 years in the aerospace industry, rising to the title of executive administrator for Interstate Electronics Corporation.
In retirement, Ridge and his wife Mary sought to relocate outside Southern California. They heard about St. George and decided to move in 1992, building a house close to the Virgin River on the south end of town.
“We are very happy here,” Ridge says. “We like St. George. We think it is a great city.”
“I was just a young kid. I didn’t know a soul,” Ridge says. “I hadn’t trained with them ... You learn in a hurry.” ‒ Ridge Bemis, World War II veteran and 98-year-old St. George resident