F I R S TP R E V820NEXTLAST

Watching the Ocean, Baker Beach
On the evening of the Pearl Harbor attack hundreds of San Franciscans gathered on its Ocean Beach straining in the sunset to spot any invasion fleet that might be headed for the city. No invasion ever came but five years later a Baker Beach fisherman discovered a twenty-one foot, twenty-seven hundred pound Japanese torpedo half buried in the sand just a few hundred feet from the Golden Gate Bridge. It was determined the torpedo was over two years old and had probably drifted in from the Pacific. Bridge traffic was shut down temporarily while the still-deadly device was detonated. Fifty years prior to the torpedo's discovery Thomas Edison had proposed a plan to defend the Bay with its own explosives. His scheme called for a system of floating bombs that could be detonated electronically. His plan was never put into effect.
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