1941 ❖ COASTAL LIGHTS WERE OUT

S S. MAUNA ALA,
Full of turkeys and Christmas trees,
Clatsop Spit, 
Original photo from the archives of the 
Saltwater People Historical Society©

"Early in December of 1941, the 421-foot steam freighter MAUNA ALA, was on her way to Honolulu with a cargo hold stuffed with Christmas cheer. The steamer was hauling the load for the US. government, and she was that year's "Christmas Ship." She was packing 60,000 Christmas trees; 10,000 frozen turkeys; 3,000 frozen chickens; and thousands more cases of prime steaks and Almond Roca candy. Her destination: Pearl Harbor, where the soldiers and sailors stationed at the base were eagerly waiting for her to arrive. The Japanese airstrike of Dec. 7 happened when the MAUNA ALA was still several thousand miles from her destination. The word went out immediately that the voyage was off. So the MAUNA ALA was ordered to make immediately for the nearest deepwater port. Unfortunately, for the MAUNA ALA, the nearest port was Astoria, Oregon. An order for radio silence went out. As the MAUNA ALA steamed homeward, she was neither getting nor receiving any information. That was unfortunate, because had it not been the case, they surely would have learned that the well-meaning authorities in Oregon had decided to black out the entire cost. And they'd blacked it out completely -including lighthouses and navigational beacons. And so it was that, under full power at maximum cruising speed, the S.S. MAUNA ALA piled onto the beach at Clatsop Spit, just south of the Columbia River entrance. Mindful of what happens to 10,000 turkeys when they're left out in an unrefrigerated space for too long–even in December on the Oregon Coast–the military declared the contents of the MAUNA ALA 'open salvage,' essentially inviting local residents to come on down and get what they could. So, plenty of locals got to start off the nation's four-year wartime run of scarcity and rationing with a whale of a Christmas feast, courtesy of the MAUAN ALA and the U.S. military."

Courtesy of:

Offeat Oregon.com
Finn J.D. John
August 2016, for Clatsop Spit, OR.