Margaret "Maggie" Gee dreamed of becoming a pilot after watching Amelia Earhart land in Oakland, completing her solo flight from Honolulu.
"I read about her all the time, but actually seeing her fly a plane was like a dream come true. She was my hero, my inspiration," Gee, now 84, said recently. "I didn't care if it was ladylike or not, I wanted to fly."
Gee, who became one of the first Chinese American women aviators to fly for the U.S. military, is among nearly a dozen World War II veterans and eyewitnesses featured in "California at War," an hourlong documentary that will air on KCET on Sept. 20, three days before Ken Burns' seven-part series, "The War."
Told through photographs, archival footage and interviews, "California at War" paints a vivid picture of this state's history and growth -- spotlighting such wartime phenomena as the Hollywood Canteen, the Zoot Suit riots and the so-called Battle of Los Angeles in February 1942, when the city mistakenly thought it was under enemy attack.
At first, said Bret Marcus, the documentary's executive producer, "there was an incredible sense of denial about the war among Californians. The war was more than a continent away. Then the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and there was fear that California would be the next target."
The fear was not unfounded.
John Sudden was 14, hunting on his parents' ranch near Santa Barbara, when he saw a torpedo heading toward the H.M. Storey oil tanker.
"The most frightening thing I'd seen before that was looking down and maybe seeing a rattlesnake," he recalled in the documentary.
The Storey wasn't hit, but other ships weren't so lucky.
Richard Quincy tells of standing guard on the oil tanker Montebello, six miles off Cambria, near dawn on Dec. 23, 1941.
"I saw a quick flash of light in the darkness, probably a flashlight," he said. "Then the torpedo hit."
As the 38-man crew escaped in lifeboats, they watched the oil tanker's stern rise and then sink. Quincy recalls desperately rowing to safety while the attacking submarine lobbed shells at them.
"Using a deck gun, they shot nine rounds at us. We all survived," said the 88-year-old, who lives in Danville, near Oakland.
But, he said, a lot of people doubted the attack had occurred, even when it was reported in the news.
Then, on Feb. 23, 1942, the Japanese attacked the California mainland, firing 13 shells from a sub at the Ellwood oil field north of Santa Barbara.
