Blackout Rules, December 23, 1941

Lieutenant-General J. L. DeWitt, commander of military defense operations in the western United States during World War II, asked that cities near the Pacific coast be able to black out within 60 seconds. With no light, enemy bombers would have difficulty locating their targets. Complying with DeWitt's request, Portland Mayor Earl Riley issued a set of blackout rules pertaining to the lighting of city businesses.

In the months immediately following Pearl Harbor, Americans on the Pacific coast genuinely feared raids by Japanese bombers. On March 31, 1942, for example, an Oregon Journal headline asked, "Could Portland be bombed?" The accompanying editorial concluded that:

"Not until this war is won and ended and peace is established, are we free of danger from the worst that the Axis can do. That targets America, but it points the threat right here. Coolly, courageously, ably, we must be ready."

The bombers never came, but the Japanese military did try an alternative and ineffective method for bombing the West Coast. It released hot-air balloons armed with incendiary bombs, which in theory would travel east across the Pacific Ocean and land on North American sites. In the end they did almost no damage. In fact, the only known incident in which Americans were killed took place in Oregon. In May 1945, a mother and five children on a church picnic in Bly—east of Klamath Falls—died when they handled and set off an unexploded bomb.