Seventy-five years ago Berkeley faced new crime problems in 1943, police Chief John A. Greening said. He predicted “petty and felonious” crime would rise “with the expected influx of additional defense workers, scheduled within the next few weeks” in the East Bay.
“Whenever there is an increase in population cities can expect a corresponding increase in crime” he told the City Council. “This is especially true when the need for workers is so great that no concern is given to character and little even to skills.”
He noted that in 1940 two Berkeley police officers were injured making arrests, while in the first half of 1943 15 had been injured. Greening added that the police department was short-staffed with 16 vacancies. Fourteen men had recently applied for police jobs, but only eight to 10 of them were expected to qualify. Greening said that men over draft age — 38 at the time — were opting for defense industry jobs. The Police Department had prepared 12 “auxiliary police stations” throughout the city in case of emergencies and enrolled auxiliary officers as well.
Government changes: Berkeley saw some changes in City Hall at the close of June 1943. City Clerk Miss Florence Turner retired “with the smiles and tears of council members following her.” They gave her “a fitted leather cosmetics case” as a parting gift.
“I don’t believe there is anyone in Berkeley so well known and so admired as Miss Turner” said City Manager Chester Fisk. She had worked for the city for 28 years. The same council meeting was the last for Mayor Frank Gaines. Mayor-elect Fitch Robertson would take office July 1, and Councilmembers Frank Berg and Richard French would be replaced by Redmond Staats Jr. and Joseph L. McKee.
Berg had lost his bid for re-election, and French had decided not to run again. Gaines said he would “continue as a vigilant citizen to help Berkeley maintain the standards that make her one of the foremost cities of her size.” All were given leather wallets as parting gifts.
Ice ballet: The Gazette described Berkeley as “the leading ice skating center of the Pacific Coast” on June 25, when reporting on “10 Pacific Coast and National 1943 titles” won by members of the St. Moritz Club skaters headquartered at Berkeley Iceland.
The paper also announced that Iceland would premiere “something entirely new in the field of ice shows,” the “ice ballet.” Sponsored by the Berkeley Festival Association, Iceland would start in mid-July a program of ice shows directed by William Christiansen, director of the San Francisco Ballet. The performances would be accompanied by a 50-piece orchestra.
Berkeley Iceland is now, of course, a sporting goods store where you can buy sporting equipment but not really do what the building was designed for — actually engage in winter sports. A block away the old Berkeley Bowl, which opened as a bowling alley on the same 1940s weekend as Iceland, is now a Honda dealership. This is all part of the current triumph of commerce over publicly accessible recreational facilities in our community.
War news: A P-38 fighter plane, presumably on a training or practice flight, crashed June 28 into a crowded stretch of shore in Huntington Beach. Four children were killed and scores of other people injured, many of them from burns. The pilot had bailed out, landing a mile away. The same day one man was killed and eight people injured when no less than three Army planes crashed during bad weather into a three-square-block area in Louisville, Kentucky.
Steven Finacom is a Bay Area native and community historian in Berkeley.