Blanchard and Bleichert: a hero and a snitch.
Remembering Sam Murakami and Hideo Ashida manacled en route to Manzanar made it easy to simplify the two of us–at first. Then we went into action side by side, and my early notions about Lee–and myself–went blooey.
It was early June of ’43. The week before, sailors had brawled with zoot suit wearing Mexicans at the Lick Pier in Venice. Rumor had it that one of the gobs lost an eye. Skirmishing broke out inland: navy personnel from the Chavez Ravine naval base versus pachucos in Alpine and Palo Verde. Word hit the papers that the zooters were packing Nazi regalia along with their switchblades, and hundreds of in-uniform soldiers, sailors and marines descended on downtown LA, armed with two-by-fours and baseball bats. An equal number of pachucos were supposed to be forming by the Brew 102 Brewery in Boyle Heights, supplied with similar weaponry. Every Central Division patrolman was called in to duty, then issued a World War I tin hat and an oversize billy club known as a nigger knocker.
At dusk, we were driven to the battleground in personnel carriers borrowed from the army, and given one order: restore order. Our service revolvers had been taken from us at the station; the brass did not want .38’s falling into the hands of reet pleat, stuff cuff, drape shape, Argentine ducktail Mexican gangsters. When I jumped out of the carrier at Evergreen and Wabash holding only a three-pound stick with a friction-taped handle, I got ten times as frightened as I had ever been in the ring, and not because chaos was coming down from all sides.
I was terrified because the good guys were really the bad guys.
Sailors were kicking in windows all along Evergreen; marines in dress blues were systematically smashing streetlights, giving themselves more and more darkness to work in. Eschewing inter-service rivalry, soldiers and jarheads overturned cars parked in front of a bodega while navy youths in skivvies and white bell-bottoms truncheoned the shit out of an outnumbered bunch of zooters on the sidewalk next door. At the periphery of the action I could see knots of my fellow officers hobnobbing with Shore Patrol goons and MPs.
I don’t know how long I stood there, numbed, wondering what to do. Finally I looked down Wabash toward 1st Street, saw small houses, trees and no pachucos, cops or blood-hungry GIs. Before I knew what I was doing, I ran there full speed. I would have kept running until I dropped, but a high-pitched laugh issuing from a front porch stopped me dead.
I walked toward the sound. A high-pitched voice called out, “You’re the second young copper to take a powder from the commotion. I don’t blame you. Kinda hard to tell who to put the cuffs on, ain’t it?”
I stood on the porch and looked at the old man. He said, “Radio says cabdrivers been makin’ runs to the USO up in Hollywood, then bringin’ the sailor boys down here. KFI called it a naval assault, been playin’ ‘Anchors Aweigh’ every hour on the half hour. I saw some gyrenes down the street. You think this is what you call an amphibious attack?”
“I don’t know what it is, but I’m going back.”
“You ain’t the only one turned tail, you know. ‘Nuther big fella came runnin’ this way pronto.”
Pops was starting to look like a wily version of my father.
“There’s some pachucos who need their order restored.”
“Think it’s that simple, laddy?”
“I’ll make it that simple.”
The old man cackled with delight. I stepped off the porch and headed back to duty, tapping the knocker against my leg. The streetlights were now all dead; it was almost impossible to distinguish zooters from GIs. Knowing that gave me an easy way out of my dilemma, and I got ready to charge. Then I heard “_Bleichert!_” behind me, and knew who the other runner had been.
I ran back. There was Lee Blanchard, “The Southland’s good but not great white hope,” facing down three marines in dress blues and a pachuco in a full-drape zoot suit. He had them cornered in the center walkway of a ratty bungalow court and was holding them off with parries from his nigger knocker. The jarheads were taking roundhouse swipes at him with their two-by-fours, missing as Blanchard moved sideways and back and forth on the balls of his feet. The pachuco fondled the religious medals around his neck, looking bewildered.