Vignette #3 - WAR!

[Barnaby Cuthbert]

It's the War to end all wars, and it’s not of Kindred design. In London, Prince Mithras is dead, killed by the bombs of the German war machine. Europe is in chaos. No vampire has ever seen or heard of anything like what World War II has brought to bear. Hand-held machine-guns. Armored infantry. Tanks. Fighter jets and bombers. It seemed like only yesternight that men fought wars on horseback. Even the rifles and paper airplanes of World War I seemed like children’s toys by comparison, and the worst of what humanity has to offer is not yet known. For the rest of the century Kindred will claim that they were behind it, or refuse to talk about it, or rarely, chidingly admit they were overwhelmed by it, but all of the bluster in the world cannot overcome one simple fact: mortals are proving capable of more destruction than the most diabolical of Kindred.

But that’s the now. It wasn’t always so.

Like most cities in the decade or two after the turn of the century, it remained boom time, and the early 1900’s gave way to the roaring 20’s. Moonlit terraces were home to innumerable dinner parties with Charleston dancing flapper girls and their gentleman callers. It was a high-society’s world. Riding high on the successes of the Yukon Gold Rush, it was an easy transition for Seattle's bustling town.

1909 - June 1: The Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition opens on the site now occupied by the UW.

1910 - Seattle's population is 237,194. - Laurelhurst and Georgetown annexed. - Nov. 8: Washington state grants women the right to vote. In 1854, a proposal by Arthur Denny to enfranchise women had failed by one vote in the territorial legislature. Seattle women won the right to vote in 1883, but that was ruled unconstitutional by the Territorial Court in 1887.

1911 - Feb. 7, Mayor Hiram Gill is recalled. Gill sought to preside over a city tolerant of gambling and prostitution. - Sept. 5: Port of Seattle established. - May 20: Union Station opens to serve the Union Pacific railroad.

1913 - July 17: A confrontation between sailors and an Industrial Workers of the World speaker during Seattle's Potlatch Days festival leads to two days of rioting and fistfights. No deaths are reported, but injuries and property damages are extensive. - Dec. 27: The Leschi, the first automobile ferry, makes its first trip across Lake Washington.

1913 First automobile ferry, the Leschi, crosses Lake Washington.

1914 - The Cornish School, specializing in the arts, is founded. - July 4: Smith Tower opens. It is the tallest building west of the Mississippi.

1916 - June 1: Longshoremen strike in major ports along the West Coast, including Seattle. The strike is marred by violence and property destruction and is not settled until October.

1917 - March 26: The Seattle Metropolitans hockey team wins the Stanley Cup.

1917 - May 8: Lake Washington Ship Canal, including the Hiram Chittenden Locks, is completed, connecting Shilshole Bay, Lake Union and Lake Washington. - May 9: Boeing Airplane established.

1918-1919 - A flu epidemic kills 1,600 in Seattle.

1919 - Eddie Bauer goes into business. - Feb. 6: First general strike in the nation's history begins in Seattle when 60,000 workers stay home. The strike ends Feb. 11.

In the 30’s automobiles got faster, hooch got illegal, and those enterprising enough learned how to make money off of Prohibition. Suddenly a business with a basement in the Denny Triangle had a convenient place to store contraband whiskey or host a speakeasy, and that area was rife with them. Bootleggers across the northwest drove souped-up automobiles cross country, making big money transporting liquor across state lines and into the thirsty mouths of a grateful populace. In response to the lawlessness of the late 20’s and early 30’s the rise of a new kind of threat came into being: the G man. The Fed. Agents with mandates to stop illegal activity who didn’t follow their own laws, who were willing to break down doors and expose dark corners to the light of the law. The Kindred old enough to remember the Inquisition rightfully feared them, and did their best to hide in the shadows, behind their Masquerade, but more than one Kindred was very nearly exposed by the efforts of the FBI to shut down liquor sales.

1920 - Seattle's population is 315,312. - May: The nation's first sanitary landfill is established on Queen Anne Hill. - Dec. 27: The Hearst company takes over the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

1924 - Dec. 6: The Olympic Hotel opens.

1926 - Don Ibsen, a senior at Roosevelt High School, screws a pair of tennis shoes onto a cedar board and becomes one of the co-inventors of water-skiing. - Fisher's Blend Station corporation is formed, and Seattle's AM radio station goes on the air. - May 9: Bertha Landes is elected mayor, first woman mayor in any major U.S. city.

1927 - Jan. 28: Boeing secures the Chicago-San Francisco air-mail contract and forms United Air Lines.

1928 - Thomas Edison flips a switch in West Orange, N.J., and turns on Seattle's new electric street-lighting system. - Burton and Florence Bean James start the Seattle Repertory Playhouse. - July 26: Boeing Field opens. - Dec. 30: The Interurban to Tacoma ends service.

Then the Great Depression hit, and the Western world knew hunger, joblessness, malnutrition. As the Kine suffered, so did the Kindred. Hoovervilles, shanty towns full of the jobless and hopeless, sprang up all over the country, and Seattle was no different. It was Bust time in Seattle again. Some Kindred wasted away, fell to their Beasts from lack of blood. Others found a way to insinuate themselves into the hardscrabble life of the Hooverville downtown, or wormed their way into the bank accounts of the ‘haves’. Those that didn’t, perished or fell into torpor. Its a bitter time for everyone.

1930 - Seattle's population is 365,583. - Dec. 10: The Denny Regrade is completed. Begun in 1898, this was a massive project to level Denny Hill and surrounding area, one of several similar works around the city.

1932- Feb. 27: The Aurora Bridge is dedicated, the first major highway bridge built in Seattle.

1933 - June 23: Seattle Art Museum opens in Volunteer Park.

1934 - The Washington Park Arboretum is established. - May 9: A West Coast waterfront strike, in which several people are killed, begins. It lasts until July 31. The International Longshoreman's Association wins recognition in Seattle.

1936 - Aug. 19: Newsroom members of the American Newspaper Guild strike the Post-Intelligencer.

1938 - July 29: Ivar Haglund opens a fish-and-chips stand at Pier 54. This expands into Ivar's Acres of Clams and an empire of seafood eateries.

1939 - Lloyd and Mary Anderson form a buying co-op in Seattle so members can find obscure climbing equipment. This becomes REI (Recreational Equipment Incorporated). - Dec. 2: Yesler Terrace becomes the first racially integrated public housing in United States.

1940 - Seattle's population is 368,302. - June 5: The Lake Washington Floating Bridge opens, connecting Seattle with Mercer Island and the Eastside.

In Seattle, wartime saved the economy from the worst of the Great Depression, and Boeing field was the life’s blood of the economic return of the city… at least until the Federal Government took it over. Fearing a second world war, the United States had already begun to build up its armed forces in the late 1930s, helping to revitalize the Depression-becalmed economy of the Puget Sound region. The area's aircraft and ship builders have shifted into high gear after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Every sector of business and domestic life is affected by the war effort. Mortal society is undergoing dramatic change as women take the place of men on production lines, thousands of Japanese Americans are interned into camps, and equal numbers of African Americans migrate to the Northwest in search of defense jobs. War contracts are revitalizing slow industries with a swelling flow of urgent orders for war materials, equipment, and supplies. Labor shortages have replaced unemployment lines and a great migration has developed as Americans move from poorer areas, particularly in the South, to areas with major war industries.

Washington, a comparatively small and undeveloped state, plays a disproportionately important role in the country's efforts to gear up for war. Seattle ranks as one of the top three cities in the nation in war contracts per capita, and Washington state ranks as one of the top two in the nation for war contracts per capita. Airplane and ship contracts in 1943-1944 were valued at three times the total of all manufacturing in the state in 1939. Boeing's Seattle and Renton plants produce 8,200 planes, including 6,981 B-17s and more than 1,000 giant B-29s. Civilian use of Boeing Field is greatly curtailed to accommodate the production of thousands of Boeing bombers. The military also annexes Tacoma's McChord Field, prompting that city to plead with the Port to develop Seattle-Tacoma International Airport at Bow Lake -- midway between the Sound's two major cities. Sea-Tac Airport is born.

1942 - April 21: Japanese Americans are ordered to evacuate Seattle. More than 12,000 U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry from King County were held in inland "relocation centers" during World War II.

1944 - Aug. 14: African-American soldiers riot at Fort Lawton and lynch an Italian prisoner of war. Twenty-three men are convicted and 13 acquitted in the riot, attributed to racial tension based on unfair treatment of black soldiers.

1945 - Dec. 22: Group Health Cooperative formed.

It’s the summer of 1945 in Seattle, and the war has been raging for years. Kindred and Kine refugees have flooded every part of the world on their way out of war-torn Europe. America is now acting as the game-changer, along with Russia. Both sets of troops are pushing into Germany, but have been met with fierce resistance on all fronts. Hitler’s Germany is giving ground, but stubbornly, and resources are wearing thin. The Japanese in the Pacific remain defiant and entrenched. The atmosphere is one of uncertainty and determination, of loss and of longing for simpler nights. People stay indoors at night, they black out their windows and sleep with weapons, afraid the Empire of Japan might just be able to hop across the Pacific to take Seattle. Asians are taken to internment camps and held, or deported without trial. Air raid drills fill the night with terrifying sirens. Air raid wardens patrol every street, looking for every sign of a light in the darkness that might show a Japanese warplane a target. Blood is difficult to come by and fear rules the night.

Throughout the city, Kindred have gathered together to discuss the state of affairs in the world. Refugees have swelled the city's population with new arrivals, fresh with the tales of the horrors of Europe, and hoping to escape to the relative safety of the Emerald Domain.

[Barnaby Cuthbert]

Inspiration!

Seattle 1945
Flip through a few Newspapers:


Camouflaged Boeing Field!?!?:


Seattle War Years Photos: www.seattlepi.com/local/seattle-history/slideshow/Seattle-History-War-Years-1941-1945-7429.php

[Ace Devee]

On behalf of Prince Orleans and the Court of Seattle,

I cordially invite members of the city and their guests to a formal gathering of the Court of Seattle
on August 5, 1945 (or September 5, 1945)

at

Ivar's Acres of Clam
Pier 54

Presenting this invitation will grant you access to the gathering.

Your Host,
Isabella Stanton
Ventrue Primogen
Status 4

(Invitations are translated into an appropriate language for existing residents)

Invitations would be delivered to the public residence of the members of court by couriers as needed.
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I would like to bring some method to play music but as the current moment I am unsure how (or even what music) I am open for ideas. I am going to try to be at site early and bring some fabric and decor items but we will also need the supplies that have been coming to games:

Chairs and Tables
Princes area supplies
Lights/Fabrics for decoration

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By whatever means of arrival you are greeted by a mortal host for the restaurant, when you present your invitation you are quickly escorted to a discreet door that leads upstairs, obscured by a screen from public eye.

Up the stairs you are greeted with a short hall, with space to hang outerwear and a few doors. The doors open into a large room encompassing the rest of the floor. The walls are lined with windows that let the onlooker look out into the sound and into the growing downtown area. The room is well decorated but it is clear the decorations are well maintained rather than new.


Cassie McElhaney
Sent from my iPhone

[Romio Julian Rosselini]

((I can try to bring my Ipod basestation, it can be battery powered. I have a fairly wide collection of music, plenty of good classical or stuff like Sinatra)