![]() ![]() One well dressed young woman wears visibly baggy stockings (far right) a wartime inconvenience when only rayon (it stretched and stayed stretched) hosiery was available. Girls are in bobby sox, women war workers in unfamiliar work pants. The area bustles with activity as servicemen, civilians and workers from war plants are busy meeting friends or waiting to catch streetcars and buses to other destinations. Horton Plaza looking northwest toward Broadway and Third in hazy afternoon sun. It was like a sunny, cleaner Grand Central Station. But, more important, people touched base there, met there and said goodbye there. The Plaza was always busy as people on swing shifts, graveyard shifts and day shifts came and went at all hours. Streetcar and bus lines from throughout the city converged at the Plaza. Few automobiles are in evidence due to gas rationing. Horton Plaza, at Fourth and Broadway, was alive and healthy in 1943 and the busy center of a Navy town. In the best tradition of photographers as historians he quick-froze ordinary people going about their lives in extraordinary circumstances. On some of his negative envelopes he even wrote the time of day the exposures were made (the intersection scene above, at Fourth and Broadway, was taken at 3:30 p.m.). Most of the following images were made on one day, April 10, 1943, when Hazelip’s camera recorded goings on downtown. To those of us who know San Diego now, and can remember it during World War II, Mike Hazelip’s photographs bring back that time with heart squeezing power. ![]() ![]()
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