Cleaning out a notebook, catching up on e-mail and ending, for now, the saga of the 1941 visit of the battleship HMS Warspite and stories on the panic on the West Coast after Pearl Harbour:

The Warspite tale was brought to light back in September when Jack Wellburn wrote about his childhood thrill of seeing the giant of the sea in Nanoose Bay. Almost overnight, it expanded into a memory-lane exercise for dozens of readers who had personal memories of Warspite.

There was even a note from retired engineer Geoff Fox of Central Saanich who once worked in the jet engine division of Rolls-Royce, the company that supplied Derwent V pumps to help re-float the Warspite in 1947 when it went aground on the coast of Cornwall while on her way to the wrecker's yard.

From reader and former Lt.-Gov. Iona Campagnolo, there was a note and photograph taken on her just-concluded tour of First World War and Second World War memorials, battlefields and Canadian war cemeteries in Belgium and France. Near Juno, she had visited a German long gun emplacement that had been "dispatched with one shell from the 15 guns of Warspite" on D-Day. (For her fans, she remains in good health, sends her best wishes and is enjoying life out of the fast lane.)

Not all the mail was friendly. One reader accused me of ignoring the injustice done to Canadians of Japanese descent in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbour, and of inaccuracy in describing the sinking of a U.S. freighter off Neah Bay. He claimed the freighter was Canadian and that it wasn't sunk, just badly damaged and towed to safety.

The freighter I referred to was the SS Coast Trader. It was torpedoed and sunk on June 7, 1942, 56 kilometres southwest of Cape Flattery, which is next door to Neah Bay on the map. It was American with a crew of 37 plus 19 "armed guard" -- the American term for gun crews on armed merchantmen. One crew member perished from exposure, the crew of HMCS Edmundston and the fishing boat Virginia 1 pulled the rest from the sea.

Two weeks later, on June 20, the Edmundston and another Canadian Corvette, HMCS Quesnel, were back off Cape Flattery to assist the Canadian SS Fort Camosun back to Neah Bay after it had been shelled and torpedoed by one of the Japanese submarines active in the area. Earlier in June, the Japanese had invaded and occupied the Aleutian Islands Attu and Kiska and the West Coast trembled from Mexico to Alaska. Earlier in the year, Canadian and American authorities had ordered the removal from coastal areas of all citizens of Japanese descent. The June submarine activity was used to justify that action -- and as an excuse for the inexcusable, arbitrary sale of personal property from homes to furniture to fish boats.

How scared were the authorities? Scared enough to flank Prince Rupert with heavy artillery and order construction of two railway gun trains to run alongside the Skeena River.

The trains were to be built in Winnipeg, would be manned by Winnipeg Grenadiers and bristled with Bren guns, 75 mm and Bofor guns. One reached operational status. Its job was to patrol the 95 miles between Rupert and Terrace to prevent any Japanese attempts to sail upriver to land troops.

Once the Japanese were driven from the Aleutians, the gun train rusted on a siding at Terrace until handed to Canadian National Railway for dismantling. Roger V. Lucy has a history in his modest book The Armoured Train in Canadian Service.

And finally, the aviation museum at Victoria International Airport offers the best picture of Pat Bay when it hosted crews from West Camp, the RCAF Training Unit for fighter and bomber squadrons; East Camp, RAF Training for air crew from England, Australia and New Zealand; and the Seaplane base, part coastal patrol, part Western Command against Japanese submarine threats.

Just across the road from the museum is Mary's -- the 1940s Mary's Coffee Bar, a favourite hangout for aircrew. It's full of wartime memorabilia. If you go, be hungry. The food is good and still served in young aircrew proportions.