For two nights the mobs of soldiers and sailors had found poor hunting. In long caravans of cabs and private cars they had toured the Mexican sections, armed with sticks and weighted ropes, crashing into movie houses, looking for zoot-suited pachucos, the little Mexican-American youths. But they had found only a few dozen, and not all of them even wore zoot suits. They had broken the jaw of a 12-year-old boy. Said the boy, in the hospital:
"So our guys wear tight bottoms on their pants and those bums wear wide bottoms. Who the hell they fighting, Japs or us?"
One Panzer division of the cab-and-car attack had rolled down a Mexican district side street, past the rows of mean, ramshackle frame houses. But they had only found a few victims to beat. One of them was a 17-year-old Russian boy, Pete Nogikoss, talking on a street corner to two Mexicans. The Mexicans fled. Pete stood still. The sailors beat him to the ground.
Scores of Mexican youths had been stripped of their pants (some of them on the stages of movie houses), beaten and then arrested by the Los Angeles police for "vagrancy" and "rioting." (The police practice was to accompany the caravans in police cars, watch the beatings and then jail the victims. Their orders apparently were to let the Shore Patrol and the Military Police handle the rioting sailors. The service police were futile.) But now the rioting seemed to be diminishing. The zoot-suiters lay low, the sailors and soldiers had seemingly wreaked sufficient revenge for the several occasions when zoot-hoodlums had attacked and robbed them.
Hearst Moves In. But then the press took up the story. The Hearst newspapers, the Los Angeles Examiner and the Herald & Express, and Harry Chandler's Los Angeles Times began to blaze. Late-afternoon editions printed black-faced leads about a purported anonymous call to headquarters: "We're meeting 500 strong tonight and we're going to kill every cop we see." The Hearst Herald & Express bannered: ZOOTERS THREATEN L. A. POLICE.
The Mob Moves In. That night all Los Angeles stayed downtown to see the fun. When darkness came to the fog-chilled streets, the sidewalks and streets were jammed with expectant servicemen and civilians. Shore Patrol cars, Military Police and police and sheriffs' cars patrolled in force.
Scores of cars loaded with soldiers and sailors poured into the area. Soon after dark a mob formed, surged down Broadway, crashed into the Orpheum Theater, went down the aisles shouting for pachucos to stand up. In the balcony the mob found 17-year-old Enrico Herrera, sitting with his girl. He and others were dragged downstairs to the street; the citizenry pushed back to give them room while he was beaten and stripped naked. The crowd howled. When the sailors had finished, the police dutifully edged up, took Herrera to the hospital.