Watching the radio

Music, news, and entertainment crackled warmly from radio speakers in living rooms across the country—uniting wartime Americans in a common cause and culture.

By Judy P. Sopronyi

World War II was a radio war. Sure, every American city and large town had its daily newspapers. A tide of mail flowed through the nation, many people had access to telephones, and movie showings typically included a newsreel featuring recent wartime footage. But when it came to getting the latest news, there was nothing like radio for immediacy. There was nothing like it for entertainment, either. Every day, all day, Americans could tune in to comedy, drama, and music, along with commercials for local and national services and products. Radio was WWII Americans’ connection to the nation and the world.

The connection could be a weak one at times: reception was iffy. The only commercial broadcasts were on AM; FM frequencies wouldn’t be used commercially until after the war. Jerry Cobb of Austin, Texas, who was just a kid living out in the country near Houston during the war, says reception at his house was worse than iffy—it was lousy. He remembers one day when his dad brought home a new radio: “The reception was so bad he got mad, he opened the back screen door, he just pitched it in the back yard.â€

Radio stations were few and far between in the sparsely populated plains states. The situation in cities usually was better. Marjorie Evans, a stenographer for the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bomb, says she and her two roommates in Arlington, Virginia, just outside Washington, DC, got good reception on their radio, though they were so busy they had little time to listen.

Back then, radios had tubes instead of transistors. When you turned one on, you had to wait for the tubes to warm up before you could hear anything. “It took, it seemed like, three minutes, but it was probably more like 15, 20 seconds,†says Cobb. Many had wooden cabinets, and some were luxurious, waist-high consoles proudly placed in the front parlor. The family would gather around the radio in the evening for companionship and entertainment. During the frequent nighttime air-raid drills—when whole towns blacked out by extinguishing outdoor lights and minimizing indoor lighting so no light leaked through windows—listening to the radio was about the only thing there was to do until bedtime. Cobb reports that his dad enforced blackouts scrupulously. “The tubes were kind of like light bulbs,†he recalls. “They would light up in the back, and my dad would always put newspaper over the back of the radio so we could listen to it during the [blackout].â€

As popular as radios were, there were still many people who didn’t own one. Ralph Parker, who applied for a radio station license in Lewistown, Pennsylvania, before he went off to war, estimates that only 45 percent of homes had radios. They were substantial purchases, and the years leading up to the war were Depression years. Some country dwellers didn’t even have electricity yet. When production of radios stopped in 1942 as factories were reconfigured to manufacture war supplies, most families without radios remained without them until after the war.

For people who did have radios, the world was theirs. Provided they were willing to fiddle with the dials for a while, and if the weather was just right, they were sometimes able to pick up broadcasts from Great Britain, Holland, France, or (gasp!) even Germany. Mostly, people tuned into whichever station had the best reception.

People turned anywhere they could to find war news as they tried to keep track of loved ones and friends serving in the military. Romayne Leedy of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, who served as a USO (United Service Organization) hostess and sold war bonds during the war, says that when her future husband, John, was overseas, “I would just scramble and try to listen to everything that was going on in the Pacific.†Evans—the Manhattan Project stenographer—says, “We all knew some of the people that were going overseas, so you always wondered if they would come back.†Other listeners were simply trying to stay informed, to follow the course of their country’s enormous undertaking. The demand for news changed radio news programs from five-minute spots two or three times a day to the half-hour programs that migrated to television after the war.

The first news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor came to the mainland via radio. That whole day, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his staff monitored radio reports as they formulated the US response. The next day, a few minutes past noon, he addressed Congress, and radio stations broadcast his famous address to the nation:

Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan….

I believe I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make very certain that this form of treachery shall never endanger us again….

With confidence in our armed forces—with the unbounded determination of our people—we will gain the inevitable triumph—so help us God….

Roosevelt’s broadcast words made war a shocking fact. At the same time, they were the first step in rallying Americans around the war effort and reassuring them of his confidence in victory. FDR continued his radio broadcasts as the war unfolded. His series of radio Fireside Chats, which had helped see the country through the Great Depression, were now devoted to the war. The evening after he announced war with Japan, he took to the national airwaves again with the first of these newly focused chats, elaborating on his speech of the previous day:

We are now in this war. We are all in it—all the way. Every single man, woman and child is a partner in the most tremendous undertaking of our American history. We must share together the bad news and the good news, the defeats and the victories—the changing fortunes of war….

To all newspapers and radio stations—all those who reach the eyes and ears of the American people—I say this: You have a most grave responsibility to the nation now and for the duration of this war.

Roosevelt delivered his last Fireside Chat on the war on June 12, 1944, 10 months to the day before his death from a cerebral hemorrhage on April 12, 1945, in Warm Springs, Georgia.

“We had such faith in Roosevelt,†says Leedy. Like many Americans, Leedy also trusted the radio reports of Edward R. Murrow. A correspondent for CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System), Murrow broadcast from London in a style that riveted his audience. His reports took advantage of one of the best features of radio—the listener’s imagination. With Murrow’s help, imagination could put listeners beside him on a London rooftop as air-raid sirens wailed, German planes buzzed in, and bombs exploded.

Murrow gathered a cadre of top reporters to put the war on the airwaves. Many of these journalists—soon referred to as “Murrow’s boys,†even though not all of them were male—would go on to become household names, including Eric Sevareid, Howard K. Smith, William Shirer, and Charles Collingwood. CBS asked Murrow to stay in London to direct its news organization, but he longed to go where the action was. In December 1943, he managed to persuade a British bomber pilot to take him along on a run into Germany. The next day, his radio report was an account of his escapade, called “Orchestrated Hell.†The CBS brass was not happy about the risk he had taken and forbade him from doing it again. Murrow’s coverage of London during the Blitz—Germany’s bombing campaign over England that lasted from September 1941 through May 1942—made the war real for Americans and may have helped reconcile the United States to joining with the Allies. Murrow was well versed in the goings on of wartime Europe. One day in January 1941, he received an exciting call from Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt’s personal representative to Great Britain. Hopkins was in London to meet with Prime Minister Winston Churchill to assess the materiel needs of the British war effort. Hopkins invited Murrow to his suite, and Murrow was delighted at the prospect of landing a terrific interview. Instead, Hopkins spent the time quizzing Murrow about Churchill and other leading British politicians and about conditions in England.

Just about everyone respected Murrow. On the day of the Pearl Harbor attack, he and his wife, Janet, were stateside and had been invited to dinner at the White House. Janet called Eleanor Roosevelt and offered to decline the long-standing invitation at such a trying time, but Eleanor insisted on keeping the dinner date, saying, “We still have to eat.†After the meal, the hosts and guests talked late into the evening, too full of the day’s events to think of sleeping.

Radio supplied plenty of the sort of weighty war news that had kept the Murrows and Roosevelts talking well into the night, but it also gave wartime Americans something else they desperately needed: escape. There was plenty to laugh about and enjoy. Cobb remembers sitting around on Saturday afternoons, listening to Gene “the Singing Cowboy†Autry. “Wrigley Spearmint Gum was his sponsor, and he’d always start out singing ‘I’m Back in the Saddle Again...,’†Cobb recalls. “Fibber McGee and Molly—that was always a funny show. It always started out with Fibber McGee’s closet. He’d open the door and everything would fall out—pots and pans and suitcases and stuff. It came on before The Great Gildersleeve. He was the water commissioner of this little town. I remember Walter Winchell. He’d come on and say, ‘Hello, Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea.’â€

Leedy was a fan of Fibber McGee and Molly, too, and chuckled when she recalled the things falling out of his closet. That was, of course, courtesy of the sound effects man, who had at his disposal an amazing assortment of noisemakers to evoke footsteps, closing doors, breaking glass, animals, objects tumbling—whatever it took to create the scene in the audience’s imagination.

Radio shows were rated for popularity by the C.E. Hooper Service. At the top of the so-called Hooperatings during the war years were Jack Benny, Charlie McCarthy and Edgar Bergen, The Bob Hope Show, Fibber McGee and Molly, Walter Winchell Commentary, and Red Skelton, in no particular order. People who lived through the WWII years often mention The Shadow as a favorite, but it didn’t make the Hooperratings top 10 from 1941 to 1945. Nevertheless, the eerie crime solver had a 25-year run from July 31, 1930, to December 26, 1954. Radio was the place to be back then, and even movie stars such as Carole Lombard and Clark Gable performed on the airwaves.

Then as now, radio had music—big bands, singers, ensembles, orchestras, whatever you could want. “Don’t Sit under the Apple Tree (with Anyone Else but Me),†“Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,†and “I’ll Walk Alone†were some of the many war-inspired hit tunes. Music even reached the GIs overseas by radio—sometimes via Axis operatives such as Tokyo Rose, who served GIs in the Pacific the latest American music with a large helping of Japanese propaganda. The smooth swing of legendary band leader Glenn Miller entertained the folks at home and the troops on duty after Miller enlisted in the army in 1942. His Army Air Force Band performed and broadcast in the United States and in England. Like many in the military, Miller didn’t make it through the war; his plane disappeared over the English Channel in December 1944.

Radio in the war years had many sad stories to tell, but it was also one of the country’s greatest morale boosters. If it wasn’t an outright necessity, it was close. Tuning in kept Americans on the road to victory.

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Judy P. Sopronyi, an editor and writer who has worked at Early American Life, Historic Traveler, and other magazines, grew up listening to the radio in Hays, Kansas. She vaguely recalls hearing the spooky laugh of The Shadow and trying to imitate it. This article originally appeared in the April 2006 issue of America in WWII.

http://www.americainwwii.com/stories/watchingtheradio.htm

Home-front treasure

What were once the everyday knickknacks and doodads in a nation at war are valuable antiques today. Learn how to start your own collection.

By Martin Jacobs

Americans were stunned when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Their world changed overnight. And it changed for everyone—the young men and women who would soon be headed overseas and the adults and children who remained at home.

Many children like me suddenly found themselves participating in air-raid drills at school. We conducted war-bond drives to raise money for the war effort. We collected scrap metal, rubber, andnewspapers to be recycled for military goods. We even donated our toys for recycling—a significant sacrifice, considering that toy production virtually halted for the duration of the war!

Like the servicemen we admired, we wore identification bracelets and dog tags. We learned to identify every US and foreign aircraft using our spotter cards (playing cards with planes pictured on them). At the movies or listening to radio adventures, imaginative boys battled the Nazis and Japanese alongside their fictional heroes. Girls played army and navy nurse. Americans born after World War II may never experience the nationwide sense of unity and commitment to a common cause that we knew from 1941 to 1945. It was a time when every man, woman, and child made some contribution toward a single goal. On the home front, we considered ourselves just as important to the war effort as our troops fighting on foreign soil. Military needs took precedence over civilian needs almost immediately, and sacrifices became a part of everyday life. For the first time in American history, large numbers of women joined the work force at jobs in defense plants and war-related organizations. At home, mothers saved their cooking fat and grease for use in gunpowder and dynamite. They planted Victory Gardens to grow vegetables for the dinner table, saving the farmer-grown produce for the troops. Volunteers manned ration boards that issued ration books for various foods and supplies for every individual.

When the war ended and the troops returned home, they brought souvenirs from the battlefields with them. Meanwhile, those on the home front tucked away artifacts and mementos they had saved. They stashed them in attics, hope chests, and closets for years and forgot about them. Just 15 years ago, during the 50th anniversary of the war years, these items began to resurface. Displays and exhibits of home-front memorabilia popped up in town halls, community centers, libraries, historical societies, and museums across the country. Today, these collectibles—now known as World War II Americana—have become a valued commodity.

Among the most common home-front collectibles are items with war mottoes written on them. War slogans were plentiful and were printed, stamped, and engraved on almost anything. “Remember Pearl Harbor†was a popular phrase. So was “V for Victory,†a rallying cry that reportedly originated with a Belgian refugee who made a V sign with two fingers as he urged people of oppressed nations to fight for Allied victory against the Axis powers. Other slogans, such as “Back the Attack,†“Kick ’em in the Axis,†and “Keep ’em Flying,†also appeared on items.

But identifying home-front collectibles today is not as easy as identifying other collectibles, and a wartime slogan is no guarantee of authenticity. Certain items—such as newspapers, music sheets, and selected games, toys, and household items—even include a manufacturer‘s name or copyright date, but even in these cases, it is important to watch for fakes and reproductions. A particular first-edition issue of the Honolulu Star Bulletin published on December 7, 1941, has been reproduced frequently, and copies are often passed off as originals. Pins and badges bearing the “Remember Pearl Harbor†and “V for Victory†mottoes are commonly reproduced. Novice collectors can protect themselves from costly mistakes by working with established, credible dealers and collectors.

Searching for desirable home-front items at collector shows, swap meets, flea markets, garage sales, and shopping malls is like going on a treasure hunt. Of course, nowadays, with the Internet, a few clicks of a mouse can take you to a desired item in seconds. Online auction sites such as eBay, Yahoo, Manions, and Hakes Americana offer a vast selection of items. The downside to these online auctions is increased competition from other bidders, which can mean paying a bit more than book value for an item.

Collectors generally want their items to be in the best possible condition. Because some items might not surface on the collectibles market for years, however, a collector must be ready to claim them when they do. The scarcity of an item might prompt a collector to buy it even if the condition is less than desired. If an example in better condition comes along later, a collector can upgrade and sell the earlier purchase. Fortunately, buying home-front collectibles is a wise investment. Like stocks or real estate, collectibles are likely to increase in value, and resale should be relatively easy. Still, for most collectors, collecting home-front memorabilia is a hobby—a labor of love—rather than a business. For me, this labor of love began as a dream in the mid-1940s, when you could get a squadron insignia patch for just 10 cents and two Wheaties box tops. The price of most collectibles has increased many times over since then, but my passion for collecting them has managed to grow at an even greater pace. The following types of home-front collectibles have remained among my own and many other collectors’ favorites over the years:

Posters: An ideal medium for delivering messages about America’s role in the war and Americans’ duties on the home front, posters had themes of recruitment, conservation, danger of espionage, civilian defense, aircraft recognition, and purchasing war bonds. Most were issued by the government.

Stickers, Stamps, Decals, and Labels: Produced in mass quantities by the government and private industry, they were illustrated with war and political slogans. They aimed at recruiting men and women into the armed forces, and urging Americans to plant Victory Gardens, conserve food and fuel oil, and buy war bonds.

Magazine Ads: Corporations addressed citizens about the country’s needs and goals through magazine ads. They encouraged people to assume personal responsibility in the war effort, helping to increase factory productivity.

Matchbooks: One of the simplest and cheapest support efforts, matchbooks featuring patriotic slogans and color illustrations of soldiers, planes, ships, tanks, artillery, and pinup girls were distributed by the millions. Every time a person struck a match, he or she was reminded to save scrap or buy war bonds.

Cigarettes: Used as money by GIs and distributed at canteens and United Service Organization (USO) clubs, cigarettes were packed into rations parcels and sent to soldiers overseas. Popular brands were Lucky Strike, Camel, Chesterfield, Pall Mall, Kool, Viceroy, and Wings.

Pillow Covers: For mothers at home, the souvenir pillow cover was a fond reminder of sons or daughters overseas. They were typically made of silk, printed in several colors, and decorated with war-related designs and writing—roses, a poetic verse to mother or sister, and the name of the military base where the buyer was stationed.

Sweetheart Jewelry: Women on the home front showed off their patriotism with accessories worn on their clothing. These pins, brooches, and necklaces were worn proudly at schools or in plants that manufactured war materiel. Made of sterling, bakelite, pot metal, marcasite, pewter, brass, or gold, they often were filled with rhinestones, amethysts, or pearls and adorned with flags and eagles.

Comics: Cartoon heroes such as Captain Marvel and Joe Palooka fighting the enemy sent powerful propaganda messages to children. Donald Duck and Bugs Bunny sold war bonds, and the Lone Ranger ran ads to join the Victory Corps (a volunteer organization for high-schoolers) and sold toy blackout kits that featured some glow-in-the-dark items.

Cards: As paper was rationed, bubble-gum cards were printed in limited quantities. War-themed Uncle Sam Home Defense cards were among the most desired. Also popular were cigarette cards, pinup cards, and airplane spotter cards.

Toys and Games: Recreational items were popular with children and adults during the war. Boys built airplane and ship models, and girls dressed military paper dolls. Board games, puzzles, and paint sets were also popular.

Correspondence: Weight restrictions on overseas cargo prompted the government to devise a way of packaging hundreds of letters to soldiers together on microfilm. This V-Mail (the V was for victory), nicknamed “funny mail,†became a valuable link between soldiers overseas and their families stateside.

Greeting Cards: No occasion passed without those at home sending cards to sweethearts in the service. Patriotic illustrations and slogans adorned cards for servicemen’s birthdays, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, and other occasions.

Postcards: Publishers churned out postcards at a furious rate during the war to meet a high demand. Stores in and around military facilities overseas dispensed postcards to soldiers. At home, sweethearts and moms, dads, brothers, and sisters found them easily, too.

Postal Covers: The country’s top artists designed patriotic envelope covers with wartime illustrations and slogans on them. These ever-popular and often humorous cachets printed in vibrant colors were used to spread the message of home-front support to servicemen and and stateside recipients alike.

Periodicals: Newspapers and magazines were important to the war effort. Publications such as the Saturday Evening Post, Time, Colliers, Life, and Look reported Allied victories. The army’s Yank and the air forces’ Brief, complete with pinups, kept up the troops’ morale overseas.

Sheet Music: War-related titles and strong cover graphics that included photos of songwriters and recording artists helped sell song sheets.

Sports Memorabilia: Though most athletes traded in their togs for military uniforms during the war, organized sports flourished on the home front. Items that feature wartime graphics and advertising—be they sporting event programs, score cards, or ticket stubs—are highly desirable.

Anti-Axis Novelties: Hitler, Tojo, and Mussolini were the war’s three most recognized villains. Thousands of ashtrays, dart boards, badges, toys, coloring books, posters, comics, and other items depicted them.

As we move further into the new millennium, home-front collectibles are becoming even more popular. These mementos are reminders of the devotion and sacrifice of the people at home during World War II. And it’s not just the Americans who lived through those years who are interested. It’s also their children and grandchildren who are making these informative and intriguing pieces collectible today. Sixty years since the end of World War II, more new collectors than ever are interested in recapturing the vibrant spirit of the WWII home front.

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Martin Jacobs of San Francisco is a longtime collector of WWII home-front items and has written numerous articles and books on the home front and its relics. This article originally appeared in the February 2006 issue of America in WWII.

http://www.americainwwii.com/stories/homefronttreasure.htm

Operation Rutabaga

by Carl Zebrowski

When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, everyone in America began to worry. For US Secretary of Agriculture Claude R. Wickard, the worrying focused on whether American farmers could provide enough food for servicemen overseas and still fulfill the requirements at home. But a surplus of food wouldn’t be good, either. Following the law of supply and demand, prices would drop. Farmers would lose money on everything they sold and start going out of business. That could be disastrous. Wickard later summed up this conundrum as "scared to death you wouldn’t have enough, scared to death you’d have too much."

Still, it was the prospect of not having enough that Wickard feared most. At the end of 1941, he urged Americans to break soil in the spring and plant vegetable seeds so they could grow their own food, freeing up farmers to feed the troops. "Victory Gardens," a term that had originated late in World War I, was the name he gave to the plots the citizens would soon be tending.

Before long, millions of Americans were digging up their back yards and sowing seeds. Even city-dwellers were carving out 8-by-10-foot blocks from tiny yards so they could participate. There were also communal plots in municipal parks and other public places-including such unlikely sites as Oregon’s Portland Zoo, Chicago’s Arlington Park race track, and San Francisco City Hall. Some companies, particularly manufacturers of war goods, started their own farms of several hundred acres to supply their employee cafeterias.

Victory Gardens big and small were sown with tomatoes, beets, carrots, peas, and radishes. And when seeds for those and other popular vegetables grew scarce, the gardeners took their chances on rutabagas, kohlrabi, and parsnips. "I can never forget the kohlrabi," recalled Elaine W. Kniskern on the Daily Star Online website. "It was a strange thing, or perhaps I was strange, but I loved kohlrabi sliced raw and never cooked."

In 1943, do-it-yourself farming operations reached their peak, with the so-called Sunday Farmers tending 20 million plots and harvesting fully one-third of the fresh vegetables consumed in the United States.

The Sunday Farmers received plenty of instructional aid. Newspapers and magazines printed countless columns of advice and tips. Seed companies and magazines such as <I>Good Housekeeping<P> and <I>House and Garden<P> published reams of public service booklets that described the essentials. Armed with some gumption, a few basic tools, and an armload of reading material that explained when to plant what, how to care for the growing garden, and how to get rid of destructive pests, the Sunday Farmer was ready to make a real contribution to the war effort.

Despite the fact that Americans on the home front were growing much of their own food, farmers fared very well through the war. Congress helped by legislating price floors, while the farmers, most of whose workers were exempted from the draft, produced a surplus-enough to be able to send 10 percent of their produce overseas to friendly markets. From 1940 to 1945, the income of commercial farmers exploded an astounding 400 percent.

By war’s end, commercial farmers, who were reaping more profits than ever, had harvested 10 million tons of food. Victory Gardeners were not far behind, having produced an incredible 8 million tons. But perhaps the biggest yield of all those little vegetable plots was the boost in spirits they created on the home front. "It was a great morale thing," said Kelly Holthus, quoted on the Wessels Living History Farm website about his wartime boyhood in Loomis, Nebraska. "And for young people like me, it was, you know, I could do my part. I was a part of the effort."

The Victory Garden program turned out be the least controversial and most popular of all civilian war efforts. With farmers faring so well and morale at home climbing so high, there was little to complain about, especially when you added in the program’s greatest unexpected and underreported dividend: America’s diet improved. Thanks to those millions of painstakingly tended gardens, Americans, rich and poor, young and old, ate healthier than ever."

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Carl Zebrowski is the managing editor and website editor of America in WWII. This article originally appeared in the December 2005 issue of America in WWII.

http://www.americainwwii.com/stories/operationrutabaga.htm

Busy with the blitz-proofing

by Carl Zebrowski

America was plunged into a panic in December 1941. The whole country wondered what would happen next. Might the Japanese bomb Los Angeles or San Francisco? Or might they or the Germans come from the other direction and bombard the most densely populated city in the world, New York? No one knew for sure. "I lived in Clinton [New York] during World War II," Barbara Williams Roberts wrote at the website www.clintonhistory.org. "It was scary. I was still in grade school and I remember hearing an airplane and looking up to see what it was. I think I expected the Japanese to bomb Clinton."

US leaders in Washington, DC, already had plenty on their minds. They didn't have time to prepare for the highly unlikely event of a large-scale enemy attack on American neighborhoods. Their solution to easing the justifiable fears of the people was a stroke of genius: let the people defend themselves. That way, no precious resources would have to be diverted from essential military operations, and the people at home would feel not only safer, but also more involved in a war that they themselves were not actually fighting.

The US Office of Civilian Defense, established in May 1941 as the war spread across the globe, was responsible for coordinating preparations for war-related emergencies, preparations that were organized at the state and local levels. The civilian defense against air attacks began with pilots who flew along the coastlines and plane spotters who manned towers to watch for approaching enemy planes. There were also blackout drills that forced people to practice their response to the air-raid alarm signal—a series of intermittent siren blasts. Air-raid wardens supervised the blackout drills, cruising up and down neighborhood streets to make sure no light escaped the houses. By early 1943, there were about 6 million volunteers in public protection roles such as air-raid warden.

Blackout drills were planned in advance and advertised. Street lights were turned off at the scheduled time. Anyone outside was to take cover inside. Those in their homes were instructed to pull down the blinds on their windows and keep the light inside to a minimum. People in cars were to pull over and find shelter in the nearest building. The idea was that enemy planes couldn't target what they couldn't see, and that any light visible from above could attract bombs and gunfire.

The federal government sponsored public service announcements to promote participation in the drills and make sure people knew what to do. Among the more unusual of these promotions was the 1942 song by Tony Pastor and his Orchestra "Obey Your Air Raid Warden," which instructed listeners, "Don't get in a huff/Our aim today is to call their bluff./Follow these rules and that is enough./Obey your air-raid warden." Posters were more common. One flyer pictured the emergency supplies every household was supposed to keep: 50 feet of garden hose with a spray nozzle, 100 pounds of sand divvied into four containers, three three-gallon metal buckets (one filled with sand and two with water), a long-handled shovel with a square edge, a hoe or rake, an ax or hatchet, a ladder, leather gloves, and dark glasses.

Technically, people who didn't comply with the blackout orders and keep the required supplies on hand could be arrested, though arrests on these grounds were rare. On his education website, the Doyle Report, Denis P. Doyle, who was a young child during the war whose father was in the service overseas, noted several things he remembered from the WWII days. "My most vivid single memory, however, was the visit of a helmeted air raid warden to our apartment in Shaker Heights, Ohio," Doyle wrote. "My mother was out for the evening and our grandmother was caring for my little sister and me. She spoke not a word of English. A knock on the door announced an air raid warden trying to explain that an air raid drill was underway and she must either turn off all the lights or lower the curtains. At three years of age, it fell to me to translate and we pulled down the living room shades."

Some books cite accounts of enemy plane attacks in various locations across the US mainland, but whether any such incidents actually happened is hard to confirm. No plane spotter ever saw an enemy plane. There were many false alarms however, and many unnecessary blackouts. Still, the air-raid defense effort had to be considered a success. Americans appreciated being asked to take responsibility for protecting themselves, and the opportunity to participate directly in the war effort boosted their morale—which was really the goal in the first place.

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Carl Zebrowski is the managing editor and website editor of America in WWII. This article appeared in the October 2005 issue of the magazine.

A generation's moment

By James P. Kushlan

1941 was a great time to be an American. Big bands belted out sassy swing in dance halls, in towns as big as New York and as small as Gallitzin, Pennsylvania. Cars had curves, they were built of real metal, and gas was cheap. Cigarettes weren't bad for you, nor were red meat or carbs.

Fashion was in a golden age; even everyday clothes made people look good. Practically every man sported a broad-brimmed hat. Nylons and high heels were de rigueur for women, whose legs were objects of men's fond reverence. Most movies were still in black and white, but they packed a wallop of drama, comedy, music, and spectacle complete with cartoons and newsreels—for less than a gumball costs today!

1941 Americans worked hard, families were close-knit, manners mattered, and faith was important. Sure, there were problems, challenges America had yet to face. But no challenge seemed too great for an America that was definitely on the upswing.

Just as everything really did seem to be "coming up roses," the warplanes of a rising empire appeared over Battleship Row in Hawaii's Pearl Harbor. 1941 ended with the shrill shock of infamy and war. But Americans jumped into action. All the restless energy of 1940s America had suddenly found its outlet: war.

Not just any war, mind you. Unlike most conflicts in our history, this one was brought on by a direct attack on the United States. It quickly became a two-pronged fight to halt the onslaught of the would-be overlords of Europe and Asia.

The sharp contrast between the practices of the Allies and the Axis powers made World War II into a battle of freedom against oppression, democracy against totalitarianism, good against evil. Americans were the good guys; they were on the right side, and that gave them courage and determination to risk their lives in the armed forces, to make sacrifices on the home front, and to press on to victory despite the heavy and heartbreaking cost.

The people who lived through that heroic, colorful, difficult, and painful chapter of America's story went on with their lives after the war. They built homes, lovingly raised record numbers of children, and transformed America into an economic and military powerhouse with unparalleled global influence. But what would always define them was that great adventure of their youth, World War II.

For those of us who met them as Mom and Dad, Aunt and Uncle, or Grandma and Pap-Pap, their stories—of hardship at home, terror at the front, and irreplaceable losses, all mixed with good times, good friends, victory, and the joy of survival and reunion—infected us with a permanent curiosity, a desire to understand. And they gave us the first hint that maybe, just maybe, there was a little more to them than they liked to let on.

This magazine is about their moment of greatness—and one of America's best.

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James P. Kushlan, former editor of Civil War Times and Columbiad magazines, is the editor and publisher of America in WWII. This column originally appeared in the June 2005 issue of America in WWII.

http://www.americainwwii.com/stories/generationsmoment.htm