The impressions I have regarding the life of people my parent’s ages are of a population at home during World War II characterized by grim, patriotic, hard working people, , doing without, and focussed on what needed to be done to “finish it.” This impression is reinforced by movies and books memorializing their struggle and dignity. My reading of The Darkest Year by William Klingaman modifies this impression with anecdotes that complicate such impressions.. He reports on the home front from December 7, 1941 to late December 1942. It reminded me a bit of our collective Covid experience……..
What sets this history in motion is that the entry into World War II completed a process started just a few years before, anticipating that war—a war that the majority wanted to have no part of but with resignation, accepted that possible inevitability. This planning for war and supplying the British in 1940 brought the economy out of the depression and all that went with it—doing without, insecure job prospects, broken families, broken labor relations, and so on. People were making money, lots of money, and employment was good. Consumer goods were available and people had pent up demands, bringing inflationary pressure on the economy.
Christmas 1941 was to be a banner year for retailers and this came crashing down with Pearl Harbor. This attack would accelerate the nation’s war footing with a planned economy—a concept foreign (to this day) to Americans. As critics of FDR would point out over and over, the Germans, Russians, Japanese, and Italians had been using planned economies to the detriment of their peoples for a decade—and yet, they were winning the war in 1941. Those centralized economies were the blueprint for how to go about it. Our American social and economic traditions complicated that throughout the year of 1942; what to make of the week before Christmas, Detroit laying off 20,000 auto workers as factories closed and retooled for war vehicles. We were clearly going to flail about gearing up for this war.
Sacrifices were planned and then executed by authorities. Propaganda and slogans were publicized serving this up as an honorable goal. There is a quaint quality to the slogans of those early months. People did not think of them as quaint. After a long depression with financial success in sight, the notion for many that one could not drive anywhere one wanted when desired was troubling, as was rationing coffee, red meat, rubber, gasoline, and steel. Despite a wish to plan the economy with vital products diverted to the war effort, the government(s) were clumsy in the application of new federal authority which, being new, was often confused, and without effective communication (other than slogans). Resistance was found at the state and city level where local electability and relationships were more potent for leaders who could bend rules by new authorities higher up. Ration cards were mandated but not distributed on time. When cards were available, an honor system determined who got what rating which determined what you could buy. People lied. Scandals abounded as Congressional secretaries were allocated unlimited gasoline. The allocation of gasoline was uneven in the US—-the use of freighters to transport gulf oil to the Northeast was disrupted by German submarines and the use of rail cars was such that shortages were real. Where gas was available, it was still rationed to conserve on tire wear. Tire manufacture was quickly dedicated to military uses only. Those with foresight bought out available tires that December and hoarded them. This was unpatriotic, but practical. The mass of regulations mandated were not enforced and so, exceptions were frequent.
Golfers quickly read the tea leaves. Golf balls were a non essential product. A run on the market ensued as they were not going to be made for the foreseeable future: Abercrombie and Fitch in Manhattan sold more than 24,000 golf balls before 11AM on Dec 18, 11 days after Pearl Harbor. By noon, the stock was gone.
Rubber imports dropped considerably and there was as yet, no synthetic rubber that could be made in quantity. The bureaucracy to retrieve hoarded tires was unpopular and grating, not to mention clumsy. To further restrict the wear on rubber tires which were not going to be easily replaced during a long war, gasoline rationing was imposed even when gasoline was relatively easy to get. People cheated. People stole; there was an epidemic of auto theft, usually with the stealing of tires in mind, not unlike the catalytic converter robberies of 2022.
Industries cheated: steel was hoarded for example, with future contracts depending on producing products that would require steel when steel was going to be allocated by a huge bureaucracy. The bureaucracy stumbled time and time again; 18 months after getting the call to organize around a war footing (started in 1939) by the first week in January, 1942 the government still had no spreadsheet demonstrating industrial capacity across the board. There was no plan in early 1942—they (the federal bureaucracy) was making it up as they went.
FDR was the face of the government and his record this first year reflects distraction and clumsiness both in the design of government attempts to organize and his communication strategies. The one exception was the fireside chats—fifteen minutes and language of a conversational tone which was very popular. He was clear that we were in “dark days” with defeats likely before victory, but no specifics —good or bad —were relayed to the public through his administration. The losses at Peal Harbor were minimized and the battle in Bataan was cast in a heroic light with skirmishes being highlighted when there was a victory. He proposed a contest to patriotically name the war something more catchy than, World War II. The distrust this generated was tremendous and would be reflected in part in the mid terms in late 1942 when Republicans made great gains in Congress. The top down controls of a national government going to war were not appreciated and further damaged by what we would now call a lack of transparency. Again, the models of success, Germany and Japan were guilty of the same communication tactic.
In desperation, with failing home war production (when compared to planned output), larger and more dictatorial executive orders came to pass. Price regulations were imposed. They were gamed. Black markets arose. The political opposition while toning down outright disagreement offered alternative facts in opposition to the strident controls put on the economy. The class battle engaged during the depression (labor/“socialists” and capitalists/common sense small businesses---the wealthy vs the working man) replayed in this year of crisis. How to manage an economy in this setting was novel and everyone had a best, “common sense” plan. Industries produced consumer goods until told they could not. The economy still allowed people to switch jobs (and in this environment, money flowed to many industries allowing for the head hunting of qualified workers). The draft found men at risk volunteering when they had skills so as to avoid being an infantryman or in these early days, were drafted with an unclear process for sorting theirs skills and needs of the military. Absenteeism in this first year evolved and was huge as looking for that a better job or relief from extended work weeks (48 hours for much of WWII) found them calling in sick.
Repeat offenders could be fired and their names supplied to the selective service boards…..
The Draft: Initially, teens were not called. It was an unpopular idea and legislation to change this occurred only after mid term elections and the manpower demands were more clear. Initially, 30-50% of draft applicants were denied usually on the basis of three things: bad teeth, venereal diseases (for which there were no cures in 1942), and Tuberculosis (of interest, a recent Pentagon study showed 70% likely unfit based on obesity, drug use, mental health diagnoses). The Depression’s effect on people’s health was still felt. The standards would be lowered as the year went on--bad teeth and having only one eye were to be acceptable.
Industry struggled: Orders came in; there was a shortage of materials and trained workmen. This kept shifting as the year moved on. People were drafted, joined the armed services, had hangovers, and looked for better jobs. Some people were ill and had little access to health care. Getting people to work in brand new facilities, often built away from cities as a form of diversified defense, was difficult given a shortage of autos (no longer available to civilians in the open market) and gasoline rationing. There were typically no mass transit systems in these add-on industries. Housing was incredibly short given the migration of millions of people to places with no capacity to house them much less provide social services. Slums swelled and crowding was the way of the world. FDR would suggest people living in Washington DC and not engaged with the war effort were, “parasites” and should move--this was not received well by the press or the “man on the street”.
Social Services: Teachers are not paid well now. They were not paid well in 1942. Many would quit and work in war industries which did pay. Schools had to be transformed with bare minimal education proposed and occasionally delivered and delivered on a shortened time-frame. The focus was on turning out soldiers and workers with basic skills. Those in college lived under a sword of Damocles ie could not count on a deferment from the draft. Degrees could be obtained on a shortened time line. Many degrees came to be questioned with regard to relevance in this war environment. Doctors and nurses were brought into the military system and communities (especially rural ones) ran short. People were turned away from Emergency rooms (there was no legal obligation for the ER’s to see them when understaffed). Illnesses required self care without professional advice. Children suffered. Male parents were often absent either in the military call up or working long hours. Supervision in school was weak. Juvenile delinquency soared in major cities with behavior that mirrors the flash mob scenes we see today, vandalism typically being the end result. People were mugged during blackouts and businesses with lights on at night were broken into to take down the lights with many of the patriots doing so taking home goods from such stores.
Organized Prostitution: this environment was a rich one for organized prostitution. Military leaders and business leaders often decided whether to accept it as a necessary evil or try to control/eliminate it. VD was a huge driver of concern both with “morality” and a functioning dependable armed force in mind.
Paranoia: The West Coast would be the scene for bizarre activity based on a long-term prejudice and fear of Japanese nationals and their offspring living in the Western States as well as an over arching fear of invasion. The logistics of such an invasion were daunting but not clear to the average citizen; the press and government’s interest in getting people’s heads in the game found dramatic efforts to prepare for yet another defeat at home. While applied to people with roots from Axis countries as well, initial efforts by Federal authorities were out of step with the common man. Loyal aliens were to be protected from “amateur detectives, super patriots, and self-appointed sentinels.” A top department of justice aid on the radio: “Misguided people who like to display their Americanism by smearing shop windows or making insulting remarks in public about persons of foreign birth. …such acts are only slightly less reprehensible than those of saboteurs and spies you have vowed to suppress.”
Within months, Japanese American citizens were rounded up and put in concentration camps. This was a popular and “necessary” program. Rumors were rampant re their role in Pearl Harbor (none) and sabotage in the States (none). One of the rationales for moving and concentrating them was to protect them from “super patriots” who tended to take matters in their own hands. Weather balloons triggered the firing of anti aircraft guns in the LA area with shrapnel causing damage to homes. The military was criticized for not getting any planes in the air in response (there was not need and they in turn may have been mistaken as those of the enemy). A woman was shot driving at night with the lights out and not responding to commands to stop. One night, a rumor spread that San Francisco’s Presidio had been taken over by the Japanese and armed civilians responded to turn the tide. Alistair Cook, a British Journalist was astounded to hear a radio broadcast, “Live from the war front in San Francisco.” San Francisco for most of 1942 was considered the least prepared of American cities with air raids in mind……
The Economy: the war footing put the economy in jepardy and many of the tools to correct inflationary behavior were ineffective, clunky, and unpopular. Limited consumer goods and steady unprecedented pay checks were a recipe for inflation. To combat inflation three strategies were used: a) getting people to invest in war bonds—by taking cash out of the consumer economy and supporting the war effort. Targets were rarely reached despite constant pressure and advertising with famous movies stars. b) Federal income taxes went up and in 1942, 30% of workers who had never had to pay income tax were going to have to pay in 1943. Few planned for this and the higher the wages made, the bigger the bite. c) Price Controls; this appears to have failed time and time again. All the above were unpopular. For the Unions, there were many many pressures as their role to protect wages and jobs were not always in line with the war effort. As more industrial manpower was needed, blacks were brought in with all the social dislocation and distress this caused the white workforce which was organized mostly on segregated lines. Riots occurred simply allocating housing for such workers deemed essential to the war effort. Women were included in the expanding work pool as well and the volumes were unprecedented. Eventually, 20% of women of working age were employed and 20% of the total workforce in the United States would be women. Bosses soon sorted out that for light industry, women needed less supervision, were less quarrelsome with their bosses, broke fewer tools, and were injured less often than the men whose jobs they replaced. A social revolution was in the making. The barriers remained real: there was prejudice and intimidating behavior on the part of men still working in industry (of interest, the rotating meal order wheel one sees in old restaurants was designed to minimize personal interaction between male cooks and female waitresses). There was fear of on the job violence, emotional and physical; many plants would not allow women to work night shifts and those that did often advised safety procedures when going for bathroom breaks or leaving the plant. Women who got pregnant mostly left this work force as there was no organized day care system.
Indifference: the majority of Americans were no more sophisticated about international politics, geography, or economic planning in 1942 than they are now. There was an air of unreality captured by many contemplating home attitudes this first year. This had implications: coastal cities not blacking out at night provided back light that aided submarines targeting the merchant ships moving up the coast. The inability to believe that cities on the East coast might be bombed led to chaos when officials tried to organize a system with this in mind.
In part, the news being heavily controlled fostered some indifference in that people did not know what to believe. The obvious defeats were minimized (Pearl Harbor, Bataan, Singapore). Charles Lindbergh: “the newspapers are winning the war for us, I wish our military forces could keep up with them. From now on it will be extremely difficult to find out what is really happening in the war.” The real victories of that year (The Doolittle raid, Coral Sea, Midway, Guadalcanal) which often reached people through foreign news reports confounded faith in the Federal Government.
The invasion of two Aleutian Islands (a feint to draw the navy away from Midway) however brought exaggerated fears of imminent invasion in the Northwest. Returning war heroes, like Doolittle’s group were frustrated by the public’s general indifference or seeming blindness to the serious problems of the war. What seemed important to many, was finding bootleg sources of gas or getting into fistfights when only three gallons could be bought at time.
Mid-term elections: The Democratic Party controlling the Federal Government failed at multiple levels to meet its own goals for helping its political base. Managing labor relations, industrial production, communication, innovation, dramatic social change were all needed tools to be used to produce a modern armed force. Democrats were badly beaten in the election of November 1942. One year after Pearl Harbor, the leadership behavior had opened a rift between the Feds and population; there was not overt opposition but a simmering distrust of congress and the administration sparked by sense and evidence that Washington did not trust the people or their judgment especially with war news.
People wanted news, not to be preached to.
Roosevelt’s former campaign manager noted after the election that American people got a little bit tired of being pushed around. After the election, this got worse: through an executive order a War Manpower Commission chairman got virtually dictatorial powers over the Selective service system and civilian employment in the US. He decided where when and in what business/service anyone worked. It would take news of offensive victories to temper the understandable discontent evident at the end of the first year at war.
This book clearly wanted to bring attention to the problems of early World War II in the United States. It does not end with a clear path to the improvement and success we associate with the war. I know that labor strikes were a huge problem in 1943; it was managed top-down by the Roosevelt administration. I conclude that despite the clumsiness, the government, industry, labor, and the people sorted it out with time. There were winners and there were losers. Three years after Pearl Harbor, it was a different country with a different set of expectations of the coming years. I could not help but see parallels with our own crisis of the last few years, the Covid pandemic:
While on a quicker time-line, Covid, like the war, was a world-wide disaster with unprecedented possible outcomes all requiring organization, sacrifice, and endurance to overcome the worst possible. The models for success were both unclear, unpopular, and counter to business as usual.
People’s behavior did not align with the expert’s concerns and suggested plans.
There were defeats before there were victories and the news of both were often ambiguous.
Experts in any field are not necessarily competent to communicate effectively.
Alternative points of view made the organization of a coordinated defense and offense against the infection very difficult and not as effective as it otherwise might have been. I suspect the “enemy” ie Covid was not as daunting as the apparent conquest of the world by Japanese and German soldiers. Would the resistance in America to Covid measures have looked different if Covid attacked children, like Polio, with the numbers that took so many of the over 65?
Many people think their individual rights override the needs of the society and population. They will do what they need to do to get what they want. Hoarding tires was unpatriotic but was not going to change the course of the war and accurate foresight has its rewards. I believe the majority accepted the larger need in 1942 with erosion on the edges of personal behavior, depending on the situation. The majority could align their personal needs with that during World War II and during the covid epidemic. I grew up thinking that the victory in WWII was an unqualified success. I think from the vantage point of 2023, the response to Covid has been wobbly, but in the end, just as successful and our great grandchildren will see it as such.
Randy’s metaphorical analogy:
I would like to suggest that a war’s manifestation is like a colonoscopy. We get warned about Colon Cancer and what you can do to prevent it or screen for it. You can understand the arguments pro and con and decide, yes or no. Actually participating ie scheduling and committing to the preparation (“the worse part,” according to my patients), you can know it is coming and still try to put it out of your mind. You can delay it.
You can skip it—and pay the consequences. Once done, it may or may not be remembered as horrible or funny, or so-so—that depends on the outcome (we found a cancer! Your screen was clear!) as well as the experience itself. An interesting study done years ago showed that people undergoing colonoscopy and asked to rate the pain of the procedure responded in an odd way. The doctor would note a difficult procedure with the patient complaining often and loudly and yet, the patient might respond with a “0” meaning, “no pain,” when surveyed. The psychologist analyzing this data came to the conclusion that the score depended greatly on the experience of the last few minutes of the procedure; the pain from before that time was sublimated. The impressions we have of our ancestors at home during WWII may reflect their memory of the event as the war closed in 1945……….
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