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World War II: Homefront
- by John on August 21st, 2007
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While I’m on the topic of WWII, here is something my grandma wrote regarding life on the homefront during WWII. I have a whole new appreciation for her after reading this.
By Margery H. Kellogg
Adams Center, NY
10/14/82
Before Pearl Harbor everyone in America was aware of the war in Europe and, depending on their personalities more or less concerned about it. Attitudes varied from an isolationist feeling that, come what may, Americans should not again involve itself in a foreign war, to a depressing feeling of inevitability that sooner or later that involvement would come.
It came with a shock the day of Pearl Harbor and the immediate Declaration of War, and within days the machinery was set in motion that was to change everyone’s lives to some degree. Prior to Pearl Harbor a number of the more adventurous, or concerned, types had joined the Canadian Air Force or the R.A. F., but now there was a patriotic rush to enlist. Then the draft took those who did not voluntarily enlist; at first the young and single, then the married but without children, and later the young 30’s, even married and with children. Nearly every home suffered some sort of disruption.
The recruits were hurried to “boot camps” for about 6 months’ training before assignment. There was an urgent need for officers, and the “cream” were picked for O.C. S. (Officers’ Candidate School) from where they were sent to the field of battle to be referred to sneeringly by the veterans as “90-day wonders.”
At home Civilian Defense posts were established. Men were taught to identify airplanes in the air and manned spotting posts. There were blackout exercises when all buildings were to be completely dark, and civilian defense agents patrolled the streets to discover and warn violators.
As the men left the homes many women went to work for the first time. As the demand for war goods and munitions increased and the work force was depleted by the draft, many women went to work in factories besides replacing men in civilian jobs. If their husbands were in the service, these women often returned to their family homes with small children, and grandparents were pressed into service as baby-tenders while the mothers worked. Household help became a thing of the past as more lucrative jobs opened up for women.
Day care centers for children were opened up. For instance, the Red Cross ran one in Watertown in the old Hygienic Dairy building, picking the children up about 8:00 a.m. and returning them home in late afternoon in an old converted ambulance.
Soon many food scarcities developed, and the O.P.A. (Office of Price Administration) was set up. They issued ration stamps for meat, sugar, coffee, and gasoline; also butter that I remember. People saved grease in cans and turned it into stores for credit.
Nearly every home had a Victory Garden and housewives canned vegetables for the winter. Very little jam or jellies were made because of the shortage of sugar.
Each member of the family had a book of ration stamps, and theses were pooled and spent with great care. They did not, of course, take the place of money, like food stamps, but only entitled you to the purchase of a certain quantity . They must have been a real headache to storekeepers.
As rubber was used for the war, new tires were almost non-existent, and tires and inner tubes were patched and repatched, as nervous drivers tried to keep their automobiles moving. Car-pooling came into use, riders paying their way with cash and gas ration stamps.
Black market (illegal) operations in scarce goods sprang up, both at home and overseas where soldiers were hungry for things like cigarettes and chocolate.
At home storekeepers formed the habit of holding items in which there was a shortage “under-the-counter” for favored customers.
Some housewives kept chickens for the first time, for meat or eggs, or bought eggs when cheaper and more plentiful, and put them in crocks of water glass for use later. They didn’t spoil, but their flavor was somewhat affected.
Women experimented using honey or maple syrup in baking instead of sugar, and eagerly swapped new recipes.
As clothing grew scarcer, people wore clothes longer and made them over. Runs in stockings were mended or rewoven. As always in wartime women knitted.
The U.S.O. (United Service Organization) set up canteens and places of recreation for soldiers stationed near or on leave, and women and young girls volunteered their services to help run these.
Blood banks were established, and everyone who was able gave blood.
More public transportation was needed for goods and people, and to replace vehicle traffic, and old train cars and engines were pressed into renewed service.
The nature of college campuses changed as young men left to go in the service, or young professors were called up.
There was a shortage of doctors and nurses at home, as they were more urgently needed overseas or in veterans’ hospitals.
Families tried to keep in touch with their men through frequent letter-writing. Special forms were used which were reduced in size by photography and sent to A.P.O. addresses to be forwarded. Families did not have knowledge usually of just where their soldiers were.
Nearly every home had a small flag in the window with a red border and a blue star for each member in service, to be replaced by a gold star if that person happened to be killed. Groups of “Gold Star Mothers” were formed in an attempt to find comfort through sharing grief.
Banks were usually quite cooperative about expending loans for postponing mortgage payments, a much needed courtesy because government allowances to families were not high- $50 per month for a private, plus $10 for each child.
Of course, the most difficult things were psychological- the loneliness and the worry. News did not travel fast, and a letter, perhaps mailed two weeks before and often heavily censored, was not very reassuring. It was difficult to explain to young children why their fathers were gone from their lives, or why their mothers were so tired, tense, and anxious.
Each night the paper was eagerly read for war news which usually was no longer up-to-date. The local paper carried casualty lists, always read with dread and perhaps momentary relief, or grief for a friend. Each ring of the telephone was answered in fear and trembling, and a telegram a horror not to be faced.
V.E. day in the spring of 1945 (the end of the war in Europe) was an occasion for great rejoicing. VJ day, the next August ( the end of the war in Japan) found people with very mixed emotions, relief that the war was over, although many of the occupation troops would not be coming home for a long time, and horror that the atom bomb had had to be used.
But sooner or later, the men, or at least the survivors, came home, most of them to find that home was not what it used to be and that both husband and wife had changed. The soldier husband and father was haunted by memories he would never forget, frequently depressed during the day and having nightmares at night, bearing scars, certainly mental and often physical, of what he had suffered and seen. Now he had to fit into a civilian life which must often have seemed trivial, even frivolous, and to fit himself back into a job or begin to build up a profession.
Perhaps he found his marriage had foundered, unable to stand the strain of long separation.
His wife was a different person, hardened by daily fear and new demands. Perhaps she had run the family business for the first time, or gone to work to earn real money; she had coped with pumps and furnaces and automobiles that wouldn’t work, with snow to shovel and leaks in the roof, with food shortages, and family illness and perhaps death- all with no husband to lean on. She had sometimes looked for relief or comfort in ways of which she was now ashamed.
Sometimes his children remembered and happily accepted him. Sometimes they didn’t remember and feared or even resisted his intrusion into their lives.
It took a lot of patience and forbearance to keep a family intact. Those who did were probably stronger for it, but with the memories of the holocaust in Germany, the bombings in Britain, the tragedies in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the wholesale death and destruction, besides their personal losses and hardships, it would be hard for them ever to imagine anything worth going to war for ever again.
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