Brent Lee and Karen Huser
Comiskey, Breana. “Life would never be the same again.” 1995. Brown University <http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/WWII_Women/LifeWouldNever.html>.
- “The war was always portrayed as winnable, but important, popular and fought for a just reason. The newsreels were extremely manipulative. We were taught to be more than scornful of our enemies: the Germans and the Japanese. Our enemies were portrayed as dangerous, inhuman, uncivilized, unworthy of any sympathy.” S - ½
- “I can also remember coming home from lunch one day into my dormitory room; my mother had sent me a letter, and out of it fell an obituary of a young man who died in Iwo Jima. The report of his death had happened a good two weeks before his family heard about it, three weeks before it was in the newspaper, and a month before I heard about it. It was absolutely terrifying. This was happening all the time. It did have a great impact on our lives.” S – ¾
- “I exchanged mail with several young men who had been in high school classes. Every time you went to a Buddies Club, there would be billboards with names of service men who needed to be written to. We were constantly writing letters. This was considered to be an absolutely essential activity to boost morale.” S - ¾
Elliot, Kristen. “Her Students Became Soldiers.” 1995. Brown University <http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/WWII_Women/Students.html>.
“Those who did leave sent many letters to me. Oh, I had hundreds and hundreds of letters. I can remember one particular letter that still sticks in my mind. A boy named Charlie was in the Navy, at boot camp in northern New York, I have forgotten just where. It was the most impressive sight that he had ever seen -- just hundreds and hundreds of boys all in white uniforms, all lined up to receive communion. He described the whole scene in great detail. It was a lovely letter. I saved it for years.” S-Top
- “Another boy was stationed down around New Orleans and he wrote me weekly letters. None of the letters were censored. They never ever told secrets. They were very careful. They were very nice letters. They were not written as though they were written to an English teacher; they were written to a friend.” S-Top
- “I was glad when the war ended and the boys could come back and finish their education. We had one big class of returned veterans, and one particular teacher had all the veterans in her homeroom and she just loved them. They were more mature. They had had such experiences, you just can't imagine. I know three of the boys were having difficulty with English, so I used to tutor them during a free period to help them. Somtimes they couldn't even talk about their experiences; they were just so deep that it would have torn their hearts right out to relay the stories.” S- ½
Gould, Hannah. “A Letter Every Night.” 1995. Brown University <http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/WWII_Women/Letter.html>.
- “I used to write to Irving every night, faithfully (See Writing Letters... ). And he wrote to me. Course, his letters were censored. A lot of times things were cut out that I wasn't supposed to know. We had a code between the two of us so that I would know where he was. We had a friend named Pearl, and he asked me in a letter, "How is Pearl doing?" Right away I knew where he was. Of course it was hard reading the censored letters, but when he got back he told me most of the things that were missing.” S- ¼
- “There was such happiness when the war ended. On the day when Hiroshima was bombed we all knew that something drastic was going to happen with the bomb, so we were all listening to the radio. We had a regular block party. I can remember we were all out standing in the road, and talking, and having such a good time. I went into the house and just let myself go. I bawled my eyes out. God, it was such a good feeling to know that it was ended and that the soldiers were coming home.”
- “Irving came home right after the war. He and 3,000 other men landed in California. He flew to Boston, and from there took the train to Westerly. By that time I had my license to drive the car, and I went right down to the train station and picked him up and brought him home. Our daughters were glad to have their daddy back. While he was gone I had hung a picture of him in the living room so they'd know who he was.” S-Bottom
“Home Front during World War II.” Answers.com: 20 April 2006. <http://www.answers.com/Home%20Front%20during%20World%20War%20II%20in%20the%20united%20States>
- “Labor shortages were particularly felt in agriculture. At the same time many agricultural commodities were more needed for the military and for the civilian populations of allies. In some areas with specialty crops, such as potatoes or apples, schools were temporarily closed at harvest time to enable students to work.”
- “In the US, the Civil Air Patrol was established, which enrolled civilian spotter in reconnaissance. Towers were built in coastal and border towns, and spotters were trained to recognize enemy aircraft, so as to report if any were seen. Civilian aircraft were also used as spotters for submarines, and in a few cases, actually armed with depth charges and bombs, which did attack subs on occasion and sometimes succeeded in destroying them.”
- “Blackouts were the common civilian response when warnings of potential enemy attack came. All lighting had to be extinguished to avoid helping the enemy in targeting at night.”
Huser, James Richard and Jeanne Ann. Personal Interview. April 2006.
- Families depended on food rations, while they conserved more of other materials. Only select foods were available; memories included the lack of available chocolate.
- Americans conserved more materials for their use in the war, including nylons which were popular among the women, such as his future wife.
- Families were often torn apart because relatives departed for the war. His brother Joe, who was only a few years old than him, joined the war, along with friends, immediately after graduating from Cathedral High School.
“Jack Benny, Gracie Allen and Eddie Cantor humorously describe gas rationing, 1942.” Eye Witness to History: 19 April 2006. <http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/vogas.htm>
- “Thirty percent of all cigarettes produced were allocated for service men, making cigarettes a scarce commodity on the home front by 1944. By the end of the war, rationing limited consumption of almost every product with the exception of eggs and dairy foods.”
- “Rubber became the first commodity rationed as the Japanese invasion of the Dutch East Indies cut off our supply. Gasoline rationing reduced the number of miles the average citizen drove and thus conserved rubber. Voluntary gas rationing proved ineffective and by the spring of 1942, seventeen Eastern states had instituted some form of mandatory gas rationing. By December mandatory controls extended across the entire country. On average, motorists who used their cars for "nonessential" purposes were restricted to 3 gallons of gas a week.”
- Almost immediately after President Roosevelt declared war on Japan, the United States’ citizens shifted their lifestyles to suit the economy better. All were affected by the flood of Americans volunteering to join the military.
Johnson, Casey. “Wife, Homemaker, and Civil Defense Volunteer.” 1995. Brown University < http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/WWII_Women/WifeHomemaker.html>.
- “We were very limited. We could only buy a small amount of sugar. It was very difficult to get butter. That's when margarine started to become popular. It was dreadful. It was white, these lumps like lard, and you were given a little round ball that looked like a cherry. You had to put it in this white lard and let it melt and then you mixed it all up so that it became a rather ugly yellow color. And meat was very hard to get.” S - Top
- “The coastline was a very dangerous spot. Every night was a blackout night. Every night we had to pull down these black shades -- very unattractive shades, so the lights from our house could not be seen from the outside. There was a man named Mr. Holberton who was the warden. He came by every night to make sure everybody was in total, total darkness. And if you insisted on displaying lights, you could be arrested.” S-Bottom
- “We started out as a group of women in East Providence, I guess maybe thirty of us. We studied topography. We studied mechanics. We learned how to change tires on big trucks. We met at the Rhode Island Armory and drove trucks. These were army trucks. Old ones. Several nights my friend Lorraine Geissler and I, along with eight or nine other women, drove at night without any lights on the trucks. We were being taught how to evacuate children, the sick, and the elderly from the coastal areas in which we lived into the mountains of Vermont and New Hampshire, where the people would be safer in the event of an emergency.” S-Top
Lee, Kathleen. Personal Interview. 30 April 2006
- Wife and sister to two World War II veterans
- Fear for brother’s safety while he served in the Pacific Theatre
- Her mother worried a great amount for her son’s safety in the Pacific Islands while her dad understood his son’s willingness to serve in the Marines.
O’Grady, Katherine. “What Did You Do in the War Grandma?” 1995. Brown University < http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/WWII_Women/Grandma.html >.
- “I met my husband while I was working at Gibson's. He had a construction job building an air base up in Newfoundland. When Pearl Harbor broke out, he came back home and we got married. All the fellows had gone into the service. His brothers were all gone. All the men were leaving. My husband had a deferment because his job was considered important to the defense, and we had a nine month old son. But he wanted to go so badly that he quit the job. They turned his name into the draft board, and he went into the service very happily.” S-Top
- “At the mill the government used to send out all the Purple Heart soldiers to talk to us and tell us that we couldn't take time off, and pushed all this patriotism on us. One particular day I had the day off and they went to my house. I wasn't home. It would have been embarrassing to have soldier with a Purple Heart on asking why I wasn't at work.” S- ½
- “I had a young baby and I had a place to leave him in a nursery. At the mill I worked every day and I had all my evenings off, and Saturdays and Sundays, so that I was home alone with my son. I used to take him to Bristol on the trolley and we'd have picnics on the beach.” S- ¾
Tishler, William P. “Sacrifice.” American History 102: Civil War to the Present: 19 April 2006. <http://us.history.wisc.edu/hist102/lectures/lecture21.html>
- “The federal government encouraged Americans to conserve and recycle materials such as metal, paper, and rubber, which factories could then use for wartime production. Lots of everyday household trash had value: kitchen fats, old metal shovels, even empty metal lipstick tubes.”
- “The federal government also compelled Americans to cut back on foodstuffs and consumer goods. Americans, for example, needed ration cards to purchase items such as gasoline, coffee, sugar, and meat. Rationing eventually frustrated many Americans. For the first time in years, they had money to spend, but there were few goods available for purchase. This frustration kept mounting until the end of the war. When the war finally came to a close in 1945, industries returned to consumer production and Americans went on a buying spree of unprecedented proportions.”
- Heavily reliant on War Bonds to sell support of the war to American citizens; influenced fashion because of the lesser amounts of materials used
“Women Fight the War from Home.” Women and World War II: 19 April 2006.
<http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/st/~cg3/pageone.html>
- “So in an effort to help the war effort, the government promoted "Victory Gardens." These were small gardens that family could have in their back yard which produced tomatoes, lettuce, and beans and other produce that would normally be found in the grocery store.”
- “Other items that women needed to ration were silk, nylon, rayon, cotton, and wool. All of these materials were in high demand because they made parachutes, aircraft and military clothing, tents, and even gunpowder bags. Food items that were rationed were coffee, tea, butter, and meat. As a result, housewives had to drive around to several different markets to find the supplies that they needed to create a well balanced meal. This too created a problem given the fact that gasoline was rationed as well.”
- Products as simple as sugar became difficult for the American housewives to locate; sugar was contained in molasses, which made alcohol, used in gunpowder for the military.