Childhood Memories of World War II
------------------------------------------------------------
The following was dictated into my PC and then edited. It has been published to the KETC War Stories website.(search Alaska)
------------------------------------------------------------
The following was dictated into my PC and then edited. It has been published to the KETC War Stories website.(search Alaska)
WW II helped form most of my childhood memories. I was six when the U.S. went to war. It entered our home through the radio. Mom, Dad & I were in the kitchen that Sunday. We were listening to the radio waiting for the Jack Benny show, but instead heard about Pearl Harbor. My parents knew difficult times were our future.
Dad devoted one half of our backyard to planting vegetables and the other half to raising chickens and rabbits. He built a henhouse for the chickens and a rooster and a hutch for the rabbit. The vegetable gardens and animals were now a part of my city life.
Every day war headlines splattered across our newspaper with important meetings, battles, victory and defeat. With the Atomic Bomb came VJ day. The war headlines ended as quickly as they came. I wondered what the newspaper headlines would be without the war?
The war required metal. My friends and I loaded our red wagons with scrap metal for Scrap Metal Drives. We dumped the contents of the wagons on the school playground where a hill of metal would form. There were wheels, cans, barrels etc. destined to become jeeps, tanks, guns, and more.
Tires and gasoline were strictly rationed. Carpooling was a necessity.
Daily, news broadcasters brought the war into our home. I vividly remember Walter Winchell with his machine gun like delivery starting each show with “Good evening Mr. and Mrs. North and South America and all the ships at sea. Let's go to press." The war came to my weekly movies. I saw “To Be or Not to Be” with Jack Benny in a Hitler parody and “Mrs. Miniver” starring Greer Garson. Seeing the bombing of London made the war a reality.
The war affected every day life. Candy and gum were scarce. I chewed the same piece of bubble gum for days. Nightly planting it carefully on wax paper in the icebox. After a week the gum was tasteless! Dad rolled his own cigarettes due to supply shortages. Savings Stamps were sold at school. I licked them to paste in a book. Eventually they were converted to a U.S. War Bond. A war poster read “Help Stamp Them Out”.
My cousin was in the Army Air Force, stationed on Attu, the furthermost Aleutian island of Alaska. As an aerial photographer he came home with exciting tales. He brought a bear rug home that soon found its place on his mother’s living room floor and became my favorite place to listen to his stories. His brother was a flight engineer on B-29's in the Pacific. For years he kept his flight engineer’s circular slide rule close by. Their sister worked for Delta Airlines testing instruments. Sometimes workers were required to fly the planes on which they worked. Could that be true? We were given plane-spotting cards so we could identify enemy planes overhead. Was it is a Messerschmitt, a Stuka, or a Japanese Zero? Fortunately, no planes came close to the lower 48. However Attu was attacked and occupied briefly by the Japanese in 1942. American planes were also included so we could be assured they were not a threat. I can still identify a Flying Fortress and a Liberator plane.
Dad was an air raid warden. He wore an armband and maybe a helmet when performing his duties. When the sirens roared there was a blackout. He was responsible for assuring that all homes on his watch were dark.
The war home front was much different then, different than it is with our war today. But the killing and suffering haven’t changed.
Dad devoted one half of our backyard to planting vegetables and the other half to raising chickens and rabbits. He built a henhouse for the chickens and a rooster and a hutch for the rabbit. The vegetable gardens and animals were now a part of my city life.
Every day war headlines splattered across our newspaper with important meetings, battles, victory and defeat. With the Atomic Bomb came VJ day. The war headlines ended as quickly as they came. I wondered what the newspaper headlines would be without the war?
The war required metal. My friends and I loaded our red wagons with scrap metal for Scrap Metal Drives. We dumped the contents of the wagons on the school playground where a hill of metal would form. There were wheels, cans, barrels etc. destined to become jeeps, tanks, guns, and more.
Tires and gasoline were strictly rationed. Carpooling was a necessity.
Daily, news broadcasters brought the war into our home. I vividly remember Walter Winchell with his machine gun like delivery starting each show with “Good evening Mr. and Mrs. North and South America and all the ships at sea. Let's go to press." The war came to my weekly movies. I saw “To Be or Not to Be” with Jack Benny in a Hitler parody and “Mrs. Miniver” starring Greer Garson. Seeing the bombing of London made the war a reality.
The war affected every day life. Candy and gum were scarce. I chewed the same piece of bubble gum for days. Nightly planting it carefully on wax paper in the icebox. After a week the gum was tasteless! Dad rolled his own cigarettes due to supply shortages. Savings Stamps were sold at school. I licked them to paste in a book. Eventually they were converted to a U.S. War Bond. A war poster read “Help Stamp Them Out”.
My cousin was in the Army Air Force, stationed on Attu, the furthermost Aleutian island of Alaska. As an aerial photographer he came home with exciting tales. He brought a bear rug home that soon found its place on his mother’s living room floor and became my favorite place to listen to his stories. His brother was a flight engineer on B-29's in the Pacific. For years he kept his flight engineer’s circular slide rule close by. Their sister worked for Delta Airlines testing instruments. Sometimes workers were required to fly the planes on which they worked. Could that be true? We were given plane-spotting cards so we could identify enemy planes overhead. Was it is a Messerschmitt, a Stuka, or a Japanese Zero? Fortunately, no planes came close to the lower 48. However Attu was attacked and occupied briefly by the Japanese in 1942. American planes were also included so we could be assured they were not a threat. I can still identify a Flying Fortress and a Liberator plane.
Dad was an air raid warden. He wore an armband and maybe a helmet when performing his duties. When the sirens roared there was a blackout. He was responsible for assuring that all homes on his watch were dark.
The war home front was much different then, different than it is with our war today. But the killing and suffering haven’t changed.
