There was a lot of rationing of food, and other items such as paper.

There were "black-outs", where we had to have black window shads to pull down at night before we could turn on the lights inside our house.

Some times an air-raid wistle would blow at night, and scare everybody in the neighborhood. My father was responsible to keep this warning alarm working properly, by climbing up a high pole.

People were allowed only so much gas for their car, and so people without a car would trade with others for what they did have, such as items from their fruit trees.

We raised chickens, and had only one mean rooster--who pecked at whoever went into the pen to get the eggs from "his" harum. My father also killed these hens, and my mother would "dress" them and get them ready to cook.

Everyone was encouraged to have a "victory" home garden, in which we planted vegitibles such as carrots and tomatoes, and and share these with whowever needed it. My little brother was tasked with taking a wagon full of such food, and selling them to our neighbors--who were, by the way, very happy to buy such items as the stores didn't have them. (My brother was the only one who didn't like this assinment.)

We raised rabbits for food, and when they were killed, my father would skin them and clean the fur, which he then traded for more food for the animals. (Just doesn't seem right to use their own carcusus to buy the food for them to eat.) Also, one didn't dare touch one of the mother's blind and furless babies, for if you did, the mother would kill it.

There was a big empty lot behind our house which ended at railroad tracks at a station beind the tracks. I did my part to contribute to the war cause, as through their open train windows I handed them all my comic magazens when the train stopped at the station. All the men cheered, and (I presume) wore them to pieces while passing them around to the other men. One of them threw me a quarter, and told me to hurry and grown up so he could date me at some time in the future.

There was a bums-camp in the empty lot (that's what they called them then, not "homeless"), who had nowhere else to go. They would sit around a fire, and warm their canned food. They also had a system where they scratched our address on a piece of wood near their fire, as to who might give them food--such as from our "victory" garden, which was full of vegitibles and fruit trees. Plus, my mother would always make peanut butter sandwitches to give them in a paper sack, along with a fruit item.

They were allways very polite and asked my mother, "Mam, do you have any food you can share with us?". Then she would go in the kitchen and prepare a lunch with whatever we had, such as food from our victory garden, or that was hanging from on our fruit trees.

The end.

Thanks for sharing that. I really enjoy hearing the first person accounts. It's so important to record them. Your family is to be commended.

Devoted Exmo Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Thanks for sharing that. I really enjoy hearing
> the first person accounts. It's so important to
> record them. Your family is to be commended.

My thoughts as well.

That's a beautiful story, Polly. Perhaps you know this, but during the depression in the United States the bums/hobos/homeless would leave a mark on the mailbox or a telephone pole or whatever to tell others in their situation which homes were generous and which not. That sounds similar to what you describe.

Polly, I assume this was in the United States. Some things you mention were similar to my experiences in WW2 in London. Our back yard was dominated by an air raid shelter which we hurried to when the siren indicated a raid, but around it we had rabbits, chickens and at one time ducks. We also had a garden. Some things are quite vivid in my memory and even now the sound of those sirens in films or documentaries stops me cold.

We had neighbors across the street who raised rabbits FOR FOOD.

Rule Number One: No matter how cute the baby bunnies were, none of us were allowed to give them names. That would "anthropomorphize" them, or give them identities, which would make it much more difficult to break their necks, skin and eat them later.

I was invited over once, for a meal of fresh rabbit stew, veggies grown in their garden, and home-made bread to sop up the gravy with. My grandmother had raised me with impeccable manners, so I got through it OK, but with every bite of the meat (which really wasn't bad; the gravy was delicious) I couldn't help wondering if this was one of the bunnies I had known personally, and cuddled. I wasn't cut out for farm life.

My most vivid childhood memory of WW11 was when we were living in Kalgoorlie Western Australia and had a semi underground air raid shelter. (Think they may have been called Anderson shelters).

Once a week mum would go down into the shelter to give it a sweep out, get rid of the cobwebs and change the water bottles while I waited outside. One day she had only been down there for a minute or so when I heard a blood curdling scream and mum's broom came flying up the steps followed by a six foot long racehorse goanna. and then my very pregnant and hysterical mother.

I thought it was the funniest thing I'd ever seen, but mum vowed "they" could bomb the pants (polite version) off us but she was never going down there again.

They were called Anderson shelters in the day. They would not, of course, survive a direct hit but shrapnel fell like gemstones at times and some of it was nasty stuff...but great for my shoebox collection after the all clear

There was a World War 11? I must've missed history class for WW's 3-11.

stillanon Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> There was a World War 11? I must've missed history
> class for WW's 3-11.

Hope you had a very good reason for missing those history classes! But then again, maybe it was not a matter of you missing history class, more a matter of me missing elementary maths and not seeing that 1 +1 without the plus sign makes eleven not two.

Not seeing operators seems to be something you've tried to rectify in seeing conspiracies.

OK,I made a joking reply to stillanon about writing WW11 instead of the perfectly acceptable way of writing it with roman numerals. Nobody is perfect and we all make mistakes. In fact I think you too have made a mistake in saying that not seeing operators is something I have tried to rectify in seeing conspiracies.

Would you please enlighten me as to how you have come to that conclusion as I very rarely post here and do not initiate nor become involved in conspiracies on this or any other forum.

Kentish - are you familiar with the Museum of Kentish Life in the UK? They have an Anderson shelter on display and a typical row house with the radio blaring one of Churchill's messages, set up as if frozen in the day. It brought everything my father described to me about enduring the war in the Midlands to life.

I, too, was told of stories of food rationing, rationing coupon books, absence of street lights and road signs, city buses without interior lights, children kitted out with gas masks and having to carry theirs to/from when returned to attending school, the day grandfather returned from the war in europe with a jar of fruit jam (a delicacy that hadn't been enjoyed for a very long time), air raid sirens, and an uncle's motorcar that had been stored in a distant barn, up on blocks, due to the rationing of petrol. The joy and struggles when uncle and father went to start it up again post-war.

Only decades later did we learn just how close Britain was to being invaded.

I am not familiar with the Kent museum I was born in Hive, Sussex where my father was working but we moved back to London shortly after I was born in January 1940. While I have no sense of continuity during those times specific things are firmly fixed in my mind such as standing in the doorway of the shelter dying a day time raid and watching a V1 rocket puttering across the sky.

Rationing was a big part of life for several years after the war and did not end fully until the early 50s. There was no such thing as chocolate or candy in the shops and if the local greenhouse got a box of oranges you joined the queue and were rewarded with one per customer while they lasted.

I was one of those kids who left London in the second great evacuation (the expectation of V rocket attacks) with my gas mask over my shoulder to travel to the west coast of Lancashire.

That's Hove, Sussex.

pollythinks Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

Did you have a farm?

"One of them threw me a quarter, and told me to hurry and grown up so he could date me at some time in the future."

==I guess you are a girl.

"Some times an air-raid wistle would blow at night, and scare everybody in the neighborhood."

==But nobody invaded the USA, right?
There was the attack on Hawaii by Japan but it seems as if no other country is interested in attacking the USA back then.

~~~~iceman9090

German U Boats were a mile off the coasts of North Carolina, Ne England NJ and NY.

stillanon Wrote:
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> German U Boats were a mile off the coasts of North
> Carolina, Ne England NJ and NY.

Source:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3774630/The-ghosts-U576-German-U-Boat-30-miles-coast-North-Carolina-72-years-sank-Nazi-campaign-terror-44-soldiers-entombed-inside.html

Wow, the Nazis had big plans. Bigger than I thought.

~~~~iceman9090

The biggest plan during the war was to shut down American shipping to Britain since it was the stream of supplies that enabled the insular state to survive the onslaught from Germany. The same geopolitical logic--Germany's need to isolate and starve the UK--had lead to the unlimited B-Boat offensives in 1915 and subsequent years that gave Wilson the excuse he wanted to reject isolationism and join the war against the Germans.

LW, virtually everything was in short supply during the war but a very stringent rationing system ensured that survivable rations were available. As I recall, an adult male's weekly ration of margarine was 2 ozs per week. Butter was a rarity and if it was available it was referred to as "best butter", a term my mother used for the rest of her life. Ships crossing the ocean carried mostly necessary products which is why only occasionally did we have things like oranges. I can vividly recall being in a cinema with my older sister a year or two after the war ended. The lights went up for the interval an d I watched wide eyed in wonder as a lady sitting in front of us pulled this yellow thing out of her purse, stripped away the skin and began to eat something the likes of which I had never seen. I nudged my sister who whispered: "It's a banana. I haven't seen one of those since before the war."

I always get a chuckle when I see kids bouncing along with those shoes that have lights in the heels. All clothing and shoes were on ration during and after the war, so it was fix and mend to make those items last. My dad learned jhow to do basic shoe repairs and the heels of the boots we wore then were covered with nailed in metal studs. We would walk down the street kicking our heels tol make the sparks fly. Kids today have nothing on us.

Thank you for those reminiscences, Kentish. They bring color to the history.

kentish Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I always get a chuckle when I see kids bouncing
> along with those shoes that have lights in the
> heels. All clothing and shoes were on ration
> during and after the war, so it was fix and mend
> to make those items last. My dad learned jhow to
> do basic shoe repairs and the heels of the boots
> we wore then were covered with nailed in metal
> studs. We would walk down the street kicking our
> heels tol make the sparks fly. Kids today have
> nothing on us.

The advantage of living like that is that it puts it into people's conscience that resources are limited. Today's cellphones, TVs, PC monitors all use LCDs which need a transparent conductor.
The transparent conductor is made of tin gallium oxide.
Gallium is a rare element. There are no gallium mines. It comes as a byproduct of purifying aluminium ore.

Most LEDs are made of gallium arsenide phosphide.
All these things go to the trash once they break down.

Fluorescent tubes have been going to the trash for many decades. Mercury mines are pretty rare. The mercury just goes into the air as a gas.

The tantalum in quality capacitors.
The rhodium in tiny resistors.
The cobalt in batteries, hard steel, jet engines.

All that is rare.

~~~~iceman9090

The Japanese also tried to attack the west coast, but did not dedicate a lot of effort into it.

A Japanese submarine sank an oil tanker, the SS Montebello a few miles off the coast of Cambria, California. The wreck is now about five miles off shore and nearly 1000 ft deep but it still leaks oil that occaisionally makes it way to the surface and local surf break sending a history message from 1943.

The Japanese also tried rigging blimp like aircraft with bombs, none of these ended up doing any damage. One was found as far East as Wyoming.

The Japanes also tried launching planes from a submarine type aircraft carrier. These did not work either after several tries, a workable design was enroute to US waters when the war ended.

They could achieve little at such great distance. After Pearl harbor, the Japanese had few capital ships with which to patrol and control East Asia let alone to defend against allied intrusions.

The forays towards the west coast of the US were undertaken with submarines and small surface ships, none of which could project significant power onto the mainland. They were more intended to cause fear and confusion than to produce actual military gains.
This is all fairly similar to Germany's slightly more robust activities along the east coast.

Force projection over long distances is tough, and was much tougher in the 1940s.

>The Japanese also tried rigging blimp like aircraft with bombs, none of these ended up doing any damage.


Except for killing 6 people near Bly, Oregon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb

My mom was a WW2 nurse in Newark. She worked the POW wards with the U-Boat prisoners. Lots and lots of marriage proposals, and the men told her that they'd take care of her when they won the war.

Biggest German plan had been put in place in the 1920s and 1930s to integrate the U.S. financial and industrial businesses with German business interests, tying up patents, banking connection, and hobbling production of American war preparations. Germans bottlenecked aluminum production (aircraft), machine tools, helped encourage the 1939-41 business "sitdown strike" frustrating shifting factories to war production, businesses were heavily invested in the German runup to the war, particularly Ford Motor Company (Germany ran on Ford trucks and allied bombers never really hit the factories, especially at Cologne), and Germany traded with Standard Oil of New Jersey via subsidiary corporations, like the Ethyl Corporation in England for airplane gas's critical additive, tetra ethyl lead, which would have grounded the Luftwaffe before the invasion of Poland. The Nazi's bought an emergency supply of tetra ethyl lead in 1938, 500 tons, which was transhipped from England to Germany through the U.S. corporation. In effect, Germany's Luftwaffee bombed England and fought the Battle of Britain on British gasoline. Germany imported oil through Franco's Spain as late as September, 1944, routed through Venezuelan corporations.

Germany had all kinds of intrigues with American Nazis, like the Bund and the Silver Shirts, especially in New Jersey and the West Coast. Pelley's Silver Shirts infiltrated the Los Angeles Police Dept. in 1933 and flipped law enforcement scrutiny on the West Coast from Nazi sedition to anti-communism, and what became HUAC in the '50s came out of Southern California and went after Hollywood. Germany sent over $5 million to help elect Wendell Willkie, which was frustrated by FDR running for a 3rd term (the Germans first tried to fund the Democratic rivals to FDR). New Jersey had violent street brawls when the Bund came to hold their rallies and local jews recruited the Minutemen (professional boxers) to break up the meetings.

Several U.S. Senators lamented that we'd backed the wrong side in WW2 in the 1940s and 1950s. Vets coming back from the war went after the local school boards because the high schools flunked out seniors to make them eligible for the war draft quotas.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/24/2020 01:10AM by snagglepuss.

The Japanese also invaded the Aleutian Islands.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleutian_Islands_campaign

Guam was invaded.

The Philippines was part of the US at the time.

Wake Island was invaded.

Greatest Generation: mobilized the entire country to fight WWII, industry, science, military. Gave up all luxuries, stockings, butter, spare tires, new cars, appliances. Kids collected scrap metal. Rationing.

Trump Generation: But wearing a mask makes me all itchy! My rights!

I was 5 years old when Pearl Harbor was attacked. I came home from Sunday School in Flagstaff Arizona and both my parents were crying. When I asked why they said the Japanese attacked us at Pearl Horbor. It meant absolutely nothing to me.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/21/2020 12:22PM by thedesertrat1.

Please folks, that was WWII, not WW11...

But what if they really meant "World War Eleven?"

My mom (who is still alive and lives with me) was born in 1940 and remembers the rationing. In fact, when COVID came around, all she could think of was that we would have to ration again the way things were rationed in her youth, particularly food.

I think that one of the greatest lessons her generation could teach us is patience and money management. She and her friends, when they got money, usually didn't spend it, or all of it, right away, because they never knew if they would lose the job or other means for getting that money. Unfortunately, our banks and businesses nowadays encourage people to spend more now to keep their profits up without having to worry about the possible consequences of that spending down the road. We need to relearn the art of putting some of our current desires into check so that we have something for tomorrow and the future.

Pollythinks, were you in the UK or the US during WWII?

Was there enough toilet paper? Haha jk.

Reading these comments has reminded me that I need to write down my dad's World War 2 stories while I can remember them.

He was a Navy Corpsman, and was a Pharmacist's Mate. He received his training on a hospital ship in California and then shipped out to the South Pacific area.

He had stories of bravery of all of his crew mates, and funny stories as well.

While he was serving in the South Pacific, his brother was in the Army in North Africa and Italy.

Their widowed mother lived alone and she would set a place at the table for both of her sons, with lit candles, because she had trust that they would both return home alive and be with her again.

My mother's brother was in the Navy and was at Pearl Harbor.

My mother was one of many Rosie the Riveters and then signed up for the Coast Guard.

Their generation really was Great. I have the utmost respect for them and for everyone who serves in the military.

My mother was born in the 1920s in a West Coast big city, grew up during the Depression and graduated from high school in 1940. So much of what you said sounds like things she talked about. Her parents raised chickens and rabbits for food, and some of their Portugese neighbors kept goats in the empty lots.

During WWII the family ate horsemeat which apparently tasted a lot like roast beef. My grandmother once bought and served a black market ham, which they ate, all the while expecting the cops to break in and confiscate it.

During the Depression Grandma fed bums - yes that's the word of those times. She gave them food outside, never let them into the house, and she didn't give them money. I think she even had dishes that were only used for that purpose, not for family meals. Mom believed that the house was marked with the "kind woman" symbol somewhere so that the bums knew where to get a meal.

After high school, Mom worked at a trade school that taught War Production Training classes. She wasn't a Rosie, but a lot of Rosies came of that school.

I don't remember the war, but I do remember that we had a Victory Garden which later became our back lawn. I have photos of me as a toddler in that garden. (In SLC.) And I do remember when my uncle came home from the war--a big day. He was my Dad's younger brother who I'm told, was drafted in 1940. My folks talked about The War when I was older, so I knew about food shortages.

Japenese bomblets fell into the Western U.S., hikers & campers were warned not to touch unknown objects.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/22/2020 09:57PM by GNPE.

Your post reminded me of the anti personnel bombs the Germans dropped on the UK. They were a hinged bomb that opened up as they dropped and became known as Butterfly Bombs. A number of people were killed by them when first dropped as they looked harmless.

Some heavier bombs were not always designed to explode immediately. For instance, if a bomb fell on railway lines and destroyed 20 yards of track, railway traffic was only temporarily stopped because the tracks could be quickly repaired. If a large bomb fell on that same track but did not explode the track would be shut down for quite a while until the bomb was defused. This was not always a simple procedure because the Germans consistently changed the defusing procedure to confuse the disposal people, many of whom were killed.

One of my dad's stories was about the "Daisy Cutters". For those who don't know, Daisy Cutters were bombs that would explode above the ground and would send hot shrapnel flying, about the height of a daisy.

One night,he and a couple of his buddies were up playing cards in their tent. Suddenly, the camp was getting bombed and a Daisy Cutter went off by their tent.
A piece of shrapnel tore through their tent and lodged in a Banyan tree that behind the tent. It passed in between the guys.
In the morning, they wanted to look at the piece of shrapnel, and it was still too hot to touch.

Daisy cutters were invented by the US during Vietnam. No daisy cutters in WWII.

First reference to these bombs is from Lieutenant Jack Wilkinson who described them in the 1918 attack in Bertangles.

That is exactly what the men in my dad's group called them.

Yes, they were also used later in the Vietnam War.

Fascinating.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisy_cutter_(fuse)

From the article;
" For this reason daisy-cutter fuses are often used to clear foliage and vegetation, such as for the purpose of creating landing zones for helicopters."

They didn't use helicopters in WWII. Yes, there were "proximity bombs" in WWII. But "Daisy Cutters" didn't happen until Vietnam.

That strikes me as a distinction without a difference.

Clearly people were using the term "daisy cutter" in the 1910s and would continue to do so for decades. I have no reason to doubt your assertion that the first bomb named "daisy cutter" came with Vietnam, but that doesn't mean the concept and bombs with that effect were nonexistent until then.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Fascinating.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisy_cutter_(fuse)

Interesting. An alternative would be to put a timer on the bomb and drop it.
I wonder how they made nuclear bombs explode. I know that they wanted them to explode 100 m in the air or was it 500 m,

Maybe they used a altimeter.

~~~~iceman9090

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Boy

The fuzing system was designed to trigger at the most destructive altitude, which calculations suggested was 580 meters (1,900 ft). It employed a three-stage interlock system:[31]

A timer ensured that the bomb would not explode until at least fifteen seconds after release, one-quarter of the predicted fall time, to ensure safety of the aircraft. The timer was activated when the electrical pull-out plugs connecting it to the airplane pulled loose as the bomb fell, switching it to its internal 24–volt battery and starting the timer. At the end of the 15 seconds, the bomb would be 3,600 feet (1,100 m) from the aircraft, and the radar altimeters were powered up and responsibility was passed to the barometric stage.[31]
The purpose of the barometric stage was to delay activating the radar altimeter firing command circuit until near detonation altitude. A thin metallic membrane enclosing a vacuum chamber (a similar design is still used today in old-fashioned wall barometers) gradually deformed as ambient air pressure increased during descent. The barometric fuze was not considered accurate enough to detonate the bomb at the precise ignition height, because air pressure varies with local conditions. When the bomb reached the design height for this stage (reportedly 2,000 meters, 6,600 ft), the membrane closed a circuit, activating the radar altimeters. The barometric stage was added because of a worry that external radar signals might detonate the bomb too early.[31]
Two or more redundant radar altimeters were used to reliably detect final altitude. When the altimeters sensed the correct height, the firing switch closed, igniting the three BuOrd Mk15, Mod 1 Navy gun primers in the breech plug, which set off the charge consisting of four silk powder bags each containing 2 pounds (0.9 kg) of WM slotted-tube cordite. This launched the uranium projectile towards the opposite end of the gun barrel at an eventual muzzle velocity of 300 meters per second (980 ft/s). Approximately 10 milliseconds later the chain reaction occurred, lasting less than 1 microsecond. The radar altimeters used were modified U.S. Army Air Corps APS-13 tail warning radars, nicknamed "Archie", normally used to warn a fighter pilot of another plane approaching from behind

Kermit Beahan was my neighbor and a friend. He dropped Fat Man on Nagasaki. His daughter, Lisa, was my friend and schoolmate. In high school, I used to tune his carburetors on his Triumph motorcycle. He'd take my Dad for drinks at the OC at Ellington AFB, about 5 miles away. He had the original bomb cradle release pin mounted and framed in his den. I was always amazed at the awesome power that he released. He never regretted dropping that bomb. Comforted in knowing that he saved countless American lives that didn't die in a ground invasion of Japan. But, he did say that he hoped that he'd be the last man to drop a weapon like that. He was a cool guy.



https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-03-11-mn-692-story.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kermit_Beahan

1987 movie Hope & Glory tells the story of the Blitz in London through the eyes of a young lad. I found it very interesting; my relatives were not in London but there were things in the war that were the same for all.

including too much rutabaga ("swede") in the school dinners.

My word. I haven't thought of Swede in years. Elementary school dinners were a nightmare. In food shortage Britain every one seemed to feature canned corned beef (more fat than beef)and Nazi dinner ladies who would spoon feed it down till the plate was cleared so nothing was wasted. Much of Hope and Glory was spot on, especially the bits taking place in London.

I remember my older sister coming home from school because a German plane had buzzed down the street close enough to see the pilot. A few minutes later he dropped a bomb on the biggest building he could see. Happened to be a school where children were eating lunch. Dozens of children and teachers were killed.Happened st Sandhurst Road school. See Google.

My relatives in the Midlands had an Anderson shelter in the garden and it tended to get water accumulating in it. The sirens would sound, they hoped the static water tank at the bottom of the road would not be needed to fight any resulting fires, they would hear the planes fly over, sometimes the sound of buzz bombs...remain in the shelter a bit longer then return to the house to sleep better.

Lots of manufacturing of important military items in the Midlands so the factories were targets.

If you have memories, please write it down so future generations can read, consider, learn and (it is to be hoped) not see that sort of history in repeat.

> If you have memories, please write it down so
> future generations can read, consider, learn and
> (it is to be hoped) not see that sort of history
> in repeat.

Agreed.

I have.

Such as this from an unknown air raid warden passing by the house the night I was born. Passed to me by my sister and now to you.

I passed your window one dark starry night
And I was surprised to see a chink of bright light.
Now I'm only just warning you, it's my duty you know.
If you are are not more careful, you will spoil the whole show.

Air raid wardens were local volunteers who patrolled the streets at night to ensure that blackout regulations were kept.

Yes, I know about air raid wardens and the nocturnal resorts to air raid shelters, etc. Graham Greene describes those things in several of his books and William Golding talks about the Blitz in his novel Darkness Visible. Both men speak very similarly to you.

The message related by your sister is great. It adds a unique human touch to those events as well as showing the humor and courtesy of that particular warden.

More:

. Hitler announced that he would "rule the world!"

. Small Japanese submarines appeared off the coast of the Pacific ocean, however the government didn't tell the population this, as they didn't want them to panic.

. No, we didn't have a farm, just an average back-yard that was turned into a farm, as far as was possible. We also grew peas, and green beans, and carrots.

. Even our local grade school had a victory garden, that the kids took care of--undersupervision of teachers, of course.

---

Something else: We lived a half block away from a Japanese flower store, and about a mile away from Forest Lawn mortuary. This store was instantly closed, and its proprietor was sent to a consentration camp until the war was over. (Plus, it was never opened again.)

Oh, yes. Marilyn Monroe got her start in WWII as a pin-up girl, as she was discovered while she was working at Lockheed at the time, an L.A. county's plane-building factory.

By the way, the whole lot where Lockheed was situated--(in the southern-half of L.A. County)--was completely covered with a large camouflage netting made to look like tree-tops.

pollythinks Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> By the way, the whole lot where Lockheed was
> situated--(in the southern-half of L.A.
> County)--was completely covered with a large
> camouflage netting made to look like tree-tops.

I have never heard of this before.

Thank you, polly!

Another great post.

Yes, the Japanese were treated terribly. In Hawaii they comprised a very large proportion of the population, so it would have been impossible to intern them all. But the West Coast Japanese were shipped off to concentration camps, deprived of their constitutional rights, and in many cases saw their homes, farms, and stores requisitioned by their white neighbors.

I once met a very old, very gentle Japanese American man who like many others so situated had worked for decades after World War Two as a gardener. We spoke for a long time and gradually he revealed more of his story. It turn out that he had been accepted to a Ph.D. program in physics at Berkeley when Pearl Harbor was attacked and was then, along with his family, arrested and imprisoned in a camp for the duration of the war. When they returned to their old home, they found another family in it. Nor would Berkeley recognize his previous admission. Behind his gentle facade, the old man was in fact deeply bitter about what he had lost.

He told me, and I've heard this from others as well, that in parts of California the Methodists stepped in and protected some Japanese homes and farms. Not surprisingly, given the old Japanese value system, after the war lots of the returning internees expressed their thanks by joining that church. They recognized who their true neighbors had been.