1942

Articles from 1942

The Battle of the Coral Sea (Newsweek & Yank Magazines, 1942 – 3)

From the 4th through the 8th of May, 1942, the Japanese and American fleets exchanged blows in their first major engagement. The Americans won, but not by much; the most important battle would take place four weeks later at Midway. But the Yanks were happy with the way it turned out nonetheless:

It was a victory all right – but it was not as decisive as it sounded, to a jubilant America. For in the north in the mandated islands the main Japanese Fleet still stood ready for action at any moment – a fleet as yet largely unscathed, a fleet that has always come back for more, a fleet that does not like the taste of defeat.


Read about the Battle of Leyte Gulf…

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‘We Can Win On Both Oceans” (The American Magazine, 1942)

Frank Knox was FDR’s Secretary of the Navy between 1940 through 1944. Arm and arm with his lieutenant, Under Secretary James Forrestal, the two men made good on the Two-Ocean Navy Bill passed by Congress during the summer of 1940:

I am proud of this Navy of ours. Every American has a right to be proud of it, to know that it is, up to now, the greatest navy in history. But we cannot afford to be complacent about it. It is still not the navy that our country needs and that our fighting men in the ships deserve.

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Under-Age Workers Step-Up (PM Tabloid, 1942)

The National Youth Administration (NYA) was established in 1935 as one of FDR’s many alphabet agencies created to alleviate the sting of the Great Depression; it was tasked with providing work and education for young Americans between the ages of 16 through 25. By the time World War II kicked -in, many in Congress felt it was time to do away with the organization, but as this article spells out, NYA members could now be put to work in the defense plants.


Click here to read about the travails of young adults during the Great Depression.

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Carl Jung on Hitler (Omnibook Magazine, 1942)

H.R. Knickerbocker (1898 – 1949), foreign correspondent for the Hearst papers, recalled a 1938 conversation he had with the noted Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung concerning Adolf Hitler and his broad appeal among the German people:

He is like a man who listens intently to a stream of suggestions in a whispered voice from a mysterious source, and then acts upon them… In our case, even if occasionally our unconscious does reach us in dreams, we have too much rationality to obey it – but Hitler listens and obeys.


Click here to read about the origins of Fascist thought…

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The American Home Front Finds Faith Again (Click Magazine, 1942)

By the time this article appeared on the newsstands at the close of 1942, the American people were fully committed to a war on two fronts that quite often was not generating the kinds of headlines they would have preferred to read. Certainly, there was the naval victory at Midway, but the butcher’s bill was high at Pearl Harbor and North Africa and after a thirteen year lull in church attendance, America was once again returning to the church:

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Art on the Home Front (Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine, 1942)

The United States had only been committed to the Second World War for twenty weeks when the American artist Rockwell Kent (1882 – 1971) felt compelled to write about the unique roll artist are called upon to play within a democracy at war:

The art of a democracy must be, like democracy itself, of and by and for the people. It must and will reflect the public mood and public interest…Awareness of America, of its infinitely varied beauties and of its sometimes sordid ugliness; awareness of the life of America, of its fulfillments and its failures; awareness, if you like, of God, the landscape architect supreme – and political failure: of the promise of America and of its problems, art has been, or has aimed to be, a revelation. It is for the right to solve these problems our way that we are now at war.

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Here Comes Denim (Collier’s Magazine, 1942)

Nine months into the war the American fashion industry awoke to discover that one of the most sought after cottons being purchased domestically was denim.


Denim was first seen in 1853, worn by the men who panned for gold in California. When faced with hard labor, this sturdy twill had proven its worth again and again, and when the American home front recognized that there was a great deal of work to be done in the fields and factories if the war was to be won, they slipped on jeans and denim coveralls and saw the job through.


Who on Sixth Avenue could have known back then that denim would be the main-stay in American sportswear for decades to come?


A far more thorough history of blue jeans can be read here.

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Air-Raid Wardens on the Home Front (ClicK Magazine, 1942)

The Congressional Declaration of War was a mere five months old when this photo-essay appeared that documented the earliest days of the American Civil Defense efforts during the Second World War. At this point in the war, the Marines were still three months away from landing on Guadalcanal and the Army wouldn’t be arriving in North Africa for another six months – but the neighborhood volunteers of the Civil Defense seemed to be prepared.

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