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This article consists of assorted stories that illustrate the length some American men would go in order to stay out of the military during the Second World War. The article also tells of draft evasion during the First World War.
Click here to read a 1945 article about your average Massachusetts draft board.
When Michael Campiseno turned 18, he was pulled out of his senior class in Norwood High School and drafted. Mike was sore. He swore that if he ever returned, he’d throw his discharge papers on the desk of the board chairman and say, ‘Now, ya sonuvabitch, I hope you’re satisfied!’
Here is the skinny on Draft Board 119 of Norwood, Massachusetts – an average draft board that sent 2,103 men off to war (75 of them never returned).
We were terribly surprised to learn of a peace movement that existed on the 1944 American home front. Baring an awkward name that was right out of Seventiespeak, Peace Now printed pamphlets that played the class game so prevalent in the other leftist organizations that would come forth twenty years later.
When World War II was inching toward it’s bloody conclusion, Japan launched its Fu-go Campaign – a project designed to deploy thousands of high-altitude hydrogen balloons armed with incendiary devices. These balloons were to follow the westerly winds of the upper atmosphere, drifting to the west coast of North America where they were expected descend into the forests and explode.
The Japanese home front suffered from tuberculosis – click here to read about it…
A year and a half before Pearl Harbor, many Americans, 10,000 to be exact, were active in welcoming British children, ages 5 – 16, to their homes. This was a time when it was widely believed that a Nazi invasion of Britain was imminent and the Battle of Britain was in full-swing:
Nobody knows how many will be admitted or how many will land in Canada on the first child-refugee ship, due three weeks from now.The quota for British children is 6,500 a-month; for children from other countries quotas are considerably lower.
To read about the short and productive life of New York’s PM, click here…
By the dawn’s early light America awoke to the knowledge that its D-Day had come. Electricity meters clocked a sudden spurt in kilowatt loads as house lights and radios went on; telephone switchboards jammed as excited householders passed the word along. By morning on June 6, scarcely a family failed to know that the nation’s sons and brothers, husbands and sweethearts were even then storming the beaches of Normandy to begin the Allied liberation of Europe.
Click here to read about D-Day…
Chicago, Illinois saw enormous changes take place during the war years, most notably the overnight construction of over 260 defense plants and the opening of its subway system (six miles in length, at that time). Half a million war workers arrived to toil in her new factories while it is said that each city block in Chicago dispatched, on average, at least seven of her sons and daughters for the armed services.
Nerves are taught with war tension. Hard work adds to the strain and increases the tempo. People walk faster in the streets. Stampedes for surface cars, and the new subway are more chaotic than ever… Five thousand block flagpoles have been erected by block committees of the Office of Civilian Defense. Listed in some manner near each are the names of all the GIs from the block. Some of the installations are elaborate and have bulletin boards that are kept up to date with personal news from camps and war theaters.
The Japanese now are permitted fuel for their homes for only two months of the year and the prices are so high that many homes are without heat the year around.
This article was written by Max Hill, who was serving as the Tokyo bureau chief for the Associated Press at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack. The column consists of his observations as to how the Japanese home front operated during his seven month incarceration.
Click here to read about the Japanese home front during the early period of the Sino-Japanese War.
Click here to read about the W.W. II German home front.
John Thompson of The Chicago Tribune saw more of the World War II than most other correspondents. He had witnessed to the Battle of the Bulge, the liberation of Paris and the horrors of the Buchenwald death camp. Throughout his life, Thompson held the distinction of being the last surviving war correspondent to land on Omaha Beach during the D-Day landings; by war’s end he had been awarded the Purple Heart, nine battle stars and was the first correspondent to receive the Medal of Freedom. This column was written in 1943 and pertains to some of his experiences in North Africa and Sicily.
