As the American occupation forces began to pour in and spread throughout the cities and countryside of Japan, both occupied and occupier slowly get to learn of the other. The cordial attitude of the Japanese leads General MacArthur to conclude that the military presence need not be as large as he had once believed:
Curious and awed, increasingly friendly Japanese flocked to watch what they called the ‘race of giants’ at work.
By the time the war ended the WACs were 100,000 strong –
they had earned 314 medals and commendations, including 23 Legion of Merit awards and fourteen Purple Hearts. Throughout the war, seventeen thousand WACs had served overseas but by Christmas of 1945 their global strength had been cut in half.
When it came across the wire that Fall of 1942 saw the U.S. Navy enlistments increase by 150%, the editors of PM were not slow to dispatch a team down to the induction center to check it out (at 67 Broad St., NYC).
Many, many African-Americans answered the call as well, but with understandable reservations…
More about W.W. II induction can be read here
Unearthed by a team of underpaid urban anthropologists digging all hours in the skankiest and most vile of magazine repositories was this single page of feminine poesy representative of an obscure, forgotten genre of Twentieth Century prosody that celebrated a brash cast of woman that was once known as a Flapper.
Alas, the name of the poet has been lost to time.
Here is an article from the man who would shortly be America’s premiere spy-master: William Wild Bill Donovan. In this report he examined the Trojan horse tactics of the German Foreign Organization:
Children of Germans naturalized half a century ago are still counted German by Berlin and every effort is made to convince them of the fact… It is safe to say that a very fair proportion of the non-refugee Germans who have become American since Hitler came to power did so with the secret intention of turning free and democratic America into ‘their‘ – that is, Hitler’s – America.
The eight Nazi agents, who landed from U-boats on the shores of of Long Island and Florida, planning to cripple American war production, are in jail here [Washington, D.C.] under heavy guard, awaiting military trial on four charges that carry the death penalty.
Here is an interview with Izzy Einstein (Isidor Einstein, 1880 – 1938): Prohibition agent and master of disguise:
A day with Izzy would make a chameleon blush for lack of variation…
He prepared himself to move in high, low and medium circles – on the excellent theory that the taste for liquor and the desire to sell it are no respecters of persons – and in all those circles he has since been whirling with rapidity and a quick-change adeptness.
In this article, a 1920s critic forthrightly states that the primitive state of movie cameras renders them unfit as capable tools with which art can be created. He expands on his remarks by pointing out that 1920s film technology generally will never be able to render thought-provoking plots or articulate narratives until some necessary advancements are made in the field.
Another anti-silent film article can be read here…
-an additional article from the 1920s defaming silent film can be read here…
In May 1942 Lieutenant General Joseph Warren Stilwell (1883 – 1946) made that frank statement after leading a tired, battered band of 103 officers, men and nurses on a 20-day march into India, refugees from the Allied rout in Burma… Stilwell’s return to Burma is the result of two years of careful preparation in which two major projects were developed. One was a Chinese-American training center in India…The other was the Ledo Road, a supply route from India by which Allied troops moving into Northern Burma could be equipped and provisioned.
In the war society of the South, religion played a leading roll… The Methodist and Presbyterian churches cut themselves away from their Northern brethren and cast their fortunes with the Southern cause… The churches of the South entered so whole heatedly into the cause of the war that they were invariably closed by the Union commanders. Throughout the war many revivals, special prayer meetings, and fasts were held for the success of Southern arms… The army was swept by religious fervor. All regiments departing for the front were consecrated. Many clergymen joined the army as chaplains… .
Click here to read about the chaplains in the Confederate Army.
