Articles from 1942
This article tells of the origin and fast times of the zoot suit. Although the garment was popularized by Mexican-Americans in Los Angeles, it had it’s origins in Harlem, New York, where it was known as the root suit.
A single page from the early war period tells the tale of Natalie Donaldson
Click here to read about the African-American efforts during the First World War.
When this article went to press the Pear Harbor attack was already over a year old – and like the articles that came out in ’41, these two pages capture much of the outrage that was the general feeling among so many of the American people. The article serves to give an account as to how the ships that were damaged that morning have largely recovered and were once again at sea (excluding the Arizona).
Five months after the Pearl Harbor attack the United States Navy defeated the Imperial Japanese Navy in the Coral Sea, click here to read about it…
In this article, photographer Frederick L. Hamilton recalled his two years in Japan prior to the Pearl Harbor attack; he let’s lose with all he learned concerning how the Japanese perceived the Americans:
They think we are soft, wasteful, irreverent and stupid…Most serious of all to the Japanese is their belief that we have no spiritual quality, no sense of honor.
Canadian war correspondent M.H. Halton reported from the Egyptian desert concerning one of modern war’s most dramatic spectacles – [a] battle of tanks in the dark.
– from Amazon: KEY WORDS: Lt General Sir Leslie Moreshead in North Africa 1941,British north african commander Lt General Sir
Major General Lewis E. Brereton (1890 – 1967) is the new commander of the U.S. forces in the Middle East.
Eight months into America’s entry into the war came this article from PM reporting the War Manpower Commission and their data as to how many American women up to that point had stepped up to contribute their labor to the war effort (over 1,500,000):
Women have been found to excel men in jobs requiring repetitive skill, finger dexterity and accuracy. They’re the equals of men in a number of other jobs. A U.S. Employment Service has indicated women can do 80 percent of the jobs now done by men.
This profile of director Frank Capra was written five years before he directed It’s a Wonderful Life and gives a tidy account as to the course of his career up until 1942, when he was inducted as a major in the U.S. Army Signal Corps.
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
