1942 – Page 8 – Old Magazine Articles

Should Movie Stars Be Expected to Fight, As Well?
(Photoplay Magazine, 1942)

We were very surprised to read in the attached editorial that the whole idea of draft deferments for actors and other assorted Hollywood flunkies was not a scheme cooked-up by their respective agents and yes-men, but a plan that sprung forth from the fertile mind of the executive officer in charge of the Selective Service System: Brigadier General Lewis Blaine Hershey (1893 – 1977) in Washington.

Always one to ask the difficult questions, Ernest V. Heyn (1905 – 1995) executive editor of Photoplay posed the query Should Stars Fight? and in this column he began to weigh the pros-and-cons of the need for propaganda and an uninterrupted flow of movies for the home front, and the appearance of creating a new entitled class of pretty boys.

Twenty years earlier a Hollywood actor would get in some hot water for also suggesting that talented men be excused from the W.W. I draft…

All-In for the Eastern Front
(PM Tabloid, 1942)

In a message to the German Red Cross, Hitler referred to Russia as ‘an enemy whose victory would mean the end of everything’

When Hitler says ‘the end of everything‘ he means the end of Nazism.

Aid From The Farm Service Administration
(Pic Magazine, 1942)

It matters not that we’re fighting a war on, under and over all the seas and on half the continents of the earth. Uncle Sam is determined that there shall be be no new army of ‘forgotten men’ to make a mockery of all the things for which we are now fighting…The Farm Security Administration [has been] detailed to look out for migratory defense workers – the kind who can’t find a place to live in overcrowded war-boom towns

Click here to read about the effects that the Great Depression had on the clothes we wore…

More Boys Are Born During War
(Yank & Pic Magazines, 1945)

The fact that more boy babies are born during and immediately after major wars is a phenomenon that was discovered by the underpaid statisticians employed by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in 1942. The articles that are attached are but two of what was probably four hundred articles that appeared on the topic that year. The writers and thinkers of the digital age continue studying this actuality – among them is the gang over at Psychology Today who wrote:

Scientists have known for a long time that more boys than usual are born during and after major wars. The phenomenon was first noticed in 1954 with regard to white children born during World War II in the United States. It has since been replicated for most of the belligerent nations in both World Wars. The phenomenon has been dubbed the ‘returning soldier effect.’ There is no doubt that the phenomenon is real, but nobody has been able to explain it. Why are soldiers who return from wars more likely to father sons than other men?

Andrew Higgins: He Made D-Day Possible
(Click Magazine, 1942)

During an informal conversation with his biographer, Stephen Ambrose, Dwight Eisenhower once remarked that it was Andrew Higgins (1886 – 1952) who had won the war for us. Knowing that such words do not flow from the lips of generals easily, Eisenhower went on to explain to Ambrose that if it were not for the creation of Higgin’s landing crafts, the architects of the Allied victory would have had to seize the existing, and well-fortified, harbors of Europe in order to unload their invasion forces – and who knows how the island-hopping war in the Pacific would been fought?

Attached is a five page photo-essay from the Fall of 1942 about the man and his early contributions.

The First Black Fighter Pilots
(The American Magazine, 1942)

This article partially explains the excitement of being a Tuskegee Airman and flying the Army’s most advanced fighters and partially explains what it was like to be a black man in a segregated America:

I’m flying for every one of the 12,000,000 Negroes in the United States. I want to prove that we can take a tough job and handle it just as well as a white man.

The Leader of Free France
(The American Magazine, 1942)

Almost literally,
he has built Free France from magnificent words. The miracle began on June 18, 1940, when he stepped before a London microphone with defiant, solemn appeal, beginning, ‘I, Charles de Gaulle, General of France’ – and ending superbly, ‘Soldiers of France, wherever you may be, arise!’.

The truth is that, to followers of de Gaulle, he is not a human being at all; he is a symbol, like the flag.

Anti-Lynching Legislation Shelved
(PM Tabloid, 1942)

Whether it was due to the urgency of the war or whether it was simply business as usual on Capitol hill, who knows – but ever since he came to Washington in 1929 Representative Joseph Gavagan (D., NYC: 1892 – 1968) tried numerous times to get his anti-lynching legislation through Congress. In April of 1937 he succeeded in getting one of his anti-lynching bills passed (277 to 118) – but the Southern Democrats saw to it that he wouldn’t get an encore performance in ’42; this was his last attempt, he retired from the House that same year.

Scorched Earth – the Film
(PM Tabloid, 1942 )

Directed by Ben Mindenburg, Scorched Earth was released in April of 1942 in order to show the beastliness of the Japanese military in China.

Women Working for the War
(The American Magazine, 1942)

Here is an account by one reporter of his visit to an American aircraft factory early in the war. His article concerns the novelty of female laborers:

We climbed to a catwalk in the rafters and looked down on one of the most fascinating factories on earth. It was gay as a flower garden. Women in bright blouses and slacks were everywhere, doing everything. Blondes and brunettes and redheads and – well , middle-aged ones. Mostly pretty. And every one eagerly intent upon her job.

Women At The Brooklyn Navy Yard
(PM Tabloid, 1942)

The Navy Yard in Brooklyn (NY) got along with men mechanics for 141 years, up to now – but this is a tough war. Women are now being hired to help build and repair warships and their accessories.

An American POW On Radio Tokyo
(American Magazine, 1942)

When the bright boys at Radio Tokyo decided to allow one of their half-starved American prisoners to flatter them on air, they couldn’t imagine that he would take the opportunity to broadcast vital information needed by the U.S. Navy, but that’s just what he did.

Click here to read an article about the American POW experience during the Korean War.

‘Healthy Eroticism” in the Third Reich
(Coronet Magazine, 1942)

The fruits of the Third Reich Population Policy are shocking indeed. Fifteen and 16-year-old girls are having babies with the blessings of their Hitler Youth leaders. Unwed mothers with illegitimate children have the right to evict married but childless couples from apartment houses…laws are passed entitling unmarried mothers to call themselves ‘Mrs.’ instead of ‘Miss’, and providing state subsides for illegitimate children and crushing taxes for childless adults.

Finding Japanese Spies
(The American Magazine, 1942)

Here is an interesting article by an American counter-espionage agent who tells several stories about the various Japanese spies he had encountered during the early months of the war. He wrote of his his frustrations with the civil liberty laws that were in place to protect both citizen and alien alike.

It was Mexican president Manuel Avila Camacho who chased the spies out of his nation – click here to read about it…

‘Why Hitler Thinks He’ll Win”
(The American Magazine, 1942)

This is a great article, penned by an American correspondent who had actually sat face-to-face with Hitler on numerous occasions. He tells the reader many of his observations concerning the man’s personality, expressions and what he has observed regarding the German people:

I have presented [in this article] the essential psychological and material factors in Hitler’s conviction that he will still win the war. There were signs even while I was still in Germany that the German people have given up the dream of a ‘total victory’ to follow their total war.

More about Adolf Hitler can be read here…

Flight Officer Lawrence Olivier
(Photoplay Magazine, 1942)

When the actor Lawrence Olivier (1907 – 1989) first heard that a state of war existed between Britain and Germany, he was enjoying the breezes off the shore of Southern California in a sailboat skippered by Hollywood’s heir expectant, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., and it was to Fairbanks that the attached letter was addressed. When this letter was written, Olivier was posted to the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm where he gained the understanding that aeronautics was an acquired taste, and one that he simply could not cultivate. In his book International Stars at War, author James Wise noted that Flight Officer Olivier would soon be judged incompetent by the Royal Navy and released for other duties more in line with his abilities (like writing this highly self-conscious letter to his Hollywood friend).

Fairbanks, on the other hand, played an important roll in the U.S. Navy and by the war’s end was sporting a chest-full of ribbons.

Reporter on Bataan
(Newsweek Magazine, 1942)

War reporter Nat Floyd (news service unknown) briefly explains how he was able to get out of Bataan just in the nick of time and avoid years of starvation at the hands of the Japanese Army.

Private Yori Wada, United States Army
(Script Magazine, 1942)

The attached article was written by a twenty-five year-old Japanese-American Army private named Yori Wada (1917 – 1997). Wada had joined the army some months prior to the Pearl Harbor attack and with all the good fellowship and optimism typical of youth, he explained with some enthusiasm, about how much he enjoyed army life and all the friends he had made within his unit. While the article makes no reference to the unfortunate lot of his family back home, Wada wrote that his future in the army as of April, 1942 was unclear; all he wanted was a fair shot to defend his country, and he didn’t think that he’d get it.