1943 – Page 2 – Old Magazine Articles

Life on a B-17 Base in England
(Collier’s Magazine, 1943)

This is an amazing article that recalls the open-all-night cities that were the B-17 bases in Britain during World War Two. Such were the lives of the ground crews, who worked all night and then found sleep impossible – preferring to stay-up and stare at the skies in anticipation for their returning bombers.

“A crew chief stumbles past you on his way to the hangar. He’s been going seventy-two hours without taking his shoes off; his face is unshaven, and his eyes look like holes burned in a blanket.”

Soldiers Speak-Out About the Home Front
(Collier’s Magazine, 1943)

“There is no other country at war with such an enormous gulf in sacrifice between fighting men and civilians. There is no other country where the men at the front have given up everything, while the people at home have given up practically nothing. And the soldiers know it…‘A few bombs would do this country a lot of good.’ I heard that in San Francisco from a curly-headed sailor who had been sunk in the Pacific, and I heard it again in Washington from a corporal who had left his leg on Hill 609. Both added, rather anxiously, that, of course, they wouldn’t want anyone to get hurt.”

Miracle at 20,000 Feet
(Collier’s Magazine, 1943)

Flying home after bombing Tunis, the B-17 All-American with a full crew of ten onboard was sliced open at the rear by a nazi fighter plane that nearly severed her tail. How the craft stayed up in the air was anybody’s guess.

The Success of the Ploesti Raid
(Collier’s Magazine, 1943)

Here is an article from 1943, the year everything changed for the Axis. The article explains all that was involved with the stout-hearted raid on the Ploesti oil fields in Rumania. 177 American bombers were sent to do the job.

“From Ploesti, the Nazis extracted oil and oil products which maintained the entire German and Italian fleets, and third of the whole German air force in Russia. Around the Ploesti installations, the Germans had raised a forest of antiaircraft guns of large and small calibers. They had built blast walls around plants’ vital parts and spotted airdromes from which fighters could rise to intercept our bombers.”

The Success of the Ploesti Raid
(Collier’s Magazine, 1943)

Child Labor During W.W. II
(Collier’s Magazine, 1943)

“Throughout the land, child labor is making a comeback as already inadequate laws buckle under pressure of fraudulent appeals to patriotism. Here is what greed and indifference are doing to America’s greatest asset: its children:”

“[The Devious] prefer children – the child worker is cheaper, more agile and willing, has less bargaining power. So the cry goes out for more and more children, ‘to help win the war!'”

“Just how it helps win the war for an Alabama girl of 11 to work in the fields till she collapses and is taken to a hospital with heart trouble has not been made clear.”

Child Labor During W.W. II
(Collier’s Magazine, 1943)

“[The Devious] prefer children – the child worker is cheaper, more agile and willing, has less bargaining power. So the cry goes out for more and more children, ‘to help win the war!'”

“Just how it helps win the war for an Alabama girl of 11 to work in the fields till she collapses and is taken to a hospital with heart trouble has not been made clear.”

Child Labor During W.W. II
(Collier’s Magazine, 1943)

“[The Devious] prefer children – the child worker is cheaper, more agile and willing, has less bargaining power. So the cry goes out for more and more children, ‘to help win the war!'”

“Just how it helps win the war for an Alabama girl of 11 to work in the fields till she collapses and is taken to a hospital with heart trouble has not been made clear.”

Child Labor During W.W. II
(Collier’s Magazine, 1943)

“[The Devious] prefer children – the child worker is cheaper, more agile and willing, has less bargaining power. So the cry goes out for more and more children, ‘to help win the war!'”

“Just how it helps win the war for an Alabama girl of 11 to work in the fields till she collapses and is taken to a hospital with heart trouble has not been made clear.”

He was One of a Kind
(Collier’s Magazine, 1943)

Here is an article by George Creel (1876 – 1953) regarding the life and career of General George Marshall (1880 – 1959) and all the unique elements within him that made him an ideal Chief of Staff for his time:

“He can not only talk with civilians in their own language, but he can also see things from the civilian point of view. Even during the years when Congress denied adequate appropriations for the Army, no one ever heard him snarl at rotten politicians. He saw the unwillingness to prepare for war as a democracy’s hatred of war, and even while regretting it, he understood.”

Click here to read about the Marshall Plan.

”With Eisenhower in Sicily”
(Collier’s Magazine, 1943)

“On the first day of operations, I heard him say, ‘By golly, we’ve done it again! By golly, I wouldn’t have believed it1’ Meaning the surprise landings really turned out to be a surprise. And [turning to the press corps] he added, ‘This is the period when you fellows want to know everything, but military folks are scared to death just now. Darn it, I can’t tell you anything! After all, I’m the man responsible.”

Hollywood Feels the Actor Shortages
(Collier’s Magazine, 1943)

“What Hollywood is saying secretly and can’t say publicly is: The Armed Forces are taking away all our actors, all our technical men. Things are serious now; in six months they will be desperate. But if anybody in Hollywood got up and said that unless a great change in public policy is made, the movies might be out of business in six months…”

“[Movie stars have] a duty and Hollywood has a duty and they should be made to stick to it.”

Amphibian Engineers
(Collier’s Magazine, 1943)

“The motto of the Engineer Amphibian Command is “Put’em Across”, and its principle is aptly put by Brigadier General Daniel Noce (1894−1976) , chief of the U.S. Army’s amphibious operations in the European theater, who built this force from scratch. ‘Water between us and the enemy is an avenue, not an obstacle’ he says.”

Fair Treatment
(Collier’s Magazine, 1943)

To us, the most interesting part of this 1943 editorial is in the opening sentence, where an accounting is given as to the number of prisoners acquired after a full year and a half of war. The U.S. military had amassed 22,000 Germans, 14,000 Italians – yet only 62 (sixty-two) Japanese prisoners of war! This is famously due to the instructions given to the Emperor’s combatants to not be taken prisoner – but we certainly expected there to be more than that. The writer goes on speaking in favor of just treatment for Axis prisoners – but please don’t pamper our Nisei in Arizona.

Race Riots
(Newsweek Magazine, 1943)

“It is a singular fact that [the] supposedly civilized Americans in these times deny the Negroes the opportunity to engage in respectable jobs, the right of access to the restaurants, theaters, or the same train accommodations as themselves and periodically will run amuck to lynch Negroes individually or to slaughter them wholesale – old men, women, and children alike in race wars like the present one.”

What Radio Tokyo was referring to were the multiple race riots that broke out in Detroit and seven other municipalities during the Summer of 1943.

The Reporter was a WAAC
(Newsweek Magazine, 1943)

Newsweek reporter Vera Clay was not slow in accepting the U.S. Army’s invitation to don the khaki uniform and learn what goes into the training of a WAAC. In the company of fourteen other women reporters, she took the train to Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, and for the next six days, the group began to learn about all things WAAC.

The Japanese Subversives
(Coronet Magazine, 1943)

These are the observations of an American woman in fascist Japan; the writer was Joy Homer. In this article she tells of her travels to Tokyo in 1940 where she was asked to secretly address those small groups that silently wished for a republican form of government while silently opposing their country’s imperial conquest of China.