Articles from 1945
In light of the fact that all Army personnel would be issued $300 with their honorable discharge papers, the fashion editor for Esquire Magazine, Henry Jackson, decided to moonlight at Collier’s in order to provide some solid fashion-tips on how best to spend that hard-earned cash.
This Yank Magazine article, written just after the Channel Islands liberation, tells some of the stories of the Nazi occupation of Jersey and Guernsey Islands.
Before the war the English Channel Islands – long known as a vacation spot for the wealthy – were wonderful places to ‘get away from it all.’
Then the Germans came to the islands after Dunkirk, and for five years 100,000 subjects of his majesty the King were governed by 30,000 Nazi officers and their men.
From time to time, it was the practice of the German military to separate American Jewish soldiers from their fellows and transfer them to concentration camps. The corpse of one of these men was found at the Nazi concentration camp in Ohrdruf, Germany.
Click here to read about the malnourishment and starvation of Allied prisoners of war…
Newton Wilson, a modest, quiet, somewhat academic man who never leaps before he looks through, in and around a situation, became the 20th Century innovator of precise recipes; a sort of Fanny Farmer of flying.
Click here to read about the earliest airline stewardesses…
A 1945 Yank Magazine article concerning American teen culture on the W.W. II home front in which the journalist/anthropologist paid particular attention to the teen-age slang of the day.
Some of today’s teenagers —pleasantly not many — talk the strange new language of sling swing. In this bright lexicon of the good citizens of tomorrow, a girl with sex appeal is an able Grable or a ready Hedy. A pretty girl is whistle bait. A boy whose mug and muscles appeal to the girls is a mellow man, a hunk of heart break or a glad lad.
To read about one of the fashion legacies of W.W. II, click here…
Click here to learn how the Beatniks spoke.
Click here if you would like to read a glossary of WAC slang terms.
•Suggested Reading• Flappers 2 Rappers: American Youth Slang
Admiral Pete Mitscher was one of the primary architects of American naval aviation during the 20th Century.In this column, one of the officers who served under him during the admiral’s command of carrier Task Force 58 recalls why he came to admire the man as deeply as he did.
One of Admiral Pete Mitscher’s officers recalls the man with tremendous admiration:
They used to think a carrier was a hit-and-run fighter, but Pete changed that. He said, ‘Hit’em and stay. Hit’em again tomorrow. And he did.’
Patching together the reports of four different war correspondents, the editors at Collier’s were able to create a genuine page-turner narrating the American naval victory that took place off the coast of the Philippines during the Fall of 1944.
Secretary of the Navy Forrestal summed up the results as ‘One of the great naval victories of the war that will go down, along with Midway and Guadalcanal sea battles as one of the great, shattering blows struck against Japanese sea power. The Japanese fleet was indeed beaten, routed and broken.’
Although his membership in the Communist Party would not be known until he had already been out of the House of Representatives for six years, Hugh De Lacy (1910 – 1986) was easily recognized by his colleagues as quite the radical…
No doubt De Lacy’s favorite presidential candidate was the American socialist Norman Thomas – and you can read about him here…
This article was penned by Yank correspondent Evans Wylie; it is an account of Ernie Pyle’s (1900 – 1945) surprise appearance during the Okinawa campaign and the violent death that Pyle had long anticipated for himself. His end came while he was being driven along a road in the company of Marines in a sector that was believed to have been safe.
Of all the many American war correspondents writing during World War II, Pyle was, without a doubt, the most well loved; he was adored by readers on the home front as well as the GIs in the field. Like many men, Pyle struggled in his career as a younger man; yet when the war broke out he very quickly found his voice – and his readership soon followed.
Two months after the death of Ernie Pyle, United Artists released a movie about him; Click here to read about it…
This article is accompanied by nineteen pictures illustrating the various ways tin cans are put to use by the American military during W.W.II, and it was printed to show the necessity of full civilian participation along the home front. In order to guarantee that this message would get out to everyone, magazine editors would have been provided with these photographs and an assortment of facts by a government agency called the Office of War Information.
