World War II 1939-1945-The Home Front
by Donald A. McCall/Rhode Island
“On December 7, 1941 my mother, father, brother and I were at my uncle’s home in East Freetown, MA on a pre Christmas visit. As our usual Sunday early evening family time we were listening to one of our favorite radio show programs when President Franklin D. Roosevelt interrupted the program to announce that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor and that we were now at war. I had turned 10 years of age in May of that year and the full impact of a war wasn’t fully understood at that time. It wasn’t very long afterward that the whole of America was in union with each other to get involved and take care of the situation.
We were not only at war with Japan but also with Nazi Germany in Europe being allied with England . The response to the call to war was intense; our young men were lining up at the recruiting centers all over the country to enlist into the armed forces. Many that were not quite the legal age to enlist lied about their age just to get enlisted. America was in a very high defense mode.
As school children we were encouraged to purchase 10 cent stamps at our schools which were then placed into a booklet that once filled to $18.70, would purchase a “Victory Bond” in your name which would gain interest to a value of $25.00 at maturity. (I still have a partially filled book from that era.) This allowed even the children become involved with the war effort by helping with the funding for our military through these bonds.
In the later years of the war there was concern for the possibility of an air raid attack on our country, so a Civilian Defense system was created. There were several lookout posts established in Rhode Island where volunteers would stand watch in shifts around the clock reporting all sightings of aircraft and its description. A picture chart was available at the posts to assist in recognizing the type of aircraft sighted.
Once sighted a call was placed by phone to a central location. Along with this effort there were several air raid sirens in many locations on top of a telephone pole to be used as an alert in the event of an air raid. One of these sirens was located on a pole at the corner of Trimtown Rd. and Rockland Rd. (Finding a way to turn it on was a typical Halloween prank by us kids.) In order to reduce location identification at night by aircraft we were encouraged to have blackout curtains on our home windows, and have the top halves of auto headlights painted out with black paint to prevent the light from shining upwards.
To help with clothing, printed patterns were made on bags of laying mash for chickens, and other farm grains. When emptied and washed the bags were used to create shirts and blouses for wear. My cousin’s husband worked at a chicken farm and she made good use of the bag materials that he brought home. Back then the bags were made of good cotton material.
The news of the progress of the war was slow in reaching the people. Unlike today with our instant coverage, we had to wait days or weeks to get news of what happening on the war fronts. News reels were shown at the movie theaters once a week. Newspapers provided the most recent news in print.
I still remember one of the leading war correspondences who wrote excellent articles. He was Ernie Pyle, Number 30 who was killed in the line of duty. (I still have newspaper clippings of him in my collection.) I was much impressed with his coverage because his articles related to many of the troops individually. To sum it up, the one thing that helped us all is that we were truly united behind what had to be done to save our America against the threat.”
