On the Home Front

 When the U.S. entered World War II, a massive effort to provide soldiers and war materiel began. That effort would involve many who would never serve in the armed forces.  President Franklin Roosevelt encouraged the American public:  “There is one front and one battle where everyone in the United States . . . is in action. That front is right here at home in our daily lives and in our daily tasks.” 

As the war transformed the American home front, two Indiana girls experienced the changes. Lois Acton and Joan Wampler were both eleven years old when the war began and they remember how even children’s lives were affected.

It took a lot of food, fuel, and supplies to feed, arm and transport the U.S. Army. In 1942 the government established a ration system to provide supplies for both its soldiers and citizens. Coffee, cooking oil, cheese, butter, meat, sugar, and canned goods were rationed.  Americans were issued ration books that contained stamps needed to purchase these items. A person could not buy a rationed item without providing the grocer with the appropriate stamp. Both Lois and Joan remembered using ration stamps.

Other items such as gasoline, rubber, and metal were also restricted.  Scrap drives were organized to gather metal and rubber for the war effort. Clothing and shoes were also rationed. Joan remembered family members pooling their ration stamps so her family could buy school clothes for the children.

Lois remembers gathering milkweed pods for the war effort. Kapok, a cotton-like fluff from the kapok tree, had been used to fill life jackets for airmen and sailors. But when Japan captured Java, the main source for kapok disappeared and milkweed floss became the best substitute.  Rural children took gunnysacks and walked through fields gathering the pods.   A wartime brochure urged: “School children of America! Help save your fathers’, brothers’, and neighbors’ lives by collecting milkweed pods.”  This effort gathered about 2 million pounds of milkweed floss for the armed services in one year.

While their parents were buying War Bonds, children could save their coins to buy war bond stamps for as little as 10 cents. Lois remembers glueing stamps  into booklets that could be turned in for a war bond.

For four years World War II required continual sacrifices, both large and small, from those on the home front.

Connection: Lois Acton Horlacher is my mother. Joan Wampler Sims Blackwell was my mother-in-law.

A Soldier in Peru

The Second World War was truly a world war. The hostilities forced nations across the globe to take sides.

With the powerhouse U.S. on their back door most Central and South American countries cut ties or declared war with Germany. During the war shipments to Europe were cut back and this made Latin American countries dependent on the United States for trade. At the same time many Asian sources for commodities such as rubber, tin and manganese  were no longer available to the Allies. The U.S. looked to South American nations for the raw materials to make products needed for the war effort.

Peru took on a special importance. It’s proximity to the Panama Canal and its raw materials made it a valuable ally in the area. The U.S. built an airbase at Talara.

A soldier stationed in Peru was Truman Sims. He was drafted shortly after he turned 18. Stationed first at Buckley Field, Colorado, he was sent to Panama aboard the U.S.S. Suwanee. He worked as a finance clerk and remained in this theater until 1947.

This WWII film by the U.S. Office of Inter-American Affairs describes the importance of South America to the war effort.

Connection: Truman Sims was my father-in-law.

World War II – Amchitka

When you picture the Pacific Theater in World War II you probably think of steaming jungles, blue ocean and island beaches. But the war in the Pacific also included places with names like Kiska, Attu, Amchitka.  It included snow, fog and rocky islands.

World War II began in Alaska nearly 6 months after Pearl Harbor, when on June 3, 1942 a small Japanese force occupied the islands of Attu and Kiska in the Aleutian Islands. A few days later they bombed American facilities at Dutch Harbor.  The Japanese hoped to defend the northern flank of their empire. Americans responded by setting up an air base on Adak and preparing to retake Attu and Kiska. The U.S. feared that the Japanese could use these islands to launch Japanese attacks against the West Coast.

Military action in the Aleutian Islands involved three combatants – Japanese, the Allies, and the weather. Every description of battle seems to include “but then the fog” or ‘however, the foul weather . . .”  This was certainly true on Attu where almost half of American casualties were from the cold weather. In May 1943 after brutal fighting the U.S. reclaimed Attu. Then American forces began rebuilding for the next assault – Kiska.

One soldier arriving at this time was Carl Horlacher.  He had been drafted from Boone County, Indiana, in December, one of the first ‘under 21’ draftees. He described his first experience in the Army:  ”January 15 we went to Fort Ben [Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana], given shots, given instructions telling us “You’re in the Army now” and how to behave.  We were there about eight days, and then shipped out to California. It was about a five day trip. We were on an old fashioned railroad car, slept in our seats. It was an extra train, which meant if we met a regular train, we had to get off on a siding and wait. We waited on a siding in Nevada for four hours when it was 80 degrees or better with no air conditioning or even lights. The generator ran off the train axle so if the train wasn’t running we sat in the dark.”

He had been drafted in Indiana, took basic  at Camp McQuaide in California, then was sent to Fort Monroe,Virginia, for radar schooling. Completing his training, he travelled back across the country to Seattle and was sent to Alaska on a liberty ship, The Sacajawea.

Carl served in the 250th Coastal Artillery as a radar operator.

Amchitka is a long way from everything, it’s one of the most southern and western of the Aleutian Islands. It was a new experience for a Hoosier boy like Carl.  “Amchitka is 60 miles long, shaped like an L, one side is all mountains.  We saw a few blue foxes though they looked black. They were the only life when we arrived on the island, not even bugs, though as we started bringing in material, bugs came in, too.  There were lots of sea lions, you would see 50-60 at a time, always off the coast, very seldom up on land. You could see them floating on their backs using a rock to break open a shell to eat the inside. The only vegetation was a grass that lives off of sea water. It had grown up and died over the winter over and over for thousands of years and made a thick thatch.  If five guys walked after each other in line, the fifth guy would be knee-deep into it.  And we needed to build an airstrip on the island. There was an inlet that we dammed up, drained and carried rocks out of it.  We laid a steel matting so the  P40s and P39s could come in and bomb the Japanese on Kiska. The Japanese bombed Amchitka, trying to destroy our airstrip, but we managed to get it built. If we had been two months later, it would have been dark twenty hours a day. Then we started building a metal building and a tower for radar and two buildings for generators. We were living in tents at this time.

“There was a high wind all the time.  A 25 mph wind was considered a calm day.  If the sun came out and shown on the Bering Sea for five minutes, the whole island would be fogged in.  It was so foggy up there, the Japanese couldn’t bomb most of the time.  If a clear strip of weather came through, they’d come over, but the fog would be coming into Kiska so they’d be told to come home.  The knock-out blow for them was when our P40s and P38s loaded all the gas they could hold and went up high.  They waited til the fog cleared and they really bombed the Kiska airstrip , then bombed their supply depots. 

“But we were going to have to go into Kiska to drive the Japanese out.,  In August 1943 we had 20,000 troops ready to land with 40,000 in reserve. When we landed we were surprised at receiving no resistance, but sometimes the Japanese didn’t fight on the coast and would engage you as you came further inland.  But they weren’t there and there was no war material of any value there.  No one knows how or when they got out.  A friend was in the Navy and he said they shelled Kiska for three weeks and never saw the island because of the fog.  We had shelled an empty island.

“We were there until the end of the war. After Midway, the Army knew the Japanese couldn’t attack the Aleutians. They turned some of the airplane hangers into gymnasiums. We didn’t really feel we had a mission anyway, though some planes still went out on bombing missions.  We didn’t have any USO shows. There was a movie theater over by headquarters, about four miles from us. Sometimes a truckload of us could go. 

“The post had a paper called the Duration. That’s how we heard about the end of the war.  The war ended on August 15, 1945 and they started moving troops out in December.  We left the day after Christmas.  The big guns on the island we just left. They were put in Cosmoline – a real heavy grease and took them to a cliff and dynamited the cliff down on top of them.  The guns were cast with bronze in the barrels, the rest were made of steel. 

“I was in Alaska for two years and six months. We came back on a liberty ship.  The outfit that left right before us left on a carrier and made it home in three days. It took us eight days because there was a storm in the northern Pacific and Arctic Ocean. A liberty ship can’t let a wave come up underneath them or they’ll break in two, so they have to back and forth in the water and made only 2 knots an hour for two or three days.  I didn’t get seasick but an awful lot of them did.  We went back to Seattle and then by train back home.”

Connection: Carl Horlacher was my father.