Articles from The American Magazine
Here are the sleeve insignia by which you can identify the various groups of U.S. Civilian Defense Workers – men and women, boys and girls, who volunteer for home duty to protect you in war [emergencies]
This article consists of assorted stories that illustrate the length some American men would go in order to stay out of the military during the Second World War. The article also tells of draft evasion during the First World War.
Click here to read a 1945 article about your average Massachusetts draft board.
This article was written by Max Hill, who was serving as the Tokyo bureau chief for the Associated Press at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack. The column consists of his observations as to how the Japanese home front operated during his seven month incarceration.
Click here to read about the Japanese home front during the early period of the Sino-Japanese War.
Click here to read about the W.W. II German home front.
In one of his other verses poet Ogden Nash (1902 – 1971) wrote that women are not female men. In the attached poem he expanded on that thought to a greater degree as he observed women and their approach to fashion.
Oh how we all laughed when we used to read of these old Cold Warriors who actually believed that Communists were active in our schools in the 1990s! Gosh, it was funny! But it wasn’t funny when we discovered how close an actual Marxist came to winning the presidential nominations of the Democratic Party in both 2016 and 2020. It seems like the long march through the institutions has finally paid off for the Leftists. The attached article was written by J. Edgar Hoover and it was penned in order that Americans would know that this day would come if we were not vigilant.
In this article, photographer Frederick L. Hamilton recalled his two years in Japan prior to the Pearl Harbor attack; he let’s lose with all he learned concerning how the Japanese perceived the Americans:
They think we are soft, wasteful, irreverent and stupid…Most serious of all to the Japanese is their belief that we have no spiritual quality, no sense of honor.
At the peak of his fame, F. Scott Fitzgerald penned this opinion piece for a popular U.S. magazine:
For one thing, I do not like old people – They are always talking about their experience, and very few of them have any! – But it is the old folks that run the world; so they try to hide the fact that only young people are attractive or important.
When mobilization began, the government, as usual, undertook to provide spiritual ministry for the men. But many veteran clergymen doubted whether religion would catch on… But religion did catch on – and with such vigor that the chaplaincy services have been swamped by it. Army and Navy chapels are jam-packed. Demands for special services, for Bible study and for religious instruction, are more than can be met. Many men – Protestant and Catholic – are being baptized or confirmed. Some chaplains report an almost overwhelming interest in religion and church as a career.
Click here to read about the renewed interest in religion that existed on the home front…
Song and Dance man Robert Watson (1888 – 1965) was Hollywood’s-go-to-guy when they needed a fella to tread the boards as the Bohemian Corporal (Adolf Hitler). Throughout the course of his career he played him nine times.
We didn’t become addicts of I Love Lucy deliberately; it was a habit that engulfed our whole family gradually. the captivating thing about Lucy and Ricky is, we think, the fact that they hold a mirror up to every married couple in America. Not a regulation mirror that reflects truth, nor a magic mirror that portrays fantasy. But a Coney Island mirror that distorts, exaggerates and makes vastly amusing every little incident, foible and idiosyncrasy of married life.
Paul Robeson (1898 – 1976) was a multi-talented man and this article lays it all out.
Paul Robeson thinks of himself as conclusive proof that there is no such thing as a backward race. Given a few generations of equal opportunities, he believes, any people – Eskimos, Malayans, Fijians or the Untouchables of India – can produce as talented statesmen, scientists, educators, inventors and artists as the whites.
The Yank is not expert at deception, but he can change his plans rapidly. He is a wizard at handling machinery and he can build airfields, roads and advance bases with uncanny speed.
– so wrote one of the bewildered Japanese Army generals concerning his experiences with the American military in the Pacific.
Who was it who deprived men of their suit vests and trouser cuffs? Who banned silk stockings? Who outlawed the flow in flowing skirts? Why, it was the War Production Board of course – click the title link if you want a name and a face…
The attached 1942 article tells the remarkable story of Prime Minister John Curtin (1885 – 1945) and his amazing Australians – together they redefined themselves as a wool-producing agrarian nation and began producing the necessary tools of war.
Bromance was in the air when Harry Hopkins (1890 – 1946) went to Moscow to meet Joseph Stalin (1876 – 1953) for their second meeting:
He shook my hand briefly, firmly, courteously. He smiled warmly. There was no waste of word, gesture, nor mannerism. It was like talking to a perfectly coordinated machine, an intelligent machine. Joseph Stalin knew what he wanted, knew what Russia wanted and he assumed that you knew.
Mic-drop.
It seems difficult to imagine, but this opinion writer felt America leaning toward socialism as far back as 1949:
While the people look more and more to Washington to do everything under the sun for them, the Federal Government hasn’t been discouraging them at all. On the contrary, the Administration has been repeatedly asking for more and more powers to use when it may see fit.
He is sympathetic to their feelings, but cautions his readers that Marxism looks alluring on the printed page – but it will simply lead to serfdom in the end
The Moody Bible Institute has not graduated many cartoonists but they did give their sheepskin to Jack Hamm (1916 – 1996), a terrific cartoonist who used his talent to advance the Gospel in Godlier America.
The battle of Saipan spanned the period between June 15 through July 9, 1944. Here is an eyewitness account of the three week battle:
Reveille for the Japanese garrison on Saipan sounded abruptly at five-forty that morning of D-Day minus one, with a salvo from the 14-inch rifles of one of our battleships. Other guns, big and small, joined the opening chorus and from than on we realized why we had stuffed the cotton in our ears. The bass drum jam session was to continue for hours.
