December 7, 1941
- It begins
On that day that would "live in infamy," December
7, 1941, Salem residents-- like most of the Nation--were stunned
and outraged. But one group of Salem-ites--parents and friends
of Willamette University’s football team, coaches and chaperones--were
in considerable anxiety for the safety of their loved ones as
they were dangerously near Pearl Harbor at the time of the Japanese
attack on Honolulu that fateful Sunday.
Just the day before, Willamette’s Bearcats had defeated the
University of Hawaii 21-6, and they were looking forward to
a few days of "R & R" in the Islands before
leaving for their next scheduled game with San Jose State
on December 16th. That plan was scuttled; the next three weeks
were spent in Honolulu patrolling the beaches until the party
returned by sea, December 26th, to their homes.
Other homes in Salem shared the anxiety of those Willamette
folks: Mr. and Mrs. Robert Hinz’s grandson was on one of the
ships sunk at Pearl Harbor. Harold Hendrickson on the "U.S.S.
West Virginia" (most severely damaged of the ships berthed
at the harbor), William D. Croghan, Jr., and Verdi Seder-strom
on the "Oklahoma" (reported sunk during the attack),
Art Boyle on the "Pennsylvania," and Glen Hochststler
on the cruiser "Astoria"--all stationed at Pearl
Harbor that Sunday--gave their families in Salem anxious moments
with fears for their safety. John Sayre and Bob Eaton of Salem,
also at Pearl Harbor with navy units, were feared potential
casualties.
Another target of the early morning raid was Midway Island
where Ben Titus, Jr., served as a radio operator with the
U.S. Army as did Dorn E. Arnold; their Salem families awaited
word of their survival. Wake Island was also hit by Japanese
bombers that morning; Kenneth C. Boley, employed there with
the Army, gave his Salem brother cause for concern. An airman
at Hickam Field near Pearl Harbor, T.A. Raffery, gave the
Raffertys here worries as the airfield was devastated during
the attack. All survived the initial attack though some were
wounded and later returned to duty.
Immediately on the news of Pearl Harbor breaking, Japanese-Americans
be-came targets for retaliation: in Norfolk, Virginia,
all Japanese nationals in the area were rounded up and arrested;
on the West Coast, in Los Angeles harbor and San Francisco
Bay, all Japanese aliens were taken into custody and turned
over to immigration agents. Tacoma, Washington, Army officers
called for the immediate "rounding up of all Japanese
nationals in the Pacific Northwest," but Salem’s officials
reported no such orders had been received here. "The
vast majority of our Japanese in this area have been here
many years and are either citizens or wish they could be."
Even so, a few Salemites took the matter into their own hands
and set out to wreak revenge upon some Japanese farmers in
the Lake Labish area. Their posse of avengers was defused
by a group of local ministers and one Willa-mette University
student and bloodshed was averted.
A total blackout of all West Coast cities was ordered on
December 8th; 40 or 50 air raid wardens volunteered to patrol
Salem (one as young as 15), making sure no lights showed from
city windows to guide Japanese planes to their tar-gets. Boy
Scouts were stationed on the streets to catch cars traveling
with other than their parking lights on.
* * * * * * * *1942
As 1942 began, National mobilization for war became the order
of the day. Auto production ceased so the automotive industry
could gear up to produce war materiel; rubber was rationed,
tires disappeared from the civilian market; gas rationing
went into effect; scrap metal was collected and turned over
to the war effort; draft boards processed the scores of young
men answering the call to protect their country; blackouts
in all coastal cities continued, and the speed limit was reduced
to 35-miles-per-hour; liquor production was curtailed till
the end of the war.
Shortages of the following everyday items brought home the
realities of a war-time economy: metal hair curlers, wigs,.
lawn mowers, girdles, sugar, quinine, gin, tea, rubber diaper
covers, metal caskets, electric appliances, fly swatters,
tin soldiers, electric trains, and bicycles. Scrap drives,
war bonds, ration books, defense stamps, air raid wardens,
articles in the newspapers offering advice on first aid after
exposure to poison gas, blood drives, civil defense meetings,
cau-tions such as "Loose lips sink ships"--all became
commonplace as the Nation, and Salem, prepared for an all-out
war.
Despite uniformly bad news from all the battlefronts: Wake
Island taken in January; Singapore’s fall in February; the
Battle for the Philippines culminating in April with the fall
of Bataan; that same month Burma fell (Hong Kong had fallen
the previous December.) By June, Nazi U-boats had sunk 213
vessels in the Atlantic during the previous six months; in
the Pacific, the Battles of the Coral Sea, and Midway and
Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands engaged thousands of sailors
and Marines with thousands of ships, planes, and munitions
against the enemy; North Africa was overrun by Erwin Rommel’s
Panzer divi-sions; and Stalingrad was fighting for its life--despite
all these reverses, morale in the U.S. remained high with
the spirit of "We Did It Before and We Can Do It Again."
Another hit song of that era was "Praise The Lord and
Pass The Ammunition."
Salem concerns were those of a Nation at war, with a few
distinctly local mat-ters. In February, President Roosevelt
had issued Executive Order 9066 calling for the internment
of all Japanese, "citizens or not," in one of ten
resettlement camps further inland. That same month in Portland
an espionage cell of some 30 Japanese was raided, leading
to the Capital Journal’s editorial of February 21st justifying
the "Purging of Potential Spies." Marion County’s
193 residents of Japanese descent were shipped on June 2,
1942, to a camp at Tulelake, California, about 35 miles south
of Klamath Falls, Oregon.
In January of 1942, a project was begun that ultimately affected--economically
and socially--Salem’s wartime experience: the construction
of Camp Adair in neighboring Polk County. By June, troops
were arriving to begin training at the camp: "A city
for 40,000 was built in six months." Some 8,000 civilians
worked on the camp’s 1,800 buildings and, after completion,
more were employed to staff the five movie theaters, 13 post
exchanges, two service clubs, the hospital, banks, post office,
and phone exchange.
Every Friday night, groups of Salem girls took the bus to
Adair to dance with the servicemen--who, in some cases, became
their future husbands. The sol-diers who preferred to come
into Salem for recreation hung out at the U.S.O., 693 Chemeketa
Street, or at favorite dance spots: the Crystal Gardens at
the corner of Liberty and Ferry Streets, or the Salem Armory.
Willamette Univer-sity and the YMCA offered their facilities
and services to Adair’s soldiers. Sa-lem homes were opened
to servicemen each weekend and, despite shortages, those homes
offered home-cooked meals and a taste of family to men far
from home.
A huge iron and steel scrap drive on July 30th covered the
west Courthouse lawn with every manner of container, toy,
auto part, appliance, or household item imaginable, leading
a trio of welders/sculptors to construct "Scrappo"
from the ten tons of scrap metal, a symbol for the mighty
efforts. Some 1,500 Salemites heard the metal sculpture "speak"
(via Gardner Knapp, ventriloquist, and C.W. Paulus, who moved
"Scrappo’s" jaw!) And millions more throughout the
Nation saw "Scrappo’s" performance as the event
was filmed by Universal Film Exchange, Inc., to be shown in
theater newsreels across the country. Chil-dren who collected
a pound of rubber that day were treated to a special free
performance at the Elsinore Theater.
The war came too close for comfort in June and September
of this year when Seaside was shelled from enemy ships and
a Japanese plane, launched from a submarine offshore, flew
low over Curry County and dropped a thermite bomb. It caused
little damage in the forested area--burning only .01 of an
acre --as it had been dropped from too low an altitude, but
the incident proved not only the audacity of the enemy, but
also that Oregonians were closer to the war zone than they
had thought!
In July of 1942, Willamette’s V-2 College Training Program,
in cooperation with the Navy and Marine Corps, was established
to meet "the military’s need for a steady supply of college
educated officers." Lausanne Hall, the all-female dorm,
was re-designated the "U.S.S. Lausanne" and furnished
housing for the trainees.
Late in the year, disaster struck the State Hospital when
47 patients died of poisoning: the assistant cook had inadvertently
mixed roach powder instead of powdered milk into the scrambled
eggs served that morning in November. Ini-tially thought to
be the work of a saboteur or spoilage of the eggs, the truth
be-came known the following day: a tragic accident.
* * * * * * * * 1943
News from the warfront changed to a more optimistic tone
with the beginning of 1943.
In February, Hitler’s army capitulated at Stalingrad, beaten
by the weather as well as stubborn Russian resistance.
By May, the Afrika Korps of General Rommel sufferred defeat
at Tunisia and, two months after that, Sicily was invaded.
Hamburg, Germany, was bombed to ruins in August and, by September
8th, Italy, one of the Axis powers, had surrendered.
The Marines took Tarawa in November, and began air attacks
on Formosa.
All of these developments were followed closely in Salem
as many of the city’s younger generation were involved in
these campaigns. Wall maps of the world were posted on many
a living room wall so that battle actions could be traced,
resulting in memorable and powerful geography lessons as the
world’s war progressed.
Copper pennies disappeared from the scene to be replaced
by zinc 1-cent pieces.
More immediate concerns for Salem folk began in the year
of 1943:
The Willamette flooded in January,
1. washing out the underpinnings of the Mellow Moon skating
rink and lodging the timbers against the west side of the
Marion-Polk County bridge.
2. Four hundred homes in the Valley were affected;
3. Ten people drowned before the river crested at 30 feet.
4. Sewers had overflowed in North Salem as the heaviest snowfall
in six years blankets the city.
As rationing became more stringent,
restaurants’ meat supplies were cut and the U.S.O. had to
begin charging for the food they offered.
Butter was in short supply, and housewives lined up in front
of whichever grocery store had received any of the precious
commodity.
1. A butter substitute--oleomargarine--appeared on grocers’
shelves and pro-vided a diversion for youngsters. By law,
the fake butter had to be packaged white, containing a small
gel capsule of yellow coloring; by squeezing the pack-age
and breaking the capsule, the soft white "butter"
took on a light yellow co-lor and, when thoroughly mixed,
was placed in molds to resemble sticks of but-ter. As the
margarine was packed in plastic, on occasion too vigorous
squeez-ing caused the bag to break and a greasy mess ensued!
Coffee, tea, sugar--always in short supply--headed the list
of hard-to-get arti-cles but, as time went on, other items
of food began to disappear from store shelves. Victory Gardens
sprouted in nearly every backyard as trucks to deli-ver produce
to the stores broke down or were commandeered for war purpo-ses.
Living in the lush Willamette Valley, Salemites had access
to a greater variety of nuts, fruits, and vegetables than
other parts of the Nation, but shared the pro-blem of transporting
all that fresh produce to market. Also, harvesting that abundance
was a constant source of worry for producers: there were never
enough hands, even using schoolchildren or State prisoners,
to help.
Soldiers from Adair were brought in, and some stores closed
early so the em-ployees could help out in the fields.
To alleviate the shortage of hands, Mexican harvesters were
imported this year. A farmers’ market opened near Marion Square;
sponsored by the city, it brought some of the rural plenty
to city dwellers.
Marion County education shared in that lack of manpower:
13 schools failed to open in September for lack of teachers.
While the legendary Bob Hope entertained troops overseas,
a phenomenon on the homefront saw its beginning: troops of
"bobby soxers" swooned over the sultry voice of
a young singer from New Jersey, Frank Sinatra. Salem girls
weren’t immune to the crooner’s appeal and formed fan clubs
to support the popular idol. "Frankie" never made
it to Salem for a personal appearance, but that was all right
- - there were always his records and radio broadcasts of
his concerts.
A local celebration was nearly obscured by war news: Oregon’s
centennial. At Champoeg on May 2nd, some 2,000 gathered for
a commemoration of the State’s first efforts at self-government.
That same day in Portland, as a centen-nial event, the Liberty
Ship "Robert Newell" was launched, "in honor
of one of the mountain men" who participated in the 1843
Champoeg meeting.
Penicillin became the wonder of 1943 when its use to prevent
infection was proved on the world’s battlefields. At home--
1. Women knit "stump socks" or rolled bandages
(grim reminders of the casualties of war).
2. Gold stars in front windows began to replace the blue
stars posted with pride to show a family member in the armed
services, gold signifying that a loved one had been killed
in action.
By July 16th, war casualties from Salem were listed on the
roster of those killed in action or dying of battle wounds.
But a far more serious and immediate threat to the children
of Salem appeared that summer: infantile paralysis, the dreaded
polio, that crippled or killed.
The year ended on an upbeat note, however: though the Christmas
tree on the Courthouse lawn once more lacked lights, Salem
citizens took pride in having their city ranked first in U.S.
cities of like size for traffic safety. And the alumina plant
project was awarded to Salem in November. Also, the Aluminum
Can Company proposed a million dollar plant to be located
in the city.
* * * * * * * * 1944
The third year of the war, 1944, began on a promising
level with news of the Axis defeats on all fronts:
in January, Leningrad was recaptured by the Russians;
February saw Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands taken;
June 5th, Rome was captured by American forces,
and the next day occurred the massive invasion of France--176,000
men assaulted a 60-mile front at Normandy.
Also in June, the Imperial Steel Works in Japan was bombed
to ruins.
By July Eniwetok, Guam, and Saipan in the Pacific Theater
had been captured,
and the Japanese retreat from Burma began.
On August 25th, Paris was liberated;
Warsaw’s liberation followed in September as the Allies crossed
the German border.
October saw the capture of Peleliu Island,
landings at Leyte in the Pacific,
and General MacArthurÆs return to the Philippines.
Also, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected to his fourth
term as President;
Federal price controls kept retailers from profiteering on
wartime scarcities,
and some innovative Salem merchants created unique transportation
solutions:
1. Curly’s Dairy utilized a horse to pull its delivery truck;
2. carpooling conserved precious gas resources;
3. bicycles with sidecars or pulling carts became a daily
sight around the city.
In July, the last division at Camp Adair moved out for overseas
duty, but even before that mass exodus, a new use for the
camp had been decided upon: some 200 Italian POWs took up
residence in the barracks, guarded by a small crew of soldiers.
Their help and that of later German POWs interned at Adair
greatly enhanced the workforce in harvesting hops, beans,
cherries, and other commodities that summer and fall.
Two items that have become standard in our time were introduced
in August of 1944:
the first prototype of a calculator
and the ballpoint pen.
Another development that proved not so beneficial was the
advent of DDT, heralded as the insecticide that would "wipe
out the mosquito and malaria,. liquidate the household fly,
cockroach, and bedbug, and control some of the most damaging
insects that prey on the world’s crops."
Shortages of household items became more pronounced this
year;
textiles were added to the list of scarce articles: cotton
and wool goods, such as suits, sheets and pillowcases, towels,
tablecloths, curtains, shirts, bed-spreads, draperies, and
dischcloths virtually disappeared from the merchants’ shelves.
Despite the fact that Salem had a thriving flax industry,
the total output of the Miles and Salem linen mills went to
the war effort.
Linen strands in ships’ fire hoses helped extinguish fires
on board;
latticed linen cargo nets and lifelines assisted in rescuing
seamen from ocean waters;
linen oil lines on tankers replaced rubber ones; linen hammocks
on shipboard and linen awnings on lifeboats were familiar
necessities to the Nation’s sailors; linen parachutes substituted
for the impossible-to-get silk ones; waxed linen-covered wiring
in the instrument panels of aircraft proved far superior to
any other material; and the sturdy thread was used to stitch
soldiers boots, devise their insignia, keep the seams of sacks
from bursting, and served as lines for signal flags to send
messages between ships.
November’s Armistice Day celebrations were somber, as the
toll of Salem’s war dead had reached 73 men. Another casualty
of note in Salem circles was 31-year-old Asahel Bush, war
correspondent for the Associated Press, who had died and been
buried in the Philippines on October 26th, killed at Leyte
by a Japanese bomb.
Word of the lifting of restrictions on West Coast Japanese
(to become official on January 2, 1945) reached Salem in December.
The relocation camps were to be closed and former residents
could return to their homes and property. Sadly, not too many
of Salem’s former Japanese chose to return: only 7 of the
pre-war 250 came back to the city.
Although 1944 went into the record books as one of the driest
in history--with only 25.13 inches of rain--produce from the
surrounding farms kept Salem’s canneries running at full bore.
Labor was still a prime issue and "Victory" shifts
of four or five hours were instituted to augment the regular
shifts required to process all the beans, sweet corn, plums,
cherries, tomatoes, berries, apples, beets, carrots, peaches,
prunes, rhubarb, and potatoes that kept the canneries running
from May to December.
Three Salem companies had government contracts to supply
the armed forces- -Calpak, Paulus Bros. Packing Co., and Allen
Fruit Co.--with canned, frozen, and dehydrated fruits and
vegetables. Recognized for their "outstanding accom-plishment
as a food processor," Calpack received an "A"
award in March of 1944 by the War Food Administration.
Some 12 canneries in the city operated around the clock to
provide food for military and civilian consumption. One, the
Salem Community Cannery on Port-land Road, which was run by
high school students and faculty, began in July of 1943 and
closed down in the fall of 1945; each participant in the cooperative
venture was allowed 100 cans of food per family member. Salem’s
cannery was one of 12 community canneries in the state sponsored
by school districts.
Besides labor problems, another concern for local canneries
was scarcity of tin-plate for cans, leading to alternative
methods of preserving: glass jars, freez-ing, and dehydrating.
Water resources were another worry; even after comple-tion
of a pipeline from the North Santiam River and tapping the
Willamette’s waters, many of the canneries had to dig wells
to keep their operations going.
And the effluent from these canneries--most of them were
along Front Street-- made for severe pollution of the Willamette,
leading many Salemites to joke about which cannery was operating,
and what they were processing according to the color or smell
of the river.
Two disastrous cannery fires closed out the year: in November,
Producers Co-operative Packing Company on Front Street burned
with a loss of over $100,000 in equipment, sugar, and cherries.
Just over one month later, in West Salem’s Blue Lake plant
was completely destroyed by fire along with half the year’s
pack of canned and dehydrated foods. Exploding cans, for several
days after the December 31st fire, made the area resemble
a war zone.
* * * * * * * * 1945
With the advent of the new year, the Nation could finally
see an end to the war; as FDR was inaugurated for his 4th
term, news from the warfront was of suc-cessive victories
over German and Japanese forces.
In February, the German Siegfied Line, last defensive barrier
to invasion of German territory, was attacked.
That same month, D-Day on Iwo Jima in the Pacific Theater
commenced; by March, the island was taken, though with a terrible
loss of life.
On all fronts, the prospects looked promising for an early
end to the conflict.
Restrictions on civilian goods eased: liquor production resumed;
the W.P.B.s ban on electricity for night-time baseball games
was lifted; the amount of steel allocated for civilian production
was doubled, making mass production of cars, home appliances,
and so on once more possible; bans on producing dozens of
civilian items were removed.
In the midst of all this encouraging news, two tragedies
marked the spring months: On the National stage, President
Roosevelt died suddenly at Warm Springs, Georgia, victim of
a cerebral hemorrhage. The strong, calming voice of the leader
who declared, "The only thing America need fear was fear
itself," was stilled forever. Oregon mourned the loss
of a great leader at a crucial mo-ment in our history.
Then, in early May, came the news that Klamath County Sunday
School picnic group had found an unexploded Japanese "balloon
bomb" and set it off, killing 5 children and one mother.
A monument near Bly marks the site where the only loss of
life on this continent from enemy action occurred. Just two
days later, Germany surrendered unconditionally to General
Eisenhower, ending the war in Europe. Hitler had committed
suicide on April 30th in his Berlin bunker, but the detail
had yet to be confirmed. Rather than wild celebrations, the
news was re-ceived in Salem with prayerful quiet, for there
was still an enemy in the Pacific to be subdued.
That objective required another four months and the unleashing
of a weapon more devastating than any yet known to man. On
August 5th, the atomic bomb was dropped over the Japanese
Army base Hiroshima. Packing more destruc-tive power than
20,000 tons of TNT, the bomb--hideous as it was in terms of
material and human destruction--played a huge part in persuading
the Japanese to capitulate. A second atomic blast a Nagasaki
three days later proved the fi-nal action in the Pacific theater:
Japan surrendered unconditionally on August 14th.
Then, and only then, did Salem celebrate: "shrieking,
hornblowing, gunshooting, singing, and praying" through
the two days’ holiday proclaimed by President Truman for Wednesday
and Thursday. Banks and all government agencies (aside for
essential services) were closed; retail stores closed on Wednesday;
liquor stores and taverns closed for both days; playgrounds
and swimming pools closed on Wednesday; and all scheduled
meetings were cancelled so Sa-lemites could enjoy the blessings
of peace at last. (Only the canneries worked overtime to process
the perishable harvest of fruits and vegetables.
Along with all the joy and elation, there was deep sadness,
too, for many fami-lies in the city had lost loved ones in
the 4 years of war: 142 men dead, not counting those Missing
In Action or still hospitalized with serious injuries.
The war was over, the young men who survived could return
home, industry could shift back to production of civilian
goods, peacetime mobilization could begin; a new era of prosperity
was on the horizon. The atomic age had begun, but a plethora
of benefits to humankind had been introduced, including the
development of radar and streptomycin this year. Art treasures
stolen by the Nazis were returned to their various countries,
and the war criminals who had instigated such horrendous acts
could be rounded up to be tried by Interna-tional courts of
justice.
The United Nations was established to assure there would
be no repeat of this most catastrophic worldwide war.
Researched and written by Sue Bell
Bibliography:
NOTE: Details on National events and battlefront news
were taken from a series to Time-Life Books: "Time Capsules"
for each year of the war, extracted from the pages of "Time"
magazine; published 1968.
1. Oregon Statesman Extra, 7 December 1941, 1:1 & 2:2;
26 December 1941, 9:6 & 7.
2. Oregon Statesman, 4 January 1942, 3:7; Capital Journal,
8 December 1941, 9:6 & 7.
3. Oregon Statesman Extra, op. cit., 1:1 & 2:6.
4. ôThe Scene,ö Summer 2003 (W.U. magazine), p. 21.
5. Capital Journal, 9 December 1941, 19:7.
6. Idbid., 18 February 1942, 3:7
7. Statesman Journal, 15 February 1981, 1A.
8. John H. Baker, ôCamp Adairö (Newport, OR, 2003), pp. 30,
79, 81, 83, 135, 136; Oregon Statesman supplement 8 November
1942, pp. 1-56.
9. Capital Journal, 31 July 1942, 12: 1, 3, 4.
10. Oregonian, 22 June 1942, 1:3 & 7; September 1958,
p. 44.
11. ôThe Scene,ö Summer 2003, pp. 18-19.
12. Capital Journal, 19 November 1942, 13:6.
13. Oregon Statesman, 4 January 942, 1:4, 2:1.
14. Ibid., 1 January 1944, A2:4.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid., 3 May 1943, 1:4 & 2.1.
17. Ibid., 1January 1944, A2:4.
18. Capital Journal, 11 July 1944, 9:8.
19. ôTime,ö 12 June 1944 issue.
20. Oregon Statesman, 31 December 1944, 6:1.
21. Ibid., 4 July 1943, 5:1.
22. Ibid., 11 November 1944, 1:2; 15 November 1944, 2:2.
23. Ibid., 31 December 1944, 5:5; Statesman Journal, 15 February
1981, 1A & 14A.
24. Oregon Statesman, 31 December 1944, 1:5.
25. William Lucas, ôCanning in the Valley,ö pp. 18, 19, 70,
137, 151.
26. William Lucas, ôCanning in the Valley,ö pp. 126, 269.
27. Oregon Statesman, 13 April 1945, 8:2.
28. Oregonian, 25 February 1959, 8:1; Capital Journal, 17
August 1950, 11:1.
29. Oregon Statesman, 8 May 1945, 1:7.
30. Ibid., 7 August 1945, 1:7.
31. Ibid., 15 August 1945, 1:4 & 8.
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