Everyone. Everything. Everywhere.
By - Harry Bulkeley
It is impossible to overstate the impact World War II had on every person who lived through it. It even had an impact on me and I was born four years after Japan surrendered. (Thanks to the Baby Boom)
Personally, it affected my family in many ways. My father enlisted in the Army Air Force two weeks before Pearl Harbor was attacked. My mother started Knox College in the fall of 1942 and spent four years with virtually no men on campus because they were all off at war. My in-laws were married in June, 1941 and just when they were settling in, he got drafted and spent two years in New Guinea as a Navy SeaBee. My mother-in-law lived with her parents and taught school waiting for him to get back.
Every family has stories like that. The war disrupted plans and changed the course of a generation. It also had a profound effect on Forgottonia. Elsewhere in this issue, we learned about Camp Ellis. It was a huge Army training center that sprang up almost overnight on the prairie of Fulton County.
In Galesburg, the government built a huge hospital complex called Mayo General to treat thousands of wounded coming back from the war. In less than nine months, 117 brick buildings went up with 2,300 beds treating as many as 3000 wounded at one time. Covering 155 acres with a mile and a half of corridors, it had a gym, a swimming pool, a movie theater and all the amenities of a small city. As an interesting sidelight, everything was on one level for wheelchairs and after the war, as a branch of the University of Illinois, it was the first handicap accessible college in the world.
Just outside Forgottonia, in Seneca, IL, in LaSalle county, 27,000 workers built 157 LSTs, Landing Ship Tanks, for the Navy. Those ships were almost 400 feet long. After they were built, they were sailed down the Illinois River, past Fulton County, then to the Mississippi and finally across the Atlantic to deliver troops and equipment for the D-Day invasion.
The sacrifices of the warriors are truly heroic. Imagine jumping into the water at Normandy or spending Christmas in a freezing fox hole in Bastogne. My father flew combat missions in India and Burma and for the rest of his life complained about the two years he had cold showers and hot beer.
People on the Home Front all did their part. Every car had a ration sticker on the windshield which entitled you to four gallons of gas per week. On the back it read "Is this trip really necessary?" Woman planted Victory Gardens and most houses had a banner in their front window which had a star for each family member in the service.
A Gold Star meant a son had died.
One of the most poignant legacies of the war to me is the music. I grew up listening to my parents play records from that time. TV shows like Mitch Miller and Perry Como permanently engrained those songs in my mind. There were upbeat songs like “Boogie Boogie Bugle Boy” by the Andrews Sisters and “American Patrol” by Glenn Miller.
But other songs touched deeper emotions. Take the old standard "White Christmas" by Bing Crosby. Good song, right? When you realize that it was released three weeks after Pearl Harbor and that boys would soon be sent to the Sahara Desert to begin our part of the war, it means a lot more. Imagine sitting in a tent with sand as far as you can see and dreaming of a White Christmas back home. Same way with 1944's "I'll Be Home for Christmas" with the last line "If only in my dreams".
"I'll Be Seeing You" is one of my favorite songs. It was written before the war but took on a whole new meaning when millions of men were overseas, not knowing if they'd make it home.
"I'll find you in the morning sun
And when the night is through
I'll be looking at the moon
But I'll be seeing you.”
Our country’s response to the war was magnificent. After December 7, 1941, everyone stepped up to do their part. Kids brought in toys and scrap metal to turn into bombers. Mothers knit socks for other mothers’ boys. Automakers stopped building cars and made tanks and bombers and jeeps for four years. And, of course, millions of able-bodied men stepped forward and raised their hand to fight for their country. Only the Civil War produced more American casualties than World War II.
I don't think there is any way we can imagine the impact the the War had on our parents but it is so accurate to call them "The Greatest Generation."