Life During World War 2
Terror in the war years in New York City.
Terror in the war years in New York City.
My memory of the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, is still very vivid. After my family heard the news on that infamous Sunday Morning, we all gathered at my grandparent’s apartment. I was nine years old, young enough to be confused about what it meant but old enough to understand that this was a terrible event.
My three young uncles talked about planning to enlist in the army. They were in their mid-twenties and weren’t married, as I remember. My grandmother was frantically trying to talk them out of such an idea. They participated in the war effort, but only my middle uncle, Uncle Ralph, enlisted in the Air Force and ran an Air orce hospital. He was a doctor. As for the other two, one worked in Washington, DC, where he headed up a consumer goods agency, and the youngest in a munitions factory. A dangerous job.
My father was too old to enlist. He had served in the US Navy in World War 1. He never said too much about his time in the Navy, but he taught me several old Navy Sea Shanties, folk songs we would sing together. Here’s one of them:
“THREE TIMES AROUND SPUN OUR GALLANT SHIP”
Three times around spun our gallant, gallant ship,
And three times around spun she,
Three times around spun our gallant, gallant ship
As she sank to the bottom of the sea.
Oh, the ocean waves may roll,
And the stormy winds may blow,
But we poor sailors are skipping at the top
And the landlubbers lie down
Below, below, below,
And the landlubbers lie below.
There are many more stanzas for this song. Each stanza tells what it’s like to be on a sinking ship from a different point of view. The cook prefers his pots and pans to the bottom of the sea, the First Mate’s wife will be a widow, the bosun laments that his girlfriend will be crying, and the captain tells of getting the news that his ship was sinking from a mermaid. It’s believed that this song originated in Scotland.
Carefully hidden from me were discussions about what was happening to the European Jews. Many had escaped from Germany to my neighborhood in Washington Heights. My mother, however, had not hidden how she felt about these refugees as a group. She made it known they were arrogant, superior, and constantly pushing their way to the front of the line for the newly installed washing machines in the basement of our apartment building.
My school life changed dramatically once the war started. Each student received a small ivory disc to wear around our necks. This disc contained information about us, our name, birthday, and religion (mine was “H” for Hebrew.) The teacher said we should always come to school with it around our necks. She went on to tell us if bombs came and burned our bodies beyond recognition, our identification would be available from the information on the flameproof disc. Fear installed itself in my body and remained until the war was over. This information was comforting in one sense but positively terrifying.
The school janitor stuck criss-cross tape on every window in the school building to lessen the impact of flying shards of glass resulting from possible bombings. We had bomb protection lessons about hiding under our desks during an attack.
I was deathly afraid of Adolf Hitler. Only when Charlie Chaplin did his movie, The Great Dictator, did I find some relief?
Volunteers came forward to act as Air Raid Wardens. They would patrol the streets, studying everyone’s windows to ensure tenants lowered their shades. Lowering window shades prevented accidental light from escaping, which would tip off the enemy planes to drop bombs and kill many people, and I might be one of them.
I was petrified all the time. We lived on the top floor of an apartment building at the top of a steep hill. Our apartment had an unobstructed view eastward, and we could see as far as LaGuardia airport. If I only could leave my bedroom shade open, even a sliver, I would have been able to study the skies to watch for the incoming bombers.
This view would give me a modicum of comfort.
However, the Air Raid Warden prevented me from watching because light might find its way out and act as a beacon. So the shade had to be pulled down to the windowsill. I was terrified, sitting on my bed, alone in the dark, without even a clue if a bomb might come my way. I felt I could withstand anything as long as it wasn’t a surprise. Not knowing was more terror than I could handle. I developed tremor attacks manifested by uncontrollable total-body shakes. I would tremble from head to toe. They were panic attacks.
My mother became aware of this development and asked the Warden for special consideration for me. He approved my keeping the shade pulled three-quarters of the way down with no light in my room. I watched the sky for incoming enemy planes for several hours each night, resting my elbows on the windowsill and my head bent for a better view of the emptiness. The tremors abated.
The food rationing made butter completely unavailable. Instead, we purchased small transparent bags containing some white pliable fat that was supposed to replace butter. It looked so unpalatable that the government placed a plug of yellow food coloring inside the bag. By manipulating the coloring agent throughout the white fat, it eventually took on the color of butter. That became my job.
You may wonder what brought up all these memories. It’s all the news from Ukraine. Reading stories and seeing pictures of women and their children of all ages trying to escape the bombing is ghastly. I feel very sympathetic toward what their lives must be like now. The pictures of the bombed-out buildings make me grateful that during World War 2, we were never actually invaded or bombed.
The guns and the bombs, the rockets and the warships, are all symbols of human failure.
Lyndon B. Johnson
My memory of the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, is still very vivid. After my family heard the news on that infamous Sunday Morning, we all gathered at my grandparent's apartment. I was nine years old, young enough to be confused about what it meant but old enough to understand that this was a terrible event.
My three young uncles talked about planning to enlist in the army. They were in their mid-twenties and weren't married, as I remember. My grandmother was frantically trying to talk them out of such an idea. They participated in the war effort, but only my middle uncle, Uncle Ralph, enlisted in the Air Force and ran an Air orce hospital. He was a doctor. As for the other two, one worked in Washington, DC, where he headed up a consumer goods agency, and the youngest in a munitions factory. A dangerous job.
My father was too old to enlist. He had served in the US Navy in World War 1. He never said too much about his time in the Navy, but he taught me several old Navy Sea Shanties, folk songs we would sing together. Here's one of them:
"THREE TIMES AROUND SPUN OUR GALLANT SHIP"
Three times around spun our gallant, gallant ship,
And three times around spun she,
Three times around spun our gallant, gallant ship
As she sank to the bottom of the sea.
Oh, the ocean waves may roll,
And the stormy winds may blow,
But we poor sailors are skipping at the top
And the landlubbers lie down
Below, below, below,
And the landlubbers lie below.
There are many more stanzas for this song. Each stanza tells what it's like to be on a sinking ship from a different point of view. The cook prefers his pots and pans to the bottom of the sea, the First Mate's wife will be a widow, the bosun laments that his girlfriend will be crying, and the captain tells of getting the news that his ship was sinking from a mermaid. It's believed that this song originated in Scotland.
Carefully hidden from me were discussions about what was happening to the European Jews. Many had escaped from Germany to my neighborhood in Washington Heights. My mother, however, had not hidden how she felt about these refugees as a group. She made it known they were arrogant, superior, and constantly pushing their way to the front of the line for the newly installed washing machines in the basement of our apartment building.
My school life changed dramatically once the war started. Each student received a small ivory disc to wear around our necks. This disc contained information about us, our name, birthday, and religion (mine was "H" for Hebrew.) The teacher said we should always come to school with it around our necks. She went on to tell us if bombs came and burned our bodies beyond recognition, our identification would be available from the information on the flameproof disc. Fear installed itself in my body and remained until the war was over. This information was comforting in one sense but positively terrifying.
The school janitor stuck criss-cross tape on every window in the school building to lessen the impact of flying shards of glass resulting from possible bombings. We had bomb protection lessons about hiding under our desks during an attack.
I was deathly afraid of Adolf Hitler. Only when Charlie Chaplin did his movie, The Great Dictator, did I find some relief?
Volunteers came forward to act as Air Raid Wardens. They would patrol the streets, studying everyone's windows to ensure tenants lowered their shades. Lowering window shades prevented accidental light from escaping, which would tip off the enemy planes to drop bombs and kill many people, and I might be one of them.
I was petrified all the time. We lived on the top floor of an apartment building at the top of a steep hill. Our apartment had an unobstructed view eastward, and we could see as far as LaGuardia airport. If I only could leave my bedroom shade open, even a sliver, I would have been able to study the skies to watch for the incoming bombers.
This view would give me a modicum of comfort.
However, the Air Raid Warden prevented me from watching because light might find its way out and act as a beacon. So the shade had to be pulled down to the windowsill. I was terrified, sitting on my bed, alone in the dark, without even a clue if a bomb might come my way. I felt I could withstand anything as long as it wasn't a surprise. Not knowing was more terror than I could handle. I developed tremor attacks manifested by uncontrollable total-body shakes. I would tremble from head to toe. They were panic attacks.
My mother became aware of this development and asked the Warden for special consideration for me. He approved my keeping the shade pulled three-quarters of the way down with no light in my room. I watched the sky for incoming enemy planes for several hours each night, resting my elbows on the windowsill and my head bent for a better view of the emptiness. The tremors abated.
The food rationing made butter completely unavailable. Instead, we purchased small transparent bags containing some white pliable fat that was supposed to replace butter. It looked so unpalatable that the government placed a plug of yellow food coloring inside the bag. By manipulating the coloring agent throughout the white fat, it eventually took on the color of butter. That became my job.
You may wonder what brought up all these memories. It's all the news from Ukraine. Reading stories and seeing pictures of women and their children of all ages trying to escape the bombing is ghastly. I feel very sympathetic toward what their lives must be like now. The pictures of the bombed-out buildings make me grateful that during World War 2, we were never actually invaded or bombed.