I had planed to read this book ten pages a day, but I became caught up with it and it has been my main reading every day, other than revisions of GANNET 6. It is fascinating to see what people understood, or thought they did, and what concerned them at the time. One of the main lessons is how wrong even informed sources can be.
On December 4, 1941 an article appeared headed ‘Singapore Doubts Japanese Threats’, which proceeded to state that with the arrival there of the new battleship, THE PRICE OF WALES, the Singapore Naval Base had never been stronger. THE PRINCE OF WALES was sunk by Japanese aircraft six days later, and Singapore surrendered to the Japanese a little over two months later.
Again, only days before Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, there was an article stating that many thought that the Soviet Union was likely to join the German-Italian-Japanese Axis.
There are countless other examples.
Once the United States entered the war, obvious morale building articles appeared about how everyone on the home front was united. This changed over the next two years when people grew weary of rationing and other restrictions.
An illuminating article was how factories and assembly lines were being modified for women workers, from bathrooms and showers, to redesigning assembly lines so that heavy components would have to be lifted shorter distances.
On April 2, 1942, the TIMES ran an article ‘Blondes May Aid In War’ in which it was stated the Office of Emergency Management was calling for women’s straight blonde hair fourteen or more inches long. It was essential that the hair had never been dyed. There was no explanation in the article of how the hair would be used, so I googled and learned:
During World War II, the U.S. military used long, unbleached, chemical-free blonde hair as a strategic material in precision meteorological and weather instruments (such as hygrometers) to measure humidity and changes in heat and cold.
Why blonde hair? Scientists discovered that untreated blonde human hair expands and contracts with extreme sensitivity to moisture and temperature shifts, making it ideal for accurate calibration in weather and aircraft instruments.
On October 9, 1940, was an article poignant in retrospect, ‘Berlin Starts Evacuation of Children Fleeing Raids’. It stated that more than 550,000 children had been evacuated from cities to towns in the countryside or “cities like Dresden, which are rarely attacked.” I found myself wondering how many of them were still in Dresden five year later on February 13, 1945, when the bombs began to fall.
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