Three days ago, US President Franklin Roosevelt announced America was at war with Japan, the third Axis power, following the surprise attack on our naval base at Pearl Harbor. Germany and Italy then announced they were at war with the United States. America immediately responded by declaring war on the two Axis powers.
It was just the year before that President Roosevelt signed The Selective Training and Service Act of 1940. This was the first peace-time draft in the history of the United States. With the attack on Pearl Harbor and the declaration of war there was a swell of volunteers for the military branches.
As America geared up to engage in this new war ‘War Posters’ became popular. I guess you can call them propaganda posters. They were created to rally and motivate the citizenry. There were recruitment posters. There were posters whose purpose was to provide guidance as to what was needed and expected. Other posters defined our purpose to the Home Front. There were Employment posters and posters to encourage the purchasing of War Bonds which helped finance the war. And others were directed at recruiting women to fill the many jobs men were not there to do because they were over seas in Europe or the South Seas.
What would you have been doing then as a child, or young adult or middle aged or senior?
Today I selected posters to represent our military branches as a way to Honor all our soldiers then and now.
I wonder what branch of service I would have joined.
My uncle served in the Coast Guard. He was 21 and he spent eight years serving his country. When I was a kid I would ask him what he did and what life was like but he didn’t talk much about his time in the service. He was a modest man. He did his job and he did it well and with Honor.
My father was older and as a civilian he used his skills to design and build housing for the troops. He designed a house that folded up and could be transported and then built in one day. His homes were used as temporary housing in Washington D.C. and in the Midwest of all places.
His brother, my other uncle was a machinist and lived in Los Angeles and San Diego where he machined airplane parts for Hughes in LA and Consolidate in San Diego.
This was a time in America in which everybody did something for the war effort and for the welfare of the United States. Would it be so today.
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