Electronic mail is arguably the most popular use of the Internet,
in part due to the proliferation of electronic mailing list
servers or "listservs" - mini-networks of users with common
interests in almost any subject, combining the best and worst
features of bulletin boards, chain letters, bulk mailings, and
talk radio.
For many users, listservs are to the Internet what zucchini is to the vegetable garden - nice to have, but often uncontrollable. But occasionally a discussion "thread" moves away from the customary brainstorming and kvetching and becomes something new. The folks on Armadillo-Watch observed such a happening this spring on that listserv. Armadillo-Watch was created as a forum for those interested in the development of Armadillo, the Texas studies gopher mounted by Houston ISD and Rice University. Most of the list members are K-12 teachers with accounts on the Texas Education Network, or TENET.
Jim Landureth (Director of Instructional Media Services, Houston ISD): In cleaning out (my father-in-law's) house, my wife found some World War II or Depression-era red and blue paper tokens. They are about the size of a dime and have "OPA-1 Red Point" & "OPA-1 Blue Point" written on them. We think they were used in a rationing program, but we don't know the details. We would like any information on them.
Queries like this are common on all listservs. Replies like the following, however, are less so:
Joan Linsley (Hamilton Middle School, Houston ISD): Now I really will date myself, but this is what I recall from the World War II rationing. Meat, butter, sugar, shoes, and many other products were rationed. The red and blue tokens ... were used like change. Everyone had a ration book; if the item you purchased did not have the value of the ration stamp, you received the token in "change" for the difference.
Gasoline also was rationed. Everyone had a stamp on the windshield which determined how much you could purchase. If you needed your car for business, you received more. Farmers had highest priority next to the military. People did get into trouble for filling their cars from their tractor supply, but, overall, people were quite honest because this was a part of the war effort.
People could give their stamps to others, but it was illegal to sell them. It was considered very unpatriotic. I must admit, however, that I did sell my butter ration stamps to my brother. Our mother set aside our individual rations after taking a portion of each. My brother really liked butter, and I guess I was too young to have developed a taste for it, so my ration started piling up in the refrigerator until he suggested perhaps we could make a deal.
Ah, yes, the good old days. But it was an exciting war that really united the people.
Over the next few days, members of Armadillo-Watch picked up the thread, creating an impressive oral history of WWII on the homefront. Some shared their own memories, others the products of their research, and the result makes for interesting reading. The following are excerpts from the message traffic.
Richard Buro (Temple ISD): Rationing and recycling in WWII should be
used as a background for environmental studies today. There were
serious efforts to recycle scrap metals, rubber, and the like.
Strategic metals were in short supply, or dangerous to transport due
to the submarine operations of the Axis.
Joan's point about the unifying aspect of the war is well taken. From the perspective of a family less than 50 years in the country (at the time of WWII) and from Germany to boot, it was also a time of fear, trepidation, and abuse. The internment camps for Japanese Americans may seem cruel and unusual, but there were definite feelings about the "enemy" then. Still, the unifying and patriotic aspects of WWII played a large part in the Allied victory.
Donald Perkins (Houston ISD; "owner" of the Armadillo-Watch listserv): We guys that are grandad and grandma age could be great resources for kids in shedding light on the economic and social history we have lived through. What was the economy like during WWII? How did getting food on the table during the war differ from now? How did you get around? Where did you shop? What did you do for fun?
I remember... We didn't have a car, and there was no way to get one. But we had two bikes, and Mom and Dad would pedal out with us to the victory garden on the edge of town. I had a four-foot-square plot of my own where I grew radishes, which came on quickly enough for my 4- year-old's patience.
Butter was in short supply, and we had oleomargarine, which was a new product at the time. It came in some sort of plastic bag and was a pure white color like lard. There was a little bubble of food coloring on the side of the bag that could be kneaded into the oleo to impart a butter color. The producers weren't allowed to color it at the factory because it would then have an unfair competitive advantage over butter - or so the butter producers thought.
I don't remember the OPA tokens, but I do remember mills, which were more the size of a nickel, with a square hole in the middle, made of some sort of paperboard product. They were valued at a fraction of a penny, I think ... hard to think that a fraction of a penny had value.
Recycling was part of our patriotic duty, and we would sit in the backyard cutting the ends out of "tin" cans and crushing them flat so that great quantities would fit in a box. The radio would play in the background, and after we finished we would all find something to read.
Don Bass (College of the Mainland): My dad had a hard time finding white shirts. My uncle in the navy pushed white shirts his way. As a salesman, my dad had a car with an "A" sticker. He got more gasoline than anybody.
I, for a long time, did not understand shortages. Do people really eat more catsup and sugar during wartime? Of course not; the factories and plants were converted to war production.
We collected scrap metal for the war effort. We scraped tin foil off cigarette packaging and other things, making a metal ball out of it. This was used for electronic solder and wiring.
It was kind of a shame to be physically unable to serve (4F). Charles Dilly faked a disability somehow and was almost banished from town. My dad had two crippled fingers on his right hand - he could not straighten them out. That made him 4F and he was somewhat ashamed of it.
My family had moved from the city to a country town, closer to the rest of my mother's family ... if my dad was drafted, then she could get some help. Freddie Durbin owned the Standard Oil station; when he went into the tank corps, his wife Isabel put on her coveralls and ran the station, greasing cars and changing oil.
Texas was a training ground - Ellington, Kelly, Garner fields were all used to train pilots and bombardiers. A lot of people got killed every day in Texas during training.
Marilyn Brien (High School for the Health Professions, San Antonio ISD): My 9th-grade daughter interviewed me about World War II. I remember (I was a pre-school child):
Mary Akers (Texas Education Agency, Austin): Ah, the hours I spent "kneading" that yellow food coloring into the oleomargarine! Of course, there was no TV in our house and I could do that chore to my favorite programs on the radio ... Guess some of us don't realize just how "old" and valuable some of our memories are.
An irony: My uncle was a detective on the Chicago police force and, therefore, was rejected when he tried to enlist. In 1945, just one month after the war was over (my dad was still stuck in the South Pacific trying to get home), my uncle was shot and killed in a bank robbery.
Joan Linsley: We did not call it "recycling" during World War II, but we really did a lot of it. My girlfriend and I scoured the town for scrap metal. We begged the auto shops, dug through garages and sheds, and walked along the railroad tracks. The spikes were quite valuable and often worked loose from the tracks. Many people had old pumps that they pulled up for us to peddle.
My dad and most of his friends were World War I veterans, and it was very difficult for them to send their sons and an occasional daughter off to war. Even worse, however, was when the missing-in-action or killed-in-action telegram arrived in our close-knit community.
My dad was a banker and would come to school to sell savings stamps. When the book was filled, the purchaser's name was broadcast statewide. We all listened to hear our names over the radio.
Another item in short supply was elastic, so clothing was made with buttons. There were all sorts of what we now call urban myths - of women losing the buttons off their underwear on the dance floor or on the sidewalks. They simply stepped out of them and went on their way, avoiding the embarrassment of picking them up.
Chocolate also was quite scarce, and one hoped for a nice storekeeper who would put aside some for good customers. Those who had relatives in the military stationed stateside had supplies of chocolate sent by them.
Don Bass: I talked to my mother Sunday about this stuff. She said that my dad always had a lot of gas ration stamps because people like the Perkins family (who had no car) would give coupons to him.
There were supposed to be spies all around. So I didn't talk to
anybody. The Germans would find out that we were making canteen belts
at the Edison Defense plant. We also had a network of aircraft
spotters who were trained to identify Japanese and German plane
silhouettes. None of them ever saw one.
I remember sending a Post Toasties boxtop to the Jack Armstrong radio show. In return, they were going to send me a B-24 Liberator bomber. I did a lot of planning on where I was going to put my bomber. The side yard was big, but it had a magnolia tree and a large victory garden there. When the bomber came it was a paper model that I had to cut out and paste together.
The mail was censored and photographed into a smaller version - easier to transport. It was called Victory Mail. There would be lines blackened out like, "Mabel went to work at the Edison Defense plant where they make (XXXXX)." So the enemy would never know that we made canteen belts. It made you think there were spies around, for sure.
Women gave up their hose - nylon for parachutes. When they were bare- legged, they would paint the seam on their legs.
Richard Buro: Here is what Central Texans have to remember of the WWII years:
Camp Hood (now Fort Hood) was the premier tank destroyer base in the U.S. It resulted from the threats posed by Hitler's blitzkrieg tactics using fast-moving armor. Temple's airport was originally designed as an auxiliary landing field for air operations at Camp Hood.
Temple had a Luftwaffe POW camp located on its southeastern side. Up until 1980 or so there were still some buildings standing, but Temple Junior College has torn most of them down.
McGregor had a major defense plant called Bluebonnet Ordnance. Now a part of the Navy Weapons division, Bluebonnet started out making 500- lb. bombs. The storage bunkers are still used by the Agricultural Extension Service. The bunkers (can be spotted) from the air easily, and a road from SH 317 to Mother Neff State Park goes through the field of bunkers.
Andrew Hall (UT-Medical Branch, Galveston): It is true that fires were not allowed on the beaches (in Galveston) during the war, and in fact traffic was not permitted along Seawall Boulevard at night. The Hotel Galvez was taken over as housing for Coast Guard personnel.
The Sui Jen (pronounced "Swee-Ren"), a popular nightclub built on a pier out over the gulf, had a Japanese motif. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the nightclub closed briefly and reopened with a bamboo- and palm tree decor. Ever since, it's been known as the Balinese Room.
Weather reports were censored, on the principle that broadcasts would provide information to the enemy. In the summer of 1943, however, a hurricane struck Galveston. The storm wasn't that bad, as hurricanes go, but warnings were not issued until the last minute. Damage was fairly extensive, and at least one vessel, the Corps of Engineers dredge ship Galveston, was lost with most of her crew. After that, the restrictions on weather reporting were eased.
As for residents seeing the fires of burning ships sunk by U-boats, in growing up here and researching Galveston history, I have never met anyone who saw the fires. It's always "I had a friend whose brother's cousin saw it." It's easy to understand people's believing such stories. There was censorship of war news, access to the beach was restricted, and people correctly suspected that U-boats were doing much greater damage than authorities were admitting at the time. With a lack of hard information, it's natural to assume the worst and further, to assume it's happening in your own back yard.
Joan Linsley: Who recalls D-Day? I was visiting a friend whose older brother was a tail gunner. My friend's mother was very upset all day; there were regular radio reports that day, which was unusual. Later, the movie theatres had all the newsreels from that invasion. My friend's brother made it home safe, but our little town did lose a number of outstanding young men.
The young people in those days had to take over for fathers, mothers, and older siblings who were off to the war, defense plants, or government jobs. Our school schedule revolved around planting and harvesting, with even little children helping out in the fields.
We also found it difficult to find people to operate the telephone
office. A friend in another town, whose husband had been gassed in
World War I, agreed to help out if we could get her to the veterans'
hospital to visit him. In those days, the operator lived in the office
building and someone had to be on duty 24 hours a day. So I also
became a telephone operator to help relieve our friend. This was
exciting when long-distance calls came through from New York or San
Diego and I would have to announce from where the call was coming. But
the most exciting part was when I received the message that World War
II officially was over, and I got to ring the fire siren to alert the
whole town.
In late May, Don Bass edited the message traffic into an op-ed essay sent to several newspapers for Memorial Day. This essay, along with the full text of the above messages, is archived on the Armadillo gopher (accessible through the State Electronic Library, through the TENET gopher, or directly at chico.rice.edu port 1170).
Contributions to the WWII electronic oral history project (especially interviews by K-12 Texas students) are encouraged. Messages can be sent to Armadillo in care of Texas Libraries at info@tsl.texas.gov.
In Bass' words, "What is very interesting is that educators are using Armadillo-watch to learn and practice behaviors, ones which are expected of our students - working in teams, problem-solving, experimentation, and using information technologies. We are even getting around to teaching these skills to our students.
"We are still not certain what the OPA coins are, but they sure started something worthwhile."