From the Annals of WWII Detroit

[Richard]

Detroit's closest chance at the Olympics? From Oct. 30, 1939 NY Times. With war broken out in Europe, Tokyo at war with China and having given up the Olympics to Finland who was now a month away from invasion by the Soviet Union, Detroit appeared to be next in line. Mayor Reading was excited, Frederick Matthai not.
Attachment 41134

During the war years Detroit had a baseball team made up of military members that reportedly could have competed with the best of the national teams,they were dissolved at the end of the war as service members transferred to different duty stations or were discharged.

[Lowell]

This cartoon from Jan. 9, 1944 caught my eye. Substitute the word "war" for "Covid" and it is as relevant today as it was back then. It's a bit ironic in that Congress is represented as a woman when, as far as I can determine, only seven served the four plus war years, a couple filling out terms for dead husbands. The cartoon is more relevant today when the new 117th congress will have 135 women.

[bust]

Was Congress ever a woman?
Even after emancipation?
Accountable for their support:
This giant male mess!

[Richard]

This cartoon from Jan. 9, 1944 caught my eye. Substitute the word "war" for "Covid" and it is as relevant today as it was back then. It's a bit ironic in that Congress is represented as a woman when, as far as I can determine, only seven served the four plus war years, a couple filling out terms for dead husbands. The cartoon is more relevant today when the new 117th congress will have 135 women.

Depicting a maid coming in to clean house.

They could not put a male there,because men are not maids that clean houses.Even today.

[Lowell]

Think we're burning through money and piling up debt to defeat the pandemic. Check out this borrowing and spending from Jan. 1944.

[Jimaz]

I had no idea there was such controversy over slicing bread!

Sliced Bread and the Second World War

[13606Cedargrove]

Interesting video about bread. Perhaps off-topic, but a friend of mine grew up in Prague, of what was then Czechoslovakia, during WWII. The Nazi's followed the "stale bread" rationing technique, too. Only day-old bread could be sold following the rationale that if the bread was a little stale, you would eat less.

[Crystal]

I live in Livingston County in a subdivision that was a golf course up until the start of WWII. Here’s a newspaper article from 5-25-1944.


Former Prisoners Of War Work At Four-Lakes

Government Is Hauling Sod to Fort Wayne to Cover Parade Grounds

Approximately thirty Italian workers, former war prisoners, who have been sworn into a special service unit of the U. S. Army, are taking sod from the Four-Lakes golf course to Fort Wayne, Detroit, where the parade ground is being sodded. The Four Lakes sod was recently purchased by the Godwin Sod Farm, and presumably was resold to the Army.

The Italians in the special service unit seem intelligent, and are polite and courteous. On man was formerly a professor in an Italian college. A spokesman for the group says the men long ago gave up Fascism, feeling that Mussolini had betrayed Italy. Some of the men were taken as prisoners a few years ago by the British, and were later turned over to the United States.

Mrs. Stephens states that the war time let-up in golfing prompted the sale of the golf course sod. Perhaps after the war, it will be ready for use again.

[Lowell]

From today 1944. Detroit's Joe Louis as an Army grunt.

[Don K]

IDK, I'm pretty lefty, and I've read about the plans for the invasion of Japan, mostly because I've developed an interest in Japan's history, and I agree on net that the nukes saved lives, both American and Japanese, and civilians as well among the Japanese. Much more morally problematic in my mind is the firebombing of Japanese cities earlier in 1945, which incinerated more than 100,000 civilians.

[Bigb23]

After reading the history of WWIII 2034 with Wired magazine, I really worry about China. They have a Navy comparable to ours. They think they own the South China Sea, despite the Philippines and Vietnam claiming otherwise. I hope they choke on cheap crap shipped to our dollar stores.

https://www.chinauncensored.tv/china...iotic%E2%80%9D

[Lowell]

Spring is coming in 1944, where my current reading is, and its time to plant your Victory Garden. Amazingly, 22 million of them. The picture is this article gives on advice on reusing fats in cooking before finally turning them in for industrial use.

Click the image to make it larger for reading.

[rickbak]

During the war years Detroit had a baseball team made up of military members that reportedly could have competed with the best of the national teams,they were dissolved at the end of the war as service members transferred to different duty stations or were discharged.

WTF does this even mean?? If this ain't a Russian trying to talk about a sport they don't know dick about, I don't know what is.

[Lowell]

Spring 1944. The Allies are prevailing in every theater of the war. The end is in sight and a return to normalcy an auto production is foreseen as shown in the ad by Detroit's Revere Copper and Brass, Inc. where 'seedlings' of vehicles are being planted.

What is slightly ironic is how few of those will survive the fifties. Only seven labels exist today.
Click/tap image for larger view.

[Lowell]

May 1944, D-day minus 15 and strikes continue in spite of the war. I'm still amazed at the number of strikes that went on in spite of the war, often over minor disputes, including the intra-union affair in what became know as the Soda Pop War.

"We must restrain ourselves and our hotheaded brothers today. If we do not, there will be no union after the war. Restrictive legislation, worse than anything on the books, will be enacted."

These words, heard by all U.S. labor, had particular pertinence to burly Rolland Jay Thomas' own union. U.A.W., largest union in the U.S. and at times the most ungovernable, was halving wildcat trouble again last week. Seven U.A.W.-organized Chrysler plants [[11,700 employes) stopped making guns, plane and truck parts. Basis of the dispute: whether A.F. of L. or C.I.O. truckmen should deliver soda pop to the plants. Unioneer Thomas promptly ousted 15 officers of a U.A.W. local for participating in the "soda pop war," instructed his men to ignore picketlines.

Detroit had need of such toughness. It was the heartland of a new flurry of strikes which extended from the Pacific Northwest lumber industry to a toolmakers' plant in Rhode Island. Detroit itself was almost without bread as the result of a walkout of 1 ,000 bakery drivers. In nearby Saginaw, Mich., 2,800 workers were out in three Chevrolet plants, as a result of a fight over a no-smoking rule. Usually mild Charles Erwin Wilson, president of vast General Motors, said Detroit was approaching "industrial anarchy."
http://content.time.com/time/subscri...778153,00.html

[Jimaz]

... I'm still amazed at the number of strikes that went on....

It's important to remember that unions were far more ubiquitous then than they are today. It was considered a cost of doing business.

But you knew that.

Thanks for these reports, Lowell.

[bust]

Unions are still powerful in some countries, where strikes are still common.
I don't know enough to speculate why, and the contexts are different.

[Lowell]

Memorial Day 1944 - Strikes continue in Detroit, again over intra union squabbles. As study released earlier in the same week revealed that the number of strikes had increased every year since the war's start.

[Jimaz]

There are a lot of old WWII films on YouTube on the PeriscopeFilm channel.

[Meddle]

Freep blurb:

Historian uncovers unknown details of lives of 1943 Detroit riot victims

Detroit Free Press|2 days ago

He was one of the 34 people who died during the 1943 riot in 24-hour, bursting-at-the-seams, Arsenal-of-Democracy Detroit. Minding his business, waiting for a streetcar at Mack and Chene, McKissick, 56,

https://www.freep.com/story/news/loc...ms/7525715002/

[Henry Whalley]

Freep blurb:

Historian uncovers unknown details of lives of 1943 Detroit riot victims

Detroit Free Press|2 days ago

He was one of the 34 people who died during the 1943 riot in 24-hour, bursting-at-the-seams, Arsenal-of-Democracy Detroit. Minding his business, waiting for a streetcar at Mack and Chene, McKissick, 56,

https://www.freep.com/story/news/loc...ms/7525715002/

One needs to pay to read that story.

[Henry Whalley]

Unions are still powerful in some countries, where strikes are still common.
I don't know enough to speculate why, and the contexts are different.

Taft-Hartley [[1947)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taft%E2%80%93Hartley_Act

[Henry Whalley]

...including the intra-union affair in what became know as the Soda Pop War.

IIRC, that war eventually was settled by the Detroit Partnership crime syndicate.

[Lowell]

Two Detroiters appeared in today's [1944] NY Times. Hank Greenberg, who served in WWII longer than any Major League player, appears in China where he played a role in the recent first B-29 raid on Japan that struck the Japanese main islands for the first time since the 1942 Doolittle Raid.

Edna Rucker, Rouge foundry worker, appears with NY Mayor LaGuardia, as a co-winner of the "Miss Negro Victory Worker" contest.

[Henry Whalley]

Fascists were thick as flies then as now. They reviled Greenberg who was battling their Axis soul-mates.