LIFE1936-1948

February, 1938, was a bleak time in America. Unemployment was 19% and President Roosevelt reported that one million jobs a month had been lost in each of the last three months. In this article on the WPA (Works Progress Administration) LIFE asks the question, “Where will it end?” One can only imagine what went through the minds of America’s army on unemployed when LIFE stated, “The likeliest answer is that it will never end.” “Authorities say that the modern industrial machine never has needed and never will need all the nation’s workers to tend to it.” LIFE believed that, “Work Relief may be capitalism’s best answer to the problem of unemployment.” By 1938, the WPA (created in 1935) had built 19,272 bridges, killed 24,099,607 rats, and erected 660 stadiums including the Louisiana State University football stadium. Three years later, in 1941, LIFE was proven dead wrong about employment as America’s businesses geared up for the war. And by 1942 America was experiencing a severe labor shortage when men were called into the service.

These peaceful scenes of Tarawa belie the horrific battle that took place four months before on this central Pacific coral atoll in late November, 1943, between Japanese forces and US Marines. The Battle of Tarawa was the next major offensive in the Pacific after Guadalcanal. Heavy US naval bombardment and carrier-based bomber strikes were largely ineffective against the dug in Japanese. The use of amtracs to move troops on the beach was found to be effective and was put to good use in later engagements. The Marines lost one thousand killed and over 2,000 wounded as they fought their way to victory through hundreds of pill boxes, heavy artillery and tanks. It was critical that the US take Tarawa to set up forward air bases to support operations across the mid-Pacific, and they did. The Japanese lost over 4,500 defenders.  Not one of Tarawa’s 3,000 residents was killed during the battle since the fighting took place on just one heavily fortified island.  Today Tarawa has about 32,000 residents in this densely populated group of islands in Micronesia. “Bloody Tarawa” is another heroic chapter in US Marine Corps history.

This cover of LIFE features new coed fashions for 1939. In the meantime, a historic event took place when President Roosevelt invited a reigning British Monarch to set foot on American soil for the first time. With Europe on the brink of war Roosevelt moved to strengthen ties between the two democracies and foster a closer relationship. This signaled the dawn of a new era of friendship and cooperation between Britain and America. A new Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan was elected, James Colescott from Terre Haute, IN. His tenure did not go well. He displayed Nazi sympathies and added fuel the Detroit Race Riots in 1943. The IRS slapped a lien of $685,000 on the Klan in 1944 and it was dissolved. Actress Katharine Hepburn’s sister, Marion, is shown marrying “a Harvard man.” They remained happily married until her death at age 68. And Henry Ford II, the crown prince of Ford Motor Company is captured doing laundry for the Yale crew team during his junior year. In six short years he was named president of Ford…it’s nice to see a hardworking young man get ahead in the world. He is best remembered for firing Lee Iacocca who then moved to Chrysler to lead its’ resurgence.

Hal Roach Studios teamed up with Dictator Benito Mussolini’s eldest son, Vittorio, to create a new film company in 1937. The Dictator provided $5,000,000 for the venture and Roach took the bait. Hollywood was outraged and forced Roach to back out of the agreement with the Facists. Vittorio fled to Argentina after WW II but later returned to Italy and died in Rome in 1997. LIFE also reported on the first “mixed” jury ever to sit in a New York City courtroom that included women. Jurists felt that the “deliberative skills” of women were lacking and only 23 states allowed women to serve on a jury in 1937. Chuck Williams, Captain of the University of Southern California football team, is on the October 11, 1937, cover. The Trojans went on that year to post a lackluster 4-4-2 record.

Barely three months after Pearl Harbor America was looking for some good news and they found it among this group of newly minted war heroes. As we read the exploits of the men cited in the above Roll of Honor it is clear that their bravery was achieved while American forces were often overwhelmed early in the war. And no hero electrified America more than Lt. Butch O’Hare who shot down five Japanese heavy bombers with his Grumman Wildcat fighter. As the lone available fighter in the air to protect the aircraft carrier Lexington, O’Hare was suddenly faced with a V formation of nine Japanese heavy bombers heading straight for the Lexington. He charged his fighter into their midst, shot down five, and badly damaged a sixth. The Lexington was saved and O’Hare landed his plane safely back on it, although he had to dodge a wild burst from one of the Lexington’s own anti aircraft guns as he landed. O’Hare was awarded the Medal of Honor for his daring. He was shot down and killed in November, 1943, near the Gilbert Islands. In 1949 Orchard Airport in Chicago was renamed O’Hare Airport and hundreds of thousands of Chicagoans turned out for the ceremony.

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Lustron Homes were decades ahead of their time. Imagine a combination dish washer/clothes washer and all outside surfaces, including the roof, made of steel and covered with baked enamel! The inside walls were made the same way, and the inside doors were pocket doors. The radiant heat came in at the top of the walls, but the warmth never made it down to the floor which was on a concrete slab.  To escape our apartment on the south side of Chicago not far from the steel mills, my parents purchased a Lustron in 1950 and we had it erected on 2 1/2 treeless acres in Crown Point, IN. It arrived on a truck that looked like a car carrier and was put up in a few days in December, 1950. The company fell into bankruptcy soon after we moved in and the truck remained in front of our house for six months. Every time the wind blew…a common occurrence on the Indiana prairie…chains hanging from the truck rattled. Lightening storms were especially frightening since out all steel house was the highest point in the area, but we were never struck. My mother did witness a tornado plow up the field across the street. We escaped the Lustron 3 1/2 years later when we moved to Lake Bluff, IL.

In late 1948 The Chinese Communists were sweeping their way to victory and defeated and captured 400,000 Nationalist troops in Mukden. This was the beginning of the end for the Nationalists and they capitulated in May, 1950, thus ending the Chinese civil war that began in 1927. Mukden, now called Shenyang, became famous in 1931 when junior Japanese officers blew up a section of Japanese owned railroad and blamed Chinese dissidents. This provided the pretext for the Japanese annexation of Manchuria. Featured on the cover of the Nov. 8, 1948, LIFE is Helena Carter. She made a few B movies and faded into obscurity by the early 1950’s.

Imagine flying on A Pan American Clipper from San Francisco to Honolulu, Midway, Wake Island, Guam, Manila and Singapore in the fall of 1941…several weeks before Japan launched all out war in the Pacific including the bombing of Pearl Harbor! Clair Boothe Luce’s trip captures for the last time this Pacific area just before the Japanese unleashed their fury. Luce describes the beauty of the Pacific, the preparation for war with Japan, the fading hope for peace, and a glimpse of the lives of lonely, soon to be doomed American military. “Give us another six months and we’ll be ready” they tell Luce in Manila. On the flight with Luce is Sir Alfred Duff-Cooper who on his way to lead British Empire defenses in Singapore. His ineffective leadership caused him to be sent home from Singapore in just a few weeks. Thus he avoided being captured by the Japanese and he and his wife spent the rest of the war living in one of London’s finest hotels.

So-called “budget” furs were being introduced in 1940 including this wolverine coat on the cover…it never caught on. By late 1940 the shipyards of England and Germany were in a desperate race to build the most ships. If Germany had been successful in their bombing of the shipyards of England and Scotland they would have won the Battle of Britain. The Germans were focusing on submarine construction to sink the ships. With the loss of the French navy to Germany, England came very close to losing the race. But Hitler was setting his sights on Russia and under appreciated the impact that submarine warfare was having on British control of the sea. Meanwhile, in New York Harbor, the world’s largest and fastest liner, the Queen Elizabeth, had it’s luxury interior ripped out and refitted with long bunk rooms to be used as a troop carrier. In March, 1940, the ship was sneaked out of England to New York.