wartime home

[Joe50's]

not sure if this has been posted but found it iteresting http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3467851/1940s-obsessive-eats-rations-sleeps-air-raid-shelter-dreams-traditional-housewife.html
wouldnt mine the house it looks lived in and not like a staged museum. Not sure about practicing black outs and using an anderson regularly. but that would be an intersting idea to try for a dinner party

 

[1930artdeco]

Yes it was awhile ago. Isn't it amazing how people like this seem to be in England and not the US....At least not that I have seen, but I am sure I have missed them if they are here.

Mike

 

[Joe50's]

theres one home ive seen that was kept mostly 20's but thats it for my area

 

[Mr. Pickett]

I agree with the OP.

I'd love to leave technology behind and live in a dated home, but acting as though WW
II is still going on is a bit on the obsessive side.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Yes it was awhile ago. Isn't it amazing how people like this seem to be in England and not the US....At least not that I have seen, but I am sure I have missed them if they are here.

Mike

Americans don't romanticize the war the way they do in the UK, because it was a very different experience. Other than Pearl Harbor and a few desultory shells on the West Coast early on, there was no actual "war" on US soil, and it's kind of hard to romanticize the actual homefront US experience. What are you going to do, pretend to complain about not having enough sugar for your coffee which you also don't have enough of?

 

[Stearmen]

Actually, there were a few more attacks on main land USA. The one you sight, led to the famous Battle of Los Angeles the next day, which was used for the comedy movie 1941. June 21, 1942, the Japanese submarine I-25 surfaced in the mouth of the Columbia river, and shelled Fort Stevens with it's 140mm deck gun. The commanding officer of the fort was to afraid to shoot back because of the muzzle flash from their cannon. In turn, the Japanese managed to destroy a baseball diamond! September 1942, I-25 launched it's Yokosuka E14Y floatplane, Bombing Brookings, Oregon twice, with no effect. In 1997 the pilot Nobuo Fujita, was made an honorary citizen of Brookings. There were also the Japanese balloon bombs which did kill a pregnant lady and five Sunday school kids in Oregon, the only combat deaths on mainland U.S. soil. And of Course, German U-Boats were sinking ships off the Eastern coast and Gulf Of Mexico. I always heard that a U-Boat lobed some shells onto Louisiana, but I can't find any reference to that, maybe just an Old Wives Tale!

 

[LizzieMaine]

As I said, desultory incidents at best. The US suffered nothing to even begin to compare to the two months of steady overnight bombing of London. It was that period in 1940, more than anything else, that created the whole "Spirit of the Blitz" romanticization of the war that carries down to the present day in UK popular culture as the epitome of the classic "stiff upper lip" self-image that many there like to see in themselves.

The American wartime homefront experience was one more of anxiety over loved ones overseas and griping and complaining about shortages and inconveniences than of direct participation in the conflict. There's really not all that much there to romanticize -- more than a few people I knew growing up who had experienced the period as adults remembered it more as "a pain in the ass" than anything else. No romanticization at all -- it was just something that happened, and then it was over.

If any part of the homefront experience does get romanticized in the US, it's the "Rosie the Riveter" image, but that romanticization is of "Rosie" as an icon of feminism, not of the reality of what it was actually like to be a woman working in a factory in 1943. The college girl who gets a tattoo of Rosie on her arm doesn't necessarily have any interest in actually running a punch press in a precision-parts plant, or even in understanding the specifics of women's participation in wartime industry. Most likely she just likes the strength implied in the image.

 

[Joe50's]

in my area they do events/reinactments of the civil war and revolutionary war but when it comes to ww11 its usually just plane exhibit at the base as there wasnt much going on during the war in the states outside of manufacturing goods and the draft so no reason to romantisize . my grandfather manufactured bombs in st louis and acted like it was work as usuall and once the war was over went back to buidling homes whilst the uk was still recovering. i saw a clip on bbc once where it showed postwar chrome covered american cars with all their luxeries and then a ministry video on fashioning a hat out of a straining pot and cookery. also during the war the homefront was risky as on the night of the initial bombing ethe columbia market had a bomb go striaght down the air vent of the shelter and detinate killing and injuring many people who were urged to go there for safety and one family fled to brighton to escape the blitz and eneded up almost all dead within arriving due to a midnight bombing. very few civilians were lost in the states homefront compared to what was going on across the pond . its pictures like this of the day after the bombings on london make it clear why they romantisize the war more

 

[ChiTownScion]

Bear in mind also that rationing continued in the UK well after the end of the war. Meat rationing continued until 1954. As noted: we in the US suffered comparatively little next to what the people of Great Britain.

 

[Stearmen]

As I said, desultory incidents at best.

I thought I made that clear, by showing the only casualties were the Sunday School class?

 

[TimeWarpWife]

I'm willing to admit that I would find it almost impossible to live without my modern washer and dryer. That dolly tub looks like some kind of extra large butter churner that I don't think I'd have to muscle to work.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I'd actually be very glad to see a young gal with Rosie flexing a muscle on her arm. I'd loan her a copy of Eilzabeth Hawes' "Why Women Cry," a landmark feminist work written in 1943 by an an actual Rosie.

 

[five6seven8]

I don't know that I'd say people in the UK romanticise World War II, as much as that it left a very deep mark in our national subconscious; as a nation we haven't really forgotten it yet. My stepfather, for example, studied history at university and in his retirement is working on a PhD on the military logistics behind the D-Day landings. Which are fascinating when you get going because there was a decoy operation involved; half the troops who took part in the landings were hours of travel away the day before the attack, because the intention was to fool the Axis that the attack would be launched from a different point on the coast (it worked). All of those people and all that materiel then had to be moved in a single night to the actual launch point, all in the blackout and long before the advent of modern roads in England. The plans are astonishingly intritate and timed down to the second. It's one of those feats of unsung heroism that makes you think on a whole different level about what was important to the success or failure of the war.

My mother, for her part, was born on D-day itself and remembers rationing from her childhood. So it's very much a present thing for us Brits. And I've met more than one young lady with a Rosie the Riveter tattoo.

 

[Stearmen]

I don't know that I'd say people in the UK romanticise World War II, as much as that it left a very deep mark in our national subconscious; as a nation we haven't really forgotten it yet. My stepfather, for example, studied history at university and in his retirement is working on a PhD on the military logistics behind the D-Day landings. Which are fascinating when you get going because there was a decoy operation involved; half the troops who took part in the landings were hours of travel away the day before the attack, because the intention was to fool the Axis that the attack would be launched from a different point on the coast (it worked). All of those people and all that materiel then had to be moved in a single night to the actual launch point, all in the blackout and long before the advent of modern roads in England. The plans are astonishingly intritate and timed down to the second. It's one of those feats of unsung heroism that makes you think on a whole different level about what was important to the success or failure of the war.

My mother, for her part, was born on D-day itself and remembers rationing from her childhood. So it's very much a present thing for us Brits. And I've met more than one young lady with a Rosie the Riveter tattoo.

It's even more impressive when you realize, that it was originally planed for June 5th. Eisenhower had to cancel it, and then every thing had to start again the next day!