WW II Shaped Me for COVID-19

It was a different time. I won’t compare my childhood WW II years to COVID-19 today, but I do remember: shelter at home; shortages; united efforts; quarantine; racial discrimination; uncertainty.

I remember the darkness. My formative years from birth to six were in Des Moines. We lived less than a mile from the “War Plant.” (Solar Aircraft was a government-converted industry for wartime production.) During black-out drills we were isolated in our homes in total darkness at night for fear of being bombed.  Bombing in the middle of country?  That did not happen, but we did not know that then.  In the middle of a crisis, one does not know how things will turn out--when the war would end, or how. Mother put a tiny night light in our bedroom doll buggy so my sister and I wouldn’t be afraid of the dark.

Shortages.  Each family or individual was issued coupons for such limited supplies as butter, sugar and coffee. My Daddy ran a gas station. It was not a profitable time to run a gas station; petroleum was needed for the war effort.  People at home had to limit driving; they were issued gasoline coupons. Each night Daddy would bring them home; Marianne and I pasted them in booklets for him to turn in.

I remember the shortages and physical limitations, but I also remember being united under the leadership of FDR, a trusted president. President Roosevelt collaborated with allies and encouraged while he organized people at home. 

Entering kindergarten at age 5, I carried newspapers bundled together with string to school. School children collected scrap metal, and tin foil. (Recycling decades later would not seem strange.) We saved dimes in stamp books; $17.50 in dimes could be exchanged for a $25.00 War Savings Bond.

People planted  “Victory gardens.” This eased the burden of commercial farmers working to feed troops and civilians overseas. Fruits and vegetables were grown in backyards and on school grounds, and parks. By 1944 an estimated 20 million victory gardens produced 8 million tons of food.  (I think now of support for local organic farming and sustainable agriculture.)

Diseases did not stop for the war.  Before a vaccine for whooping cough became widely available, when I was 3 and my sister 5, Marianne, and I and our mother contracted whooping cough. We were quarantined inside our house for 10 weeks.  Mother almost died.  Daddy couldn’t come home. He did have two sisters in Des Moines. The health department put quarantine signs outside houses to prevent highly communicable diseases from spreading.  Though very young, I remember sleeping with a sheet over my crib with a humidifier providing steam for me to breathe. (Although widely considered to have been eradicated, outbreaks of whooping cough have returned in recent years due to not all people having their children vaccinated.)

But the war was the constant focus. An uncle and my older cousins served in the military overseas.  We listened daily to the news on our radio.

Yes, the United States came together. But not everyone.  I remember mother saying how upset she was that during time of struggle and sacrifice, there were people who made profits off the war. I learned early that during a time of crisis some will always look out for their own gain and gratification.

And there was racial discrimination. We were at War with two enemies, I heard as the “Nazis” and the “Japs.” One the U.S. described as Hitler’s German National Socialist Party, with the  swastika symbol. The other the U.S. described and symbolized as a “slant-eyed” people.  Japanese Americans were incarcerated in concentration camps. German Americans, such as myself, were not.

I was in first grade when the war ended.  I vividly remember VE Day and VJ day, WW II ending in Europe and Japan. We celebrated downtown in Des Moines.  (We knew little of the devastation of our atomic bombs.) And I remember, too, listening to the radio, and for the first time hearing news other than about the War. I recall being surprised. All my formative years I had not experienced anything but war news.  As a child I was not shielded; this was my reality, even though Mother kept the small light hidden in our doll baby buggy. What had I learned?  What shapes our lives?

But, of course, times were different then.  It may have been a different time; however . . .