The Home Fronts of Iowa, 1939-1945

Introduction

1 Introduction Her heart turned over: how could there be this ridiculous talk of war when little boys in all countries collected stones, dodged cleaning their teeth, and hated cauliflower? —Jan Struther, Mrs. Miniver (1940) “Iowa,”a journalist wrote in early 1940,“is in a piece of pie at the potluck dinner given by the Ladies’ Aid Society at Pleasant Hill Methodist Church.” Iowans liked to describe themselves in such simple terms, as fair, helpful, democratic, generous, simple, almost quaint. The writer continued, “There’s plenty to eat at the Pleasant Hill Potluck Dinners. There are more than 60 people at the dinner this noon. They take their loaded trays, with a cup of dark and steaming coffee, and sit around the room beneath the temperance posters.”1 This was Iowa at its typical best before the war, consisting of comfort, caring, and consensus. Phil Stong, in a widely read“state biography” published in 1940 titled Hawkeyes, also described the state’s citizens in terms of food, as “good, rich, Iowa mayonnaise.” Stong believed Iowans belonged to “a good and practical land” and that they had settled in “an integrated and sympathetic society.”2 These popular images of the greatest food-producing spot in the world illustrated an idealized Iowa, yet Iowa was much more than a potluck. The years before the war were certainly confusing ones for Iowa’s citizens, as they were for the rest of the world. In many ways, 1940 was “the catch year.” Farmers were caught within increasing government 2 The Home Fronts of Iowa, 1939–1945 involvement and their dependence on it, along with added mechanization , yet they still embraced an agrarianism of the past. Laborers were caught within a fear of losing status and control in a mechanized world short on resources yet yearned for respectability, stable jobs, and strong unions. Merchants were caught within enlarging marketing areas and specialization yet longed for the power and simplicity of the Main Street of the past. Employed women and housewives were caught within increasing responsibilities and independence along with expanding paid and volunteer work roles yet were unsure of their futures because, as historian Susan M. Hartmann describes, the perceived role for women was still as wives and mothers, and married women remained responsible for the physical and psychological maintenance of the home. Hartmann calls this emphasis on the sanctity of the home “the unshaken claim of the family.”3 Iowa’s people before the war seemed to be caught within their social and economic circles; they were not yet able to move forward to the complex modern world brought on by the approaching total and technological war, nor were they able to move back in time, thought, or action to their pleasant ideological pasts. “What lay ahead was not simply another war,” historian Richard Ketchum notes.“It was a global revolution, and when it was over—no matter how it turned out—the possibility existed that there would be no turning back to the tried and true, to the good old days we had known before the Depression.” Iowan Henry A. Wallace had also concluded in 1940, “The good old days are not coming back. We are going on into a new world with a determined will to make it a better one.”4 Families would serve in this new world in large numbers, both before and during the Second World War. By November 1940, six brothers from the Patten family of Odebolt, Iowa, were serving on the battleship Nevada in the same section, the boiler division. Gilbert,Allen, Ray, Clarence , Marvin, and Bruce Patten received assignments to the same ship after obtaining special permission, and before their volunteer enlistment they playfully posed for a photo spelling their last name in semaphore figures. Two other Patten boys, Ted and Bick, were still waiting to pass the age requirements for enlistment at that time. In late 1940, George and Frank Sullivan of Waterloo, from another large family, approached the end of four years of duty in the navy and were stationed on a destroyer in Pearl Harbor.5 Introduction 3 The Pattens and the Sullivans were just two of the many American families filled with worries, wishes, and fears that these young men would need much more than luck in this volatile world fast approaching what would be the most devastating war ever. Prelude to War v฀1939 The storm clouds of war...