The Forgotten Generation: American Children and World War II

3. Kid Salvage

3 Kid Salvage † † † † † † † † † † † † † † † † † † “Victory Gardens Help” Grow vim, vigor, and vitamins Arm the Nation with food and health Relieve transportation burdens Decorate the home and landscape Educate in morale and self-sufficiency Nail the lie that United States youth is soft Supply canned goods for soldiers. —Education for Victory (July 1942) † † † † † † † † † † † † † † † † † † “How many bullets will this make, mister?” the little boy inquired as he handed over his beloved toy train set. The advertisement embellished already emotional scrap drives with its sentimental copy: “Sacrifice isn’t a thing you can weigh in pounds or count in dollars. It is measured in the brave little gifts of children.”1 And every child was expected to sacrifice in the nation’s all-out campaigns for scrap material—tiny babies were to give up rubber pants, little girls were to give up rubber dolls, and young boys with polio were to give up old rubber tips from crutches. Every child could and should participate while also encouraging, even demanding, that adults do their share too. Why? Because the United States desperately needed the raw materials to conduct an industrial war. The scrap drive contributions made by children—the “scrappers” who composed a 30-million-member army—became a story of individual initiative , cooperative ingenuity, and team creativity, but beneath the nostalgic story of little heroes sacrificing on the home front remained some serious concerns about adults’ demands of time, strength, and endurance 40 41 Kid Salvage on particularly young children. A legacy of hard work endures for the generation who grew up during the Second World War, but the guilt lingers on as well: Am I working hard enough? Early in the war, the Atlanta Constitution, expressive of many adult versions of scrap drive efforts, described the nation’s youth as “anxious to serve.” “It is a truism of the times,” the Atlanta editorial began, “that total war demands participation of every American citizen.” The newspaper praised “the cooperation of young people” but also compared America’s children to the Nazis’: “The youth of Germany helped Hitler rise to power. Now the youth of America have an opportunity to help this country and our allies crush that power, that force which has set the globe in flames.”2 At first the scrap efforts were creative yet piecemeal events. But as the war progressed, many more coordinated events, focused campaigns, enthusiastic competitions, and innovative drives were conducted on national and local levels to collect not only raw resources for war munitions but also to grow fruits and vegetables as part of the Food for Freedom campaign. Even for children, military terms and motivations characterized these projects, such as the 1941 Armistice Day “War against Waste” in which teenage girls from the New York City Children’s Aid Society sewed discarded apparel and flour sacks into useful clothing.3 Early in the war, these campaigns emphasized reclaiming efforts, but as the war intensified, most of the effort shifted to recycling raw materials for industrial warfare. The historian Bruce Smith, author of The War Comes to Plum Street, offers in his memoir the traditional viewpoint of the scrap drive efforts: “The Boy Scouts, 4-H clubs, community groups, and service stations all participated in this effort as housewives gave up their aluminum pots and pans, kids searched garages and trash areas for old tires and inner tubes, and everything from bedsprings to sewing machines to engine blocks accumulated at designated collection points.” Often “a carrot” would be dangled in front of the children who participated in these community drives such as for an “enterprising group” of Indiana kids, who received free movie tickets for their 930 pounds of collected rubber items.4 Now that the scrap drives have taken on a sentimental, patriotic, almost heroic cast, it is easy to forget that these sometimes fun and often creative efforts went toward the very real and even desperate need to make bullets, bombs, tanks, jeeps, ships, and airplanes. Looking back, the campaigns appear quaint yet necessary. Although the cooperative efforts certainly elevated wartime morale, historians now question whether this scrap material was ever effectively used for the war effort; at the time there seemed to be little doubt. As Herbert Agar wrote in Parents magazine in 1942, “The way to win the war was for everyone to feel some responsibility. Even the 42 The Forgotten Generation youngest child can have the feeling that he has an...