The Front is Right Here
Even the entertainment on the Homefront reminded people that the war was still there. Movies showed us heroes in uniform, songs reminded us of loved ones far away, and even cartoons ridiculing Hitler kept our attention focused on the war. Children learned to distinguish styles of planes and tanks while playing.
Television was virtually unknown at the time of the war. Families gathered about their radios for both entertainment and news of the war. They wrote frequent letters to loved ones far from home and waited anxious weeks for answers. So many letters were being written they would have taken too much room on the ships needed to transport supplies. The government photographed the letters, saved them on microfilm, and reprinted them when they reached the states or the front. These reprinted letters were known as V-Mail.
Rationing was a very big part of how the people on the Homefront did their part in WW II. Rationing was begun in 1942. It often seemed everything was rationed. People learned to use alternatives or do without. For the most part they knew their sacrifices were less then those suffered by their 'boys' in the service.
Many on the Homefront remember horsemeat being sold as an alternative to beef. Organ meats weren't rationed so many children had to learn to eat liver. New recipes were developed by housewives who learned to make do without things like sugar, butter, and eggs.
Every house had to have blackout curtains. When civil defense drills were announced houses must make sure every window was covered and no light showed through. A warden checked to make sure every house was totally blacked out.
People living nearer the coasts had to regularly practice air raid drills. The drills could come in the middle of the school day or in the middle of the night.
Businesses changed overnight from manufacturing consumer goods to war production. Automobile factories began making Jeeps, tanks, and artillery shells. In Janesville, Wisconsin they not only sent men to serve in every branch of the Armed Forces and women to volunteer as WACs, WAVEs, USO workers, military base hostesses and nurses, but the citizens took an active role on the Homefront. GM's Oldsmobile division made artillery shells, Parker Pen made fuses, Janesville Cotton Mills manufactured bandages, Gilman Engineering made machines to make
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