Remembering the year 1944 in 2004

By WILLIAM H. STEWART
Military Historical Cartographer

Sixty years ago when Saipan was invaded President Franklin D. Roosevelt had less than a year to live. Harry S Truman was the little known Vice President of the country and a man that few people had ever heard of. Gold was $32 an ounce; television was unknown to all but a few; there were no supermarkets or shopping malls; no interstate highway system and no credit cards to list only a few conveniences we take for granted today. The thoroughbred Pensive won the Kentucky Derby that year. Joe Louis was still the Heavyweight Champion of the World and Martin Marion of St. Louis was voted the most valuable player in the National League. Hal Newhouser of Detroit won the honor in the American League. Army won over Navy in football and West Point’s “touchdown twins”, fullback Felix “Doc” Blanchard and halfback Glen Davis were soon to be commissioned. The St. Louis Cardinals won the Pennant in the National League, the St. Louis Browns won the honor in the American League with the assistance of “one arm” Pete Gray. The Cardinals beat the Browns in the World Series 4 games to 2.

On Saipan Cardinal outfielder Inos Slaughter, then with the 58th Bomb Wing, played ball before 15,000 troops using bomb crates as seats while Japanese soldiers hiding in the caves and hills of Saipan would sneak out and watch the game from a distance.

Separated by war for long periods with no certainty of reunion, wistful love songs expressed everyone’s emotions and reminded lonely married couples and lovers “Night and Day”, “I’ll Be Seeing You”, “As Time Goes By”, “I’ll Get By”—that someday it might all be over.

For some, the mysterious—hoped for—protective power of some unique, intensely personal good luck charm was carried to ward off harm.

Ronald Reagan appeared in the movie “This Is The Army.” Bing Crosby was singing, “Going My Way” while Ingrid Berman starred in the movie “Gaslight” and Ethel Barrymore played in “None But The Lonely Heart.” Frank Sinatra started a new radio show and Lauren Bacall had her first move role with Humphrey Bogart in “To Have and Have Not.” Miss Venus Ramsey from Washington D. C. won the Miss America crown and Army became the National College Football Champion.

The Berlitz School of Languages advertised: “Language Is A Weapon—In every branch of our war services men who speak another language are gaining advancement. And when peace comes in every part of the globe Americans will be in charge of reconstructing a war—ravaged world.”

By 1944 there was absolutely no doubt of the fact that America was going to win the war. Another advertisement headlined, “Inventors—Postwar America will need your ideas” while still another read, “Finish High School at Home In 2 Years.” It was a time when eyeglasses cost $2.95 and dentures $7.95. A pulp paper back western magazine was priced at 5 cents and one could buy 6 Cokes for a quarter. Lucky Strike cigarettes changed the color of their cigarette package from olive drab to white at the start of the war and decided not to change the color back again for a market that repelled against G I issued green.

In 1944 there were no air conditioned homes, no frozen food, polio vaccine, automatic toasters or television sets that anyone could afford. Many people had “ice boxes” to keep food preserved, stocked every few days with blocks of ice delivered by the ice man in a horse drawn wagon.

In little more than one year after the conclusion of hostilities in the Marianas, an island that few had ever heard of only a few years earlier, America’s soldiers, sailors and airmen would be released from service by a grateful nation, presented with discharge papers and a lapel pin affectionately referred to as “a ruptured duck.” Then travel home to the old job or a new one, to resume married life or take a wife, to wait impatiently for the automobile manufacturers to re-tool for the domestic production of Packards, the Nash and DeSoto, Fords and a wide range of other famous cars, many now just a memory. After having life’s goals and dreams interrupted by the war, time was short to plan for a house financed by the Veterans home loan program, finish college under the G I Bill or start a family and participate in one of the greatest migrations in American history. The mass movement from crowded cities to green suburbs, from southern states to the north and from the United States east to the west coast. America was restless and on the move. We have been moving ever since. In little more than a year after the invasion of Saipan the war was won. America changed and everyone in it had changed forever. Nothing would ever be the same again.