Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 2, 1992 TAG: 9202020081
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
ROANOKE GETS DOWN TO THE BUSINESS OF WAR
IN THE DAYS and months after Pearl Harbor, Roanokers looked to the skies and feared air raids. And they also began to feel the effects of the war on the home front.
Three days after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Robert P. Saville enlisted in the Marines at the odd hour of 2 a.m.
There was an explanation for such heroism. Saville was a baker and didn't get off his shift until that hour. The Marines kept their Roanoke recruiting office open all night in those chancy, uneven days after Dec. 7, 1941.
No one took Saville's picture at that hour of the day, but recruits who signed up in the daytime often were pictured in the newspapers.
When a reporter asked Mrs. C.F. Hostetter about the events of Dec. 7, she said with some surety: "I think we should have whipped the Japs a long time ago."
She and Saville vanish after their appearance in the old Roanoke World-News - then an afternoon paper in good health.
Fifty years ago, in the days after Pearl Harbor, Roanoke and the rest of the country began to have a near-obsession about air raids.
People looked at the night skies, remembering the Nazi bombing of London. Soon, there would be air-raid wardens, solid citizens in old World War I helmets walking their beats self-consciously.
Schoolchildren were given serious instruction in the handling of incendiary bombs that never came.
And there was often something antic about it.
"Sporadic bombing is not impossible in this area," newspaper editor William B. Smith said on Dec. 11.
The next day, Sydney F. Small, another community leader, was saying that the main danger to domestic stability in Roanoke would be spies, sabotage or the fifth column.
Later in the war, this theory would fit in well with the slip-of-a-lip-may-sink-a-ship approach to proper conduct on the home front.
"I don't think we need to bother about a blackout now," Small said.
Even later, a military man would suggest that bombing was a probability.
Certainly, the new powder plant on the New River near Radford was a military target. Local security types guarded the bridge across the river at Radford against sabotage, but no enemy agents or bombs ever came.
A lot of Roanokers tended to smirk a little when air raids were mentioned. They probably would do the same thing today.
The days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor were days dominated by triple-decker streamer headlines in the Roanoke newspapers - sometimes telling it a little better than it actually was.
Even small boys read these headlines, expecting some overnight miracle that would end the Japanese peril and get the world back to the way it was.
Victory over the Japanese was years away, and the world would never be the way it was.
There were sudden heroes - like the Marines on Wake Island who messaged the world: "Send us more Japs."
Later, the Marine commander, his men beaten and bloody, would get some immortality by messaging: "The issue is in doubt."
There was Army Air Corps flier Colin Kelly, who stayed with his plane after ordering the crew to bail out. Later, the tale of Kelly's heroism would be debunked by some, but he belongs always to those anxious days after Dec. 7.
Not all of the news was bad. Right after that awful Sunday in early December, workers at American Viscose, also known as the silk mill, got a raise: 5 cents an hour for men and 3 cents an hour for women.
Part of American Viscose's big Roanoke operation - workers and old-timers always pronounced it "Viscoe" - lives on in buildings still standing in the Roanoke Industrial Center in the southeast part of the city.
And from the papers and the headlines of those dangerous times, you can get an impression of solid citizens, mad as hell and united - united but still hoarding sugar when there were rumors of rationing.
There were pictures of young men in flight helmets and scarves, ready to toast the Sky Blue Lady of the Clouds and drive the Japanese menace from the face of the Earth.
There were shocks from unknown quarters. The government would ration automobile tires - the newspapers keeping careful account of how many were rationed and to whom.
The same was true of cars and would later be true of meat, shoes, sugar, clothing, girdles and hose and, more noticeably, gasoline.
There would soon come a radical time when the traditional suit with two pairs of trousers was no more and cuffs on the trousers were forbidden.
Things were changing on the home front. The girl in the Kroger advertisement started wearing a World War I helmet.
There was a new federal tax sticker for automobiles. America would win the war, but in the weeks after Pearl Harbor, loyal citizens found their government had put the glue for these stickers on the wrong side.
There was more confusion. Judging from the number of stories in the newspapers, Roanokers were anxious almost to the point of hysteria as to when the first ration books would arrive in town.
The books finally came. Or that's what everybody thought. The boxes contained applications for ration books.
The Salem Theater offered some confusing entertainment. On stage that month was Rosa Lee, billed as a "lovely dancing darling." On the screen was a movie called "Tell Your Children."
Men and women were "admitted together" at midnight - a procedure that was not explained further.
The air-raid syndrome continued. Sandbags appeared at the end of the Municipal Building that housed what would be known eventually as Civil Defense.
Tires became dearer and the possible targets of thieves. The local Firestone dealer branded its rationed tires with the initials of the owners.
That month, Dr. Frank Longaker of Roanoke College warned that the war might come to Roanoke in a time of "unspeakable terror."
The newspapers painted the windows in the building black for air-raid drills.
A military man, with a theory that wandered somewhat, said Roanoke was more likely to be bombed in the daytime.
Draft age was 21 to 44, and privates got, as they used to say, $21 a day once a month. Soon, mothers who didn't raise their boys to be soldiers would say goodbye to them at age 18.
If you were 1-A after a physical exam, you went into the service. If you were 4-F, you didn't and you felt bad about that.
There was a song: "He's 1-A in the Army and A-1 in My Heart."
Up in New Jersey, a man invented a wooden automobile tire. It did not solve the rubber shortage.
The fact that the war was now serious business was stressed by the death of an FBI agent - killed as he tried to arrest two Army deserters in Abingdon.
The names of servicemen killed in action began to sprinkle the papers and next of kin dreaded the telegram that was delivered to their doors.
On Christmas Eve, the World-News said in an editorial: "We shall not succumb this Christmas Eve or any other day."