December 19, 1942 - Saturday - 80 years ago today

 -- see the previous two posts for the earlier part of the story --

-- this post is two pages, click the Read More link at bottom for second page --

 Mary McLaughlin - Working in Boston, USO

After a year of college and another summer of working in the mountains, Mary's family needed her to go to work, and she found a job in downtown Boston. 

Mary:

My brother, Tommy, was born during my year at Lowell and my parents needed my help to bring in some money so I left school in the fall and went to work at Dun & Bradstreet in Boston.  A former neighbor of ours was the District Manager.  I began as a file clerk.  It was a hard job, but I liked working there.

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I remember December 7, 1941 very clearly.  I was at home wearing an orange corduroy dress.  It was Sunday and I was listening to the radio and heard a news flash that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands.  Sailors were instructed to get back to their ships.

From that time on everything changed.  We had been working our way out of the long Depression years and things were beginning to look encouraging.

On December 8 recruiting offices everywhere were mobbed with young men volunteering to fight.  There had been a draft for young men in which they served for a year.  There had been some complaining about it but now everyone was angry.  They also thought they could finish things up in six months!

Boston was a port, of course, so there had to be a blackout because German submarines had been seen a few miles off the coast.  Imagine the whole shopping district in complete darkness.  We also had blackout in Stoneham where I lived because it was only twelve miles from Boston.

A few days after the Pearl Harbor attack Germany declared war on the United States as Italy also did.  The three countries and their friends were known as the Axis Powers.

Everything went into the war effort.  Canned goods, meat, gasoline, tires, and shoes were some of the things that were rationed.  Everyone had a ration book with stamps to be used when trying to buy any of these things.  I say trying because they were very scarce.

People who had cars had to carry passengers when they drove to work, so they tried to find someone going their way.  I rode with a couple of groups and it was more fun that taking the trolley and the subway.  It was a lot quicker too.

As we have seen, there were only a few victories early in the war.  The home front suffered from the lack of good news.

Mary:

After the war started there were no victories for our side for years.  Every day we heard about ships being sunk and battles lost.  Boston had a  blackout and it was very eerie to try to shop after work.  You could hardly see your way around and all the stores had blackout curtains.  Many things were rationed and we all had ration books.  We were allowed three pairs of shoes per year, and points were used for certain foods, tires, gasoline, etc.

We were completely unprepared for war and it took a long time to get productive.  All women who could went to work in the factories and shipyards which ran twenty four hours a day.  My friends Irene and Colleen were attending college, but in the summer they worked at the GE plan in Lynn.

The men from Stoneham who were in the Army were sent with the 182nd Infantry to fight on the island of Guadalcanal in the South Pacific.  We heard awful stories about the battle.  They did get back at the end of the war, though.

It was a year into the war, and the United Services Organization (USO) was started in 1941 and worked to provide entertainment (and other services) for everyone serving in the military.  Here is a site that describes the USO in WW II: WW2-USO.

Mary:

One day as my mother was listening to the radio she heard a request for girls to join the USO to entertain servicemen and she suggested I go to see about it.  Janet Munro, a girl from my high school class, went with me to the Army and Navy YMCA in Boston and were interviewed.  They seemed happy to have us.

The Y had a pretty full schedule.  The first event we attended was a formal dance at the Somerset Hotel on Commonwealth Ave. in Boston.  There I met Doris and Phyllis Welch who became very good friends of mine.  We had a lot of formal and informal dances at the Y.  There were picnics at a lake in Canton on Saturdays in the summer.  We had swimming parties and a lot of card playing.  Going up and talking to people was still very hard for me, so the other girls would do that and then bring the guys to me to have their fortunes told.

 

NEXT POST: DECEMBER 23RD