world war II | Author Suzanne Adair

Operation Pied Piper: the Evacuation of British Children

Posted on June 21, 2016 by suzanneadairJune 21, 2016

Relevant History welcomes back Mary Reed aka Eric Reed, pseudonym for Mary Reed and Eric Mayer, co-authors of the John, Lord Chamberlain, mystery series set in 6th century Byzantium. Murder in Megara, the eleventh entry, was published in October 2015 by Poisoned Pen Press. The Guardian Stones, a World War Two mystery set in rural Shropshire, England, appeared in January 2016 from the same publisher. To learn more about them and their books, visit their web site and blog, and follow them on Twitter (Mary and Eric.)

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This past month or two the news has been full of reports of evacuations from wild fires or floods, but they pale by comparison to the voluntary evacuation of about twenty percent of British children on the very eve of World War Two. Other evacuations occurred later, but this was the first event of its kind and the largest mass movement of civilians carried out in the UK.

Ministry of Health poster 2 Planning for the event had begun in May 1938 as it became increasingly obvious the outbreak of hostilities was inevitable. Hansard, the official record of the proceedings in Parliament, reported work on the task in hand 2 February 1939. During a House of Commons debate on air raid precautions, in response to a question from the MP representing a Tyneside town, the Lord Privy Seal stated plans were then in preparation for evacuating Newcastle-on-Tyne and Gateshead schoolchildren.

Newcastle-on-Tyne being my (Mary) birth city, naturally I was interested how the situation was handled there, and details will serve as an example of arrangements put in hand all over the country.

Dress rehearsals
Staggering logistical problems faced those organising the nation-wide evacuation of children as part of the unfortunately-named Operation Pied Piper.

Just how complex these plans were can be gleaned by perusing “Evacuation of Civilian Population from Newcastle and Gateshead In The Event of Emergency.” The document was sent in mid-August 1939 to local authorities in Newcastle-on-Tyne and Gateshead by the London & North-East Railway, which was to carry out evacuation over the course of two days.

Schoolchildren accompanied by their teachers and helper-volunteers were to leave on the first day, with passengers on the second composed of what were termed special classes, these being predominantly mothers with children too young to attend school. Payment for evacuating trains was agreed between the railway and the Ministry of Transport.

To familiarise all concerned with what they should do and where they should go when the day arrived, a dress rehearsal was held in late August 1939 in the two cities.

The LNER booklet includes a chilling note that “Should hostilities begin before evacuation is completed the pre-arranged plan may require to be modified”. In the event, changes were not necessary but it was a close-run thing. The official order for evacuation to begin was issued in the late morning of 31 August 1939, and the first two days of September saw the removal of children from the two cities to rural areas of Westmoreland, Cumberland, Yorkshire, and Northumberland.

Only just in time: war was declared on 3 September 1939.

Even a glance at the LNER booklet provides a hint of the massive planning and coordination effort between local authority officials, schools, the police, railway personnel, and others needed to get children at risk away from Tyneside.

o District Evacuation Officers were made responsible for arrangements for the evacuation of schools in their specific districts. They were also to serve as liaison between individual railway stations and the schools being evacuated therefrom.
o Coloured armlets would identify the roles of those wearing them. Thus Newcastle-on-Tyne Evacuation Officers would wear blue armlets, and teachers white ones.
o All passengers were to be labeled or ticketed as proof they were permitted to travel on the evacuating trains.
o The railway’s Liaison Officers would have sole charge of entraining and would work with the Evacuation Officers when the official order to evacuate had been issued.
o Medical personnel were to be available at each station in case children become distressed.
o The public and mothers of the children evacuated on the first day were not to be allowed on the platforms during evacuation.

There must have been many tears at parting and in the temporary homes to which evacuees were sent. Their experiences were varied to say the least. Some met nothing but kindness, others were ill-treated, sometimes physically abused. Some who were homesick or unhappy at being sent away from their families absconded in an attempt to rejoin them, though others were reportedly relieved to be living away from their old homes due to bad conditions or neglect there. Indeed, a number of children arrived with less than the minimum of recommended luggage. Not every family could afford to send their children off with spare clothing, a warm coat, or even such basic necessities as a toothbrush and handkerchiefs.

Not all children were sent away
Ministry of Health poster 1 Many parents kept their children at home because they did not want to be separated from them. Another factor in their decision was the difficulty and expense of the travel needed for them to visit their evacuated children. Some evacuees were brought back when they fell ill or had accidents and older children who had contributed to the family income returned as they were still needed to do so.

In response to a question put to the Minister of Health on 1 February 1940 concerning how many unaccompanied children had returned to certain cities, the Minister reported a January estimate had noted that of 28,300 children evacuated from Newcastle-on-Tyne, 14,000 were already back in the city. There does not seem to be any comparable figure readily available for Gateshead, from which 10,598 children had been sent away, but in both cities 71 percent of eligible schoolchildren were evacuated.

Birmingham, another major industrial city, sent over 25,000 schoolchildren to safer areas. In The Guardian Stones, published as by Eric Reed, we introduced a handful of trouble-making evacuee children from Birmingham whose behaviour made them not particularly welcomed by the residents of Noddweir, a remote Shropshire village near the Welsh border. The second book in the series is now being written and will take Grace Baxter, one of the main characters in The Guardian Stones, to wartime Newcastle-on-Tyne.

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The Guardian Stones book cover A big thanks to Eric Reed. They’ll give away an ebook copy of The Guardian Stones to someone who contributes a comment on my blog this week. I’ll choose the winner from among those who comment by Friday at 6 p.m. ET. Delivery is available worldwide.

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Ordinary and Overlooked

Posted on April 12, 2016 by suzanneadairApril 12, 2016

M Ruth Myers author photo Relevant History welcomes M. Ruth Myers, who received a Shamus Award from the Private Eye Writers of America for Don’t Dare a Dame, the third book in her Maggie Sullivan mystery series. The series follows a woman private investigator in Dayton, Ohio, from the end of the Great Depression through the end of WW2. Other novels by the author, in various genres, have been translated, optioned for film, and condensed for magazine publication. She earned a Bachelor of Journalism degree from the University of Missouri J-School and worked on daily papers in Wyoming, Michigan and Ohio. To learn more about Ruth and her books, visit her
web site and blog, and follow her on Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, and Pinterest.

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Time constraints cause most survey history classes to focus on generals and royalty; statesmen; luminaries in the arts and sciences. Small wonder ordinary folks like most of us feel no connection to such distant people and see no link between their world and ours today.

That’s why I’m currently writing the fifth book in a mystery series about a woman private eye in 1930s and 1940s Dayton, Ohio. Yes, she carries a .38 and keeps a bottle of gin in her office desk like her male counterparts. But she lives in an all-woman rooming house, as was typical for America’s first-wave career women. She’s slighted because of her gender. When her bank account runs low, she eats sardines and crackers to stretch her money. In other words, she’s an ordinary person with worries much like our own, but living in times much different than ours. We can identify with her, yet the world she inhabits is just a bit exotic.

Her name is Maggie Sullivan, and I created her for two reasons.

First, I wanted to bring to life the American women of what’s widely known as the Greatest Generation, the generation that on the battlefield and at home was the lifeblood of World War II. Most movies and novels depict them as sweethearts left behind or as Rosie the Riveter, or dancing with GI’s at USO dances. In recent years, belatedly, and usually pegged to an occasion like Veterans Day, an article here and there recognizes the women who flew military planes from one base to another or performed similar auxiliary functions.

The women overlooked
Overlooked are the countless women who stepped into jobs on newspapers, in shops and offices, as cartoonists or university instructors to keep the country moving. During World War II, the number of American women working outside the home increased from 25% to 36%.

Unmentioned is the shortage of housing women faced as they flocked to cities to enable American factories to produce vital supplies. In San Diego, with its booming aircraft industry, many single women were forced to sleep in shifts in a single room. In Washington, D.C., both genders searched the obituaries in order to pounce on apartments that became available.

In Dayton, Ohio, young women who had trained as teletype operators arrived to work at what is now Wright-Patterson A.F.B. Shortage of barracks meant many had to live miles away in the city’s YWCA or in boarding houses where they shared a laundry tub and a kitchen in the basement, riding to their around-the-clock shifts in an unheated bus with hand straps and a few bench seats.

World War II women poster Housing was just one of the hardships faced by women whose husbands flooded into the military. If they wanted to live with their husband while he was in training, they’d find themselves sharing an apartment with another couple, or living in a lean-to, possibly with no bathtub. Nor were they always welcomed by locals. Two teachers from Missouri recall being called “low-down soldiers’ wives” and “damn Yankees” when they went to see their husbands at Ft. Knox, KY. The “rooms” they managed to find consisted of cots in the hall of rooming houses. When their husbands shipped out, women knew they wouldn’t see them again until the war ended—or they came home too badly wounded for further service. Because the military censored letters from men in uniform, the women at home didn’t even know the country where they were stationed.

Relatable history
My second goal in writing the Maggie Sullivan mysteries was to make history relevant by helping some of my readers recognize that people are still alive in their own families who, if not part of the Greatest Generation itself, have childhood memories of the 1940s or remember a parent or grandparent talking about that era. Readers can compare history with things in their own experience: rotary phones to cell phones; snail mail to real-time Skype conversation with loved ones in distant places; World War II rationing of food, clothes and other essentials to current day flag bumper stickers. If you have a female relative who did something interesting on the World War II home front, I invite you to contribute photos and share her story.

Through Maggie Sullivan and her friends on the home front, I attempt to show ordinary Americans, a typical Midwestern community, and American society itself, as they move from a sort of innocence in the waning years of the Great Depression into and through the reality of World War II. If I’ve done my job right, readers will be able to hear the click of heels on the wooden floor at McCrory’s five and dime and see people from all walks of life pulling together to support their fighting men. If I’ve done my job right, they’ll be able to touch history.

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Don't Dare a Dame book cover A big thanks to M. Ruth Myers. No Game for a Dame (Maggie Sullivan #1) is available free for Kindle, Nook, Apple, and Kobo. (Note: No Game for a Dame is an excellent read. I posted a five-star review for it on Amazon.) In addition, Ruth will give away a paperback copy of Don’t Dare a Dame (Maggie Sullivan #3) to someone who contributes a comment on my blog this week. I’ll choose the winner from among those who comment by Friday at 6 p.m. ET. Delivery is available in the U.S. only.

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Civilians and Internees During World War II

Posted on October 21, 2014 by suzanneadairOctober 24, 2014

Relevant History welcomes Norma Huss, who calls herself “The Grandma Moses of Mystery.” She’s a wife, mother, grandmother, (soon to be great-grandmother), and author. Her mysteries for adult readers are set along Chesapeake Bay, where she and her husband sailed for many years. Her non-fiction is a telling of her father’s youthful adventures in Alaska. YA fiction Cherish is a blend of generations, and needed a lot of input from the younger generation to ever appear. It’s a Halloween book that grandma and grandchild can enjoy together—each will learn something about the other’s teen life and “social media.” For more information, check her web site and blog.

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A young teen’s view of World War II
I had just turned twelve a month before that Sunday afternoon when we heard the news. My family sat in the living room around the wood stove, listening to the radio while my mother and I cleaned eggs with sandpaper brushes before they would be sold to city folks. My father relaxed before milking cows. My younger brother and sister played. The Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

Over the days ahead, we heard our president tell us we were at war. Since I lived close to the west coast, we feared the Japanese. (My husband, as a child in Pennsylvania, feared the Germans.) We had air raid drills at school, we covered our windows so light wouldn’t seep out, we bought savings stamps. My father took a first aid course and learned how to stop bleeding. My mother spotted planes.

One day at school, mimeographed sheets were given to the oldest child in the family. After the parents read the sheet, it had to be returned the next day. We were to watch and report any sighting of incendiary bombs. The Japanese were floating balloons carrying them across the ocean. The government didn’t want Japan to know a few had landed.

In a few months we received our ration books with stamps of different colors, one for every member of the household. On a Sunday, we heard over the radio what each color stood for. Red stamps were for meat and butter. Another color was for canned vegetables. Sugar was rationed, as were shoes and gasoline. Since we lived in the country, we grew much of our own food, including meat, so we used our meat coupons for butter. Since each person had the same ration of shoes, families with small children found it more difficult to manage keeping those growing feet shod. Gasoline rations were separate. Farmers received more than enough to run their tractors to keep food production up. The speed limit was reduced to 35 miles an hour, saving on fuel, but also reducing accidents caused by worn out tires. (Rubber for tires was in very short supply.)

Some of the products we see in our stores today began life as non-rationed goods to replace rationed items. Play shoes made without leather or rubber were soon available. They became quite popular, and, in some cases, necessary. Cake mixes, on the other hand, were a failure. They tasted awful. My mother was disgruntled that some companies were getting allotments of sugar to mix up something so useless. (The did improve with time, until, today, they are probably more popular than home made cakes.) Production of fake butter, called oleomargarine flourished.

Internment of Japanese residents
When the war began, we lived in an area largely populated by German immigrants. This was not a problem with us. The kids were our classmates and friends. Others accepted Italians as well. The people who lived with Japanese neighbors weren’t so benevolent. My aunt, who taught school near Seattle, told us a story, which may have been an urban legend before its time. She said a teacher asked a child what they would do if the government took the father away to a camp. The child supposedly replied, “Then my mother will light the candle on the roof.”

In any event, the Japanese families, over half of them American citizens, were moved completely out of California and the western half of both Washington and Oregon. (Less than 2,000 of the over 150,000 Japanese Americans in Hawaii were interned.) I later worked with two of the Japanese women who had been interned. One had been a child. She told me they asked the man of the family two questions. “Do you swear allegiance to the United States?” and “Will you fight against Japan?” Those who replied “No,” to both questions were kept in internment until the war was over, then sent to Japan. Those who replied, “Yes,” to both questions were released, but could not return to their own homes until after the war.

Of the two women I knew, the older one had been released with her family. During the war she worked for the government in Washington D.C. After the war, when her family returned to the Seattle area, they discovered the farm they had signed over to friends to “save”, had been sold by the supposed friends who left with the money.

The other woman’s father had been born in the United States of immigrant parents. He went to Japan to choose a wife and returned to farm in America where the children were born. He said, “Yes,” he was a loyal American, but “No,” he wouldn’t fight against his wife’s family in Japan. They stayed in the internment camp until the war was over, then returned to the Seattle area. The absolute worst, my friend said, was dealing with all the others in the camp who had said, “No, No.” They tried to turn her family against America.

The book, Cherish
My book for teens is Cherish (A Ghost Mystery). It’s a story that spans the centuries with today’s Kayla, and Cherish, a teenage ghost from 1946. Cherish, fifteen in 1946, would have lived through World War II, just as I did. But, just as I did, by 1946, a year after the war was over, she didn’t dwell on it. Others did.

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A big thanks to Norma Huss. She’ll give away a paperback copy of Cherish to someone who contributes a comment on my blog this week. I’ll choose the winner from among those who comment by Saturday at 6 p.m. ET. Delivery is available within the United States only.

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Face of the Enemy: Internment on Both Coasts

Posted on September 4, 2012 by AdminNovember 8, 2013

Relevant History welcomes Joanne Dobson and Beverle Graves Myers, co-authors of the historical mystery Face of the Enemy, released 4 September 2012.

A former English professor at Fordham University, Joanne Dobson is the author of the Professor Karen Pelletier mystery series from Doubleday and Poisoned Pen Press. She won an Agatha nomination for Quieter Than Sleep, the first book in the series.

Her novels have been widely reviewed, including in the New York Times. In 2001 the adult-readers division of the New York Library Association named her Noted Author of the Year.

Face of the Enemy is her latest title. For more information, check her web site.

Beverle Graves Myers is a Kentucky native who’s always loved stories and always asked “why.” She made a mid-life career switch from Psychiatry to writing. Her latest project is a collaboration with fellow mystery author Joanne Dobson. Face of the Enemy launches a series that follows New York City through the challenges and triumphs of World War II. Bev also enjoys mixing murder and music in her Tito Amato Mysteries set in dazzling 18th-century Venice. Her work has been nominated for the Macavity, Derringer, and Kentucky Literary awards. For more information, check her web site.

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For decades the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II was a barely acknowledged part of our national history. In February 1942, just over two months after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 that led to the relocation of some 120,000 “persons of Japanese ancestry” in internment camps for the duration of the war. Almost all were relocated from the West Coast, mainly from California.

More recently, however, this injustice has received the attention it deserves. President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1988, granting each survivor of the internment camps a sum of $20,000. On the fiftieth anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, President George Bush offered the internees a formal apology. Several relocation centers have now been designated National Historic Landmarks and are open for tours under the management of the Park Service, and many schools include the topic in the Social Studies curriculum.

In the entertainment world, there is even a new musical set to open later this month that follows a family relocated from Salinas, California to the wastelands of Wyoming. Allegiance stars George Takei as Sam Kimuro, an elderly war veteran trying to reconcile with his family and his past. As a boy, Takei and his family were actually interned at Camp Rohwer and Camp Tule Lake.

Before we began researching the early war years for the mystery novel that eventually became Face of the Enemy, we wished we could work something about the internment camps into our plot. But we’d made a commitment to follow New York City through the war years, and like so many, we believed that the relocation was confined to the West Coast. Were we in for a surprise!

Our first task was to construct a day-to-day timeline of events using back issues of the New York Times. We started with the week of the Pearl Harbor attacks, and one article from December 8, 1941 practically jumped off the computer screen. The front-page headline: Entire City Put On War Footing—Japanese Rounded Up by FBI. We quickly scanned the article and hunted for follow-up information. This is what we learned:

Throughout the night following the attacks, the FBI, assisted by New York detectives and plainclothes policemen, conducted the extensive round-up in a fleet of government vehicles. Most of those arrested (allowed to take only what they could carry) were transported to the Federal Building at Foley Square or straight to the Barge Office on the southern tip of Manhattan for transport to Ellis Island. A ferry, surrounded by Coastguardsmen with rifles and fixed bayonets, sailed back and forth all night. The well-planned, well-organized effort eventually cast a wide net over the city’s German, Italian, and Japanese residents. But the Japanese detention came first and was the most comprehensive. One man interviewed while waiting for the ferry to Ellis Island stated that he’d left Japan in 1917, graduated from New York University, and had lived and worked as a doctor in the United States for thirty-five years.

The Alien Enemy Hearing Board appointed by U.S. Attorney General Frances Biddle was sworn in right before Christmas 1941, and hearings quickly commenced. Some Japanese nationals of government interest or official status would be exchanged for Americans held in Japan. Most of the detainees were destined to be released, pardoned, or interned according the Board’s findings. People had to make their cases in closed session before the members of the Board with no legal representation present. Some ended up being held at Ellis Island for the duration, without familiar food, clean beds, or school for the children. A New York Times January 24, 1942 article describes the situation best, “For the time being New York has a concentration camp of its own.”

In Face of the Enemy, all this backstory sits on the slender shoulders of Masako Fumi, a brilliant avant garde artist married to a Columbia University professor of Asian history. Raised in Paris while her father was Japan’s ambassador to France, Masako has broken with her family and has not seen Japan since she was three years old. After she was picked up in the December 8th sweep, her troubles multiply: she is accused of murdering the art dealer who, due to public protests, was removing the paintings from her solo show. Is Masako guilty of murder? Or is she simply a victim of the prevailing racial paranoia?

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A big thanks to Joanne Dobson and Beverle Graves Myers. They’ll give away a hard cover copy of Face of the Enemy to someone who contributes a comment on my blog this week. I’ll choose the winner from among those who comment by Sunday at 6 p.m. ET. Delivery is available in the U.S. and Canada.

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Making a War Cake

Posted on February 21, 2012 by AdminAugust 7, 2014

Relevant History welcomes historical mystery author Sarah Shaber. She’s the author of the Professor Simon Shaw mystery series. Simon Said, first book of the series, won the St. Malice Press/Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery award. Louise’s War is the first book in her new mystery series set in Washington DC during World War II. The sequel, Louise’s Gamble, is scheduled for publication in May 2012. Sarah also edited Tar Heel Dead, a collection of short stories by North Carolina mystery writers. Sarah lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, with her husband Steve and an autocratic miniature schnauzer. For more information, check her web site, and follow her on Facebook.

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During World War II rationing was a fact of life. We’ve heard all about the shortages, ration books, and sacrifices made by Americans on the home front. But what exactly did it mean to make do with so much less of everything?

Of all the shortages that tested American tempers, food restrictions had the greatest daily impact. Butter, meat, canned goods, chocolate, coffee, eggs, and sugar were in short supply even before formal rationing began. Not just because the troops needed them, but because the government needed to conserve the fuel needed to transport these commodities.

Americans were accustomed to eating dessert every day, enjoying beef most nights for dinner, eggs every morning for breakfast, and consuming all the butter and coffee they wanted. Chicken and fish weren’t rationed, but at the time Americans thought of them as lesser sources of protein. Margarine and artificial sweeteners hadn’t been invented.

Sugar was the first item to be rationed officially, in May of 1942. A butter shortage followed shortly, and the average American cook wondered what in heaven’s name she was supposed to fix for dinner. New recipes crowded the women’s magazines and newspapers. Mashed potato, bacon and cheese casserole, macaroni and cheese, and Welsh rarebit became main dishes, much to the shock of those who wanted their roast beef or steak!’

Dessert might have been the hardest loss to take. The American housewife usually baked a cake, a pie, or cookies every single day. She was expected to keep making those cakes, pies, and cookies! And prune whip wasn’t an acceptable alternative.

Louise Pearlie, the heroine of Louise’s War, my World War II novel set in Washington, DC, missed her sugar and butter as much as anyone. She and her fellow boarders did have eggs, because they had chickens in the back yard, but otherwise they dealt with the same restrictions as anyone else, complicated by the fact that Dellaphine, the boarding house cook, had all their ration books and kept them under lock and key! Dellaphine didn’t cook on the weekends, except for Sunday dinner, so on a Saturday Louise often found herself in the kitchen baking one of the many war cakes from the recipes in Recipes for Today, the WWII ration cookbook published by the General Foods Corporation. It was a nice break from a long week working at the spy agency OSS.

I decided to bake a war cake myself, to see what it was like to cook with such meager ingredients, and especially, to see what a war cake tasted like! I got my recipe, called the One Egg Wonder Cake, from the same cookbook Louise did, and started with the same paltry ingredients. Flour, baking powder, vegetable shortening, one cup of sugar (could have used a half cup sugar and a half cup of corn syrup), one measly egg, and a little milk and vanilla. I added some maple syrup, cinnamon and raisins to make the “spice” variation. The batter was thin and unappetizing, only about an inch deep in the baking dish. Tasting the batter did not make me optimistic about the outcome of my experiment!

I baked the cake at 375 degrees for about 35 minutes. It came out of the oven golden brown, maybe an inch and a half high. I couldn’t frost it, of course. Louise wouldn’t have had enough sugar and butter to do that.

So how did it taste? Not half bad! It wasn’t as moist and rich as a “real” cake, but it wasn’t dry either. It tasted sort of like a spiced tea cake, and would have been good as an afternoon snack with milk or coffee, if there was enough of either to go around.

I’m sure Louise and her fellow boarders appreciated having this cake for dessert after a predictable meal of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, cabbage, and iced tea. I’m just as sure they’d rather have had brownies!

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A big thanks to Sarah Shaber. She’ll give away one hardback copy of Louise’s War to someone who contributes a comment on my blog this week. I’ll choose the winner from among those who comment by Sunday at 6 p.m. ET. Delivery in the U.S. and Canada is available.

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Did you like what you read? Learn about downloads, discounts, and special offers from Relevant History authors and Suzanne Adair. Subscribe to Suzanne’s free newsletter.