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CAF Red Tail Squadron Inspiring New Orleans Students, Public Day on May 25

On Wednesday, May 22, Rise Above, a traveling exhibition sponsored by the CAF Red Tail Squadron rolled into the New Orleans Lakefront Airport to begin four days of inspirational and historical lessons for local students and the general public.

The main attraction is a 30-minute film that uses the story of the Tuskegee Airmen to inspire young people to “Aim High, Believe in Yourself, Use Your Brain, and Never Quit.” It also details the story of the restoration of an original P-51C Mustang. Groups from local schools like Dibert Community School, The Academy of the Sacred Heart, and Samuel Green Charter School have been able to learn how the Tuskegee Airmen overcame numerous obstacles to fly in combat missions during World War II and earn 96 Distinguished Flying Crosses.

The National WWII Museum’s own Red Ball Express mobile outreach program is on-site at the Lakefront Airport with WWII artifacts, uniform reproductions and children’s activities. Students have the opportunity to wear reproductions of the gear of a Tuskegee Airmen or Rosie the Riveter and pose with a backdrop of iconic propaganda posters.

Vehicles on-site include a fully restored, flight-ready P-51C Mustang and a 1941 GMC CCKW truck. These vehicles honor the service of African Americans both in combat roles and in the vital supply chains such as the Red Ball Express that kept the Allied armies moving forward.

The event is FREE to the public on Saturday, May 25 from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm. New Orleans Lakefront Airport is located at 6001 Stars and Stripes Boulevard.

The Lakefront Airport Rise Above event is sponsored by the Commemorative Air Force (CAF) of Midland, Texas and The National WWII Museum, and is presented locally by Flightline First.

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Memorial Day at The National WWII Museum

This Memorial Day, we highlight the artifacts, images and stories in our Collection that honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice in one of the world’s darkest hours. Visit www.mymemorialday.org for more information.

Monday, May 27, 2013

9:00 am – 5:00 pm
Special Exhibit – Remember Them: Memorial Day Stories from the Collection of The National WWII Museum

10:00 am
Marine Corps Band
Louisiana Memorial Pavilion

10:30 am
Memorial Day Ceremony
Louisiana Memorial Pavilion

1:00 pm – 2:30 pm
Presentation — “From Their Fathers: Children of POWs Share Stories and Artifacts”
Stage Door Canteen

2:30 pm – 3:00 pm
The National WWII Museum’s Victory Belles
Louisiana Memorial Pavilion

3:00 pm
Memorial Day National Moment of Silence & Bell Ringing Ceremony
Louisiana Memorial Pavilion

Worker Wednesday: SS Frederick Douglass launched

Although this blog series, Worker Wednesday, was conceived with the Higgins Industries employee publications (Eureka News Bulletin and The Higgins Worker) in mind, today we’ll look to the Northeast. On 22 May 1943, the SS Frederick Douglass was launched in Baltimore. The abolitionist Douglass had, himself, worked as a ship caulker in Baltimore before his escape from slavery. Frederick Douglass III, grandson of the ship’s namesake was among the guests at the ship’s launch.

Office of War Information photographer Roger Smith documented the construction at Bethlehem-Fairhope shipyards, which employed over 6,000 African American workers at the time. The entire series can be viewed at the Library of Congress. The SS Frederick Douglass would be sunk just four months later by the German submarine, U-238. The British recue ship Rathlin rescued all seventy aboard (forty merchant seamen, twenty-nine Armed Guard, and one female stowaway!).





Post by Curator Kimberly Guise.

Executive Order #9346: Remembering Our Nation’s Commitment to Equality During World War II

May 27, 2013, marks the 70th anniversary of Executive Order #9346.  If you don’t know this EO, you are not alone.  While it is often overlooked by World War II historians, the Order is very important in civil rights history and reflects President Franklin Roosevelt’s concern over the morale of African Americans and their role in defense mobilization.

President Roosevelt issued EO #9346 to reconstitute and expand the power of the Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC).  This wartime agency was initially established in June 1941 after civil rights and labor leaders threatened to march on the White House to protest lack of training and employment opportunities for African Americans in U.S. defense industries. Executive Order #8802 issued June 25, 1941 established the FEPC as a commission to encourage defense industries to train and hire African Americans, but it really had no legal enforcement.  Facing a backlash from conservatives and industry leaders in 1942, Roosevelt placed the FEPC under control of the War Manpower Commission, effectively taking away its independence and any strong agenda. The dire labor shortage of 1943, however, presented Roosevelt with a rationale for giving the FEPC more power.

EO #9346 issued in May 1943 gave the FEPC a renewed independence, and greatly enlarged its ability to promote fair hiring practices.  The order created twelve new regional offices that were to implement operating agreements with all twelve War Manpower Commission offices.  Field staff in each of these regions worked with local labor and civil rights leaders to document and resolve cases of discrimination in local war industries. Although the fair hiring campaign was technically voluntary, the FEPC staff used negotiations, pressure and appealed to the patriotism of business leaders to enforce fair employment from the summer of 1943 through the fall of 1945.

A segregated work gang at the Pennsylvania Shipyards in Beaumont, Texas. The FEPC documented cases of discrimination in US defense industries and appealed to defense companies to offer employment and training for African American workers. Photo by John Vachon. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

An Expanded FEPC

The expanded FEPC had a significant impact nationally in getting business to train, upgrade and hire African Americans. The FEPC’s efforts at the Consolidated-Vultee aircraft plant in New Orleans are one of its greatest achievements nationally.  In this case, the FEPC pushed for greater employment opportunities at the plant on the New Orleans lakefront that manufactured PBY Catalina airplanes, used in multiple-roles and the most numerous of its kind during the war.  The FEPC staff, local labor leaders and the New Orleans Urban League negotiated with War Manpower Commission and Consolidated-Vultee industrial relations personnel to successfully implement a training and hiring plan.  

Throughout the last two years of the war, the Consolidated-Vultee plant in New Orleans worked with the FEPC in training and integrating black workers. In 1944 alone, the proportion of African American workers at the plant jumped from 2 to 18 percent, and job titles increased by 27 percent.  Although entry wages were only fifty to sixty cents per hour, the opening of semi-skilled and skilled positions represented a gain for black New Orleanians, most of whom were women virtually shut out of most skilled trades in defense industries.

The hiring legacy of Higgins Industries is more well-known and celebrated than Consolidated-Vultee.  Andrew Jackson Higgins was a man well-ahead of his time in his hiring philosophy.  In 1942, Eleanor Roosevelt cited Higgins’ commitment to training and hiring black and white workers in New Orleans on a 50-50 basis.  In recent years, Higgins has been praised for employing skilled black and Asian workers. However, the very conservative AFL trade union insured that Higgins Industries would only hire skilled black carpenters, and not in any metal trades, which the union reserved for white workers.  So whereas Higgins had great vision for the potential for modern hiring practices, AFL leaders insured that segregation on the shop floor would be maintained with the exception of wood-working.

The record of American defense industries’ hiring practices during World War II is a story that presents both of examples of civil rights success and resistance from the status quo.  As such, the history is like many other aspects of the war that are complex and sometimes not pretty.  The United States was still a largely segregated society during the war, and today we praise the field staff of the FEPC and business leaders like Andrew Jackson Higgins that had the vision to promote equality and fairness in the workplace

Women riveting at the Consolidated-Vultee Plant in Nashville, August 1942. The Consolidated-Vultee Plant on the New Orleans lakefront increased its African American workforce during the war after careful negotiations with the Fair Employment Practice Committee during the summer of 1943. Photo by Jack Delano. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

The Legacy of EO #9346

The legacy of Executive Order #9346 is great, and its impact should not be overlooked. The expansion of the FEPC helped to build a strong network of civil rights leaders who were committed to insuring a more equal society well into the post-war period.  Even though the FEPC was dismantled in 1945, these networks of FEPC staff, civil rights and labor activists, church leaders and military veterans served as a the foundation for modern civil rights leadership.  The FEPC also set a precedent for the passage of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission established under President John F. Kennedy to insure that non-whites and women had legal basis for fighting wage and hiring discrimination at a time when both were still prevalent.

Ultimately, EO #9346 represented a commitment to equality that makes the United States a great nation.  Roosevelt upheld the Four Freedoms as an example of what was at stake in fighting this international conflict.  When the all-out war mobilization effort guaranteed everyone a job from 1943-1945, EO #9346  attempted to insure that non-whites had a stake in building the arsenal of democracy. As we celebrate the accomplishments of America during World War II, let us not forget EO #9346 and the nation’s dedication to an equal society.

Negro Training Defense Center, Southern University, 1941. The FEPC helped initiate training programs in defense industries like this one here at Southern University. Courtesy of the National Archives

Charles Chamberlain, Ph D is president of Historia LLC, and the author of Victory At Home: Manpower and Race in the American South during World War II (University of Georgia Press, 2003). Dr. Chamberlain is a regular lecturer at The National WWII Museum.

70th Anniversary – The Ox-Bow Incident

Released on May 21, 1943, The Ox-Bow Incident was not only one of Henry Fonda’s favorites of his films, it was also the last film he made before enlisting in the US Navy. The Ox-Bow Incident was nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards in 1944, an award taken home by Casablanca instead.

What We’re Watching – The Counterfeiters (2007)

We continue our series on WWII films with a movie we will be screening at the Museum on Thursday, May 23, The Counterfeiters.

View all of our “WWII in the Movies” posts here.

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Thursday, May 23, 2013
6:00 pm – 7:45 pm
Film Screening – The Counterfeiters (2007)
The Solomon Victory Theater

Winner of the 2007 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, The Counterfeiters is the true story of the largest counterfeiting operation in history, set up by the Nazis in 1936.

Salomon “Sally” Sorowitsch is the king of counterfeiters. Arrested and imprisoned, Salomon and a group of professionals are forced to produce fake foreign currency under the program Operation Bernhard.

Faced with a moral dilemma, Salomon must decide whether his actions, which could prolong the war and risk the lives of fellow prisoners, are ultimately the right ones.

Free and open to the public. For more information, call 504-528-1944 x 229.

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Hogan’s Heroes at the Museum



Meanwhile back at the Museum…. we wrapped up our series Hogan’s Heroes Happy Hour, in the line of related programming for our special exhibit, Guests of the Third Reich: American POWs in Europe. Over the course of five weeks, we followed 10 episodes of the television sitcom, which aired from 1965-1971. With over 160 episodes to choose from, it was difficult to select two each week. During its primetime run, Hogan’s Heroes was very popular with children and its slapstick routines brought laughter every time. This proved true also during our month-long series, as one devoted family showed up every week (despite baseball schedules!) for more laughs.

The television show and its comic treatment of the subject of captivity under the Nazis, was and is still highly contested. We heard polar opposite opinions on Hogan’s Heroes and its merit—from the child of a former POW who recalled watching his dad’s favorite show to the child of a former POW who recalled that his dad did not find the show the least bit funny. Regardless of one’s opinion on the show’s value, it is undeniable that the series brought the subject of Allied POW’s experiences in the hands of Germany back into the public eye.

During our Monday night series, we screened ten episodes of the classic series, spanning all of its six seasons. It was tough to pick a favorite.  The episodes that we screened are below:

Week 1: “The Informer” and “Hold that Tiger”

Week 2: “Tanks for the Memory” and “Happiness is a Warm Sergeant”

Week 3: Colonel Klink’s Secret Weapon” and “Sergeant Schultz meets Mata Hari”

Week 4: “War Takes a Holiday” and “Monkey Business”

Week 5: “The Pizza Parlor” and “Get Fit or Fight”

We hope to continue this series, weather-permitting outdoors, in the fall. Stay tuned for more from Stalag 13. We have 155 more episodes to choose from.

What are some of your favorite episodes? What episodes would you like to see on the big screen?

Post by Curator Kimberly Guise and Education Coordinator Lauren Handley.

70th Anniversary – Pontiff Appeals to President

“Your Excellency,” begins Pope Pius XII’s letter to Franklin Roosevelt dated May 18, 1943. “Almost four years have now passed since, in the name of the God the Father of all and with the utmost earnestness at Our command, we appealed to the responsible leaders of peoples to hold back the threatening avalanche of international strife and to settle their differences in the calm, serene atmosphere of mutual understanding.”

The Pope’s August 1939 appeal for a serene atmosphere of mutual understanding could certainly not be established after Nazi boots crossed into Poland the very next month. In his May 1943 letter, Pope Pius relates, with bitter taste, the tidal wave of destruction, despair and disorder that was then washing over the world.

It is in the same letter, the leader of the Catholic faith prays that Roosevelt understands that a bombardment of Rome would undoubtedly dislodge from human civilization the “many treasured shrines of Religion and Art,” that were housed within the city.

This appeal to effectively make Rome an open city failed. Roosevelt was not deaf to the Pope’s question of Rome and the Vatican, reassuring the Pope that bombing efforts would be concentrated upon military targets: “[if] it should be found necessary for Allied planes to operate over Rome, our aviators are thoroughly informed as to the location of the Vatican and have been specifically instructed to prevent bombs from falling within Vatican City.

Rome was eventually declared an open city by her defenders in August of 1943, after the Allied bombing campaign had ceased. The city was captured by the Allies in June of 1944.

The copious correspondence between President and Pontiff would continue after the Allied bombings of Italy, ending with Roosevelt’s untimely death.

Members of the Canadian Royal 22e Regiment in audience with Pope Pius XII. Library and Archives Canada image.

Posted by Ryan Casalino, Interactive Content Intern.

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Meet the Author – Robert Edsel presents “Saving Italy: The Race to Rescue a Nation’s Treasures from the Nazis”

Thursday, May 30, 2013
5:00 pm Reception | 6:00 pm Presentation | 7:00 pm Book Signing
US Freedom Pavilion: The Boeing Center

When Hitler’s armies occupied Italy in 1943, they also seized control of mankind’s greatest cultural treasures. As they had done throughout Europe, the Nazis could now plunder the masterpieces of the Renaissance, the treasures of the Vatican, and the antiquities of the Roman Empire.

On the eve of the Allied invasion, General Dwight Eisenhower empowered a new kind of soldier to protect these historic riches. In May 1944 two unlikely American heroes — artist Deane Keller and scholar Fred Hartt — embarked from Naples on the treasure hunt of a lifetime, tracking billions of dollars of missing art, including works by Michelangelo, Donatello, Titian, Caravaggio, and Botticelli.

With the German army retreating up the Italian peninsula, orders came from the highest levels of the Nazi government to transport truckloads of art north across the border into the Reich. Standing in the way was General Karl Wolff, a top-level Nazi officer. As German forces blew up the magnificent bridges of Florence, General Wolff commandeered the great collections of the Uffizi Gallery and Pitti Palace, later risking his life to negotiate a secret Nazi surrender with American spymaster Allen Dulles.

Saving Italy brings readers from Milan and the near destruction of The Last Supper to the inner sanctum of the Vatican and behind closed doors with the preeminent Allied and Axis leaders: Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and Churchill; Hitler, Göring, and Himmler.

Robert M. Edsel is the author of the non-fiction books, Rescuing Da Vinci and The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History, as well as the forthcoming book Saving Italy, to be published in Spring 2013. He is the co-producer of the documentary film, The Rape of Europa, and Founder and President of the Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art. In January 2012 George Clooney announced he would write, direct and star in the film version of Mr. Edsel’s book, The Monuments Men.

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WWII Wedding Gowns

The World War II years challenged civilians from the Home Front to war-torn Europe to do without many things for the sake of victory. The war also encouraged creativity to fill the gaps left by rationing and the ravages of war. These wedding dresses are a testament to the inventiveness of women tying the knot during the lean war years, and are beautifully made with materials such as parachute silk and mosquito netting.

Myrtille Delassus’ Parachute Silk Wedding Gown:

Myrtille Delassus was seventeen when the Germans invaded her hometown of Merville, France. She spent four long years waiting in ration lines, cold and perpetually hungry. She could hear the Allied invasion of Normandy and, like many others, welcomed British and American soldiers when they arrived in Merville.

GIs were generous with their surplus supplies, and one soldier, Sgt. Joseph Bilodeau of Corinth, New York, often gave items to Madame Cocque, the owner of a dress shop across the street from where he was stationed. One evening, Madame Cocque invited Sgt. Bilodeau to dinner to thank him. Since it would appear inappropriate for her to dine alone with him, she invited Myrtille, who worked in her shop. Myrtille and Joseph enjoyed each other’s company and started dating. They were married six months later on October 15, 1945, at the church in Merville.

Myrtille’s wedding dress was made from a silk parachute by the women in Madame Coque’s dress shop. It features a classic silhouette with a double-rouched bodice and medium length train.

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Joyce Adney’s Parachute Silk Wedding Gown:

Joyce Adney and Adrien Reynolds met at a dance at Utah State University, where Joyce was head of the student USO and Adrien was training to be a radar operator. The newly minted marine made quite an impression on Joyce. She later recalled, “After we had gone through the receiving line and had punch, we went into the hall and we danced together all evening. He walked me home and I went in and told my roommate I had met the man I was going to marry.”

Adrien and his detachment shipped out with the 4th Marine Division to invade the island of Saipan on June 15, 1944. Once combat ended nearly a month later, Adrien and his fellow marines found several unused Japanese cargo parachutes while clearing caves. He sent one of the parachutes to Joyce for safekeeping.

Adrien was discharged shortly after his participation in the bloody Battle of Okinawa. After stopping home in New Orleans, he immediately went to see Joyce, who was working towards her master’s degree in Detroit. “I went out to the airport, and it had been almost three years since I had seen him. He was the last one off the plane wearing his dress blues, and he melted my heart into a little puddle.” Little did Joyce know that in the pocket of those dress blues was her engagement ring.

Due to the continuation of rationing, Joyce opted to have her wedding gown made from the Japanese parachute silk Adrien had sent home. Joyce’s mother, living in Utah, made the gown by hand. Joyce would wrap strings around herself to measure her waist and bust, and then send the strings to her mother, who would then lay the strings out and sew the fabric accordingly. Adrien’s father contributed as well, making heart-shaped tins for their five-tier cake. The couple was married March 27, 1946, and remained so for the rest of their lives.

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Dinner with a Curator

Toni Kiser presents “War Time Weddings”
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
6:30 pm – 8:30 pm
The Stage Door Canteen at The National WWII Museum

June has been a traditional month for weddings since the Middle Ages. This June, Toni Kiser, Assistant Director of Collections & Exhibits/Registrar, will talk about WWII-era weddings. Learn how many brides still managed to have gorgeous gowns and delicious cakes, despite the rationing of silk and sugar. Hear a few stories of love that kept men and women going through the war, and see the artifacts related to these love stories and weddings.

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70th Anniversary: ENIAC Contract Signed

The individual units of the ENIAC were rewired manually in order to run a new program. ABOVE: Programmers Gloria Ruth Gordon (Bolotsky) and Ester Gerston wire the right side of the computer according to the program specifications. Photo: US Army from archives of the ARL Technical Library, courtesy of Mike Muuss.

On May 17, 1943, the U.S. Army signed a contract with the University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School of Electrical Engineering to develop a computer for its Ballistics Research Library.  Known as the Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer, or ENIAC, it was the first all-electronic computer, its creation marking the beginning of modern computing.

Unlike its well-known predecessor, the British Colossus built solely for the purpose of code breaking, the ENIAC was the first computer developed for general purpose.  Calculations that once took mathematicians three months to perform could now be completed in mere seconds.  Although it was finished in 1946, too late for wartime ballistics calculations, the ENIAC was used instead to model nuclear chain reactions during the Cold War development of the hydrogen bomb.

In the 70 years since the inception of the ENIAC, computer science has changed dramatically.  Where microprocessors in today’s computers can complete over 177 billion operations per second, the ENIAC could perform just 5,000 simple calculations in one second.  Modern microprocessors are tiny and fit in palm of your hand; the ENIAC was a mammoth machine weighing 30 tons and spanning 80 feet.  While current microprocessors use about 30 watts of electricity, the ENIAC gobbled up over 170,000 watts and was rumored to dim the lights in the city Philadelphia when it was switched on!

Despite their vast differences in size, speed, energy use, and programmability, the early computers developed for the war effort paved the way for modern computers.  The legacy of the ENIAC is evident 70 years later, as the rate of technological innovation rapidly increases and computers are an integral part of daily life.  It makes you stop and wonder, where will we be in another 70 years?

Post by Annie Tête, STEM Education Coordinator

“Dambusters” Strike Germany

Eder Dam on 17 May 1943. German Federal Archives image.

On May 16-17, 1943, No. 617 Squadron RAF (later dubbed the “Dambusters”) targeted dams with the intent of flooding the Ruhr region of Germany. The mission was reported a “limited success” with casualty reports ranging from 1,268 to 1,600 plus (over 1,000 of these were alleged to be Soviets in German labor camps). The initial effects on factories, mines, water production and hydroelectric power were short-lived, but the impact on food production was felt well into the next decade.

Ten of the 19 “Dambusters” returned from the mission. Four of those would not survive the war.

Möhne Dam after the attack. German Federal Archives image.