Children on the Home Front: Paterson, New Jersey, in World War II

From the National Park Service's lessons on Paterson, New Jersey, an American World War II Heritage City.

Paterson's children took part in the war effort in many ways: through the Junior Red Cross, by collecting and making things for soldiers and for people in need overseas, by gathering scrap in material drives, and by raising money in campaigns such as the United Jewish Appeal. Local newspapers and one woman's memories show what that looked like.

The Junior Red Cross

In November 1944, Paterson's Morning Call reported that the Junior Red Cross wanted every pupil in the city's public, parochial and private schools enrolled during its November 1–15 membership drive. Nationally, the paper said, the Junior Red Cross had more than 18,000,000 members — about seventy percent of all schoolchildren — making it the country's largest youth organisation.

According to Mrs. Gordon L. Corbett, who chaired the Paterson chapter's Junior Red Cross, local members had made:

• utility bags and slipcovers for lap boards;
• slippers for convalescents and soft toys;
• kits with toothpaste, shaving cream and similar things;
• decorated menus used by the Navy around the world.

Pupils were still turning out goods for veterans' hospitals, where men wounded overseas were being treated.

The paper also reported that the American Junior Red Cross National Children's Fund was buying medical kits worth $87,500, to be shipped at once to schools in Yugoslavia, Greece, Belgium and other countries, with Paterson's schools taking an active part. The kits went to liberated and occupied countries through the International Red Cross in Geneva. Each was big enough to serve four hundred children and held about thirty items, such as aspirin, boric acid, scissors, soap and gauze. Junior members were also to pack gift boxes in their classrooms with some 10,000 school supplies for European children.

Junior Commandos and the scrap drive

Paterson ran its scrap and salvage drives through its air raid zones — the districts set up to organise civilian protection, which held drills, handed out information on blackouts and relied on volunteers.

In October 1942, the Morning Call reported that Clinton M. White, executive secretary of the New Jersey Salvage Committee, had praised the city's approach in a letter to Miss Sadye Fidler, who chaired the local committee. Instead of one big citywide drive, Paterson worked through its air raid zones and sectors, covering a small area each weekend. The committee believed this raised more scrap per person, if less spectacularly, and pointed to one zone where air raid wardens and commandos had collected 100,000 pounds from an area of 20 blocks.

White was especially struck that Paterson had organised its schoolchildren into Junior Commando units. Using children in the salvage drive, he wrote, had proved their patriotism and their eagerness to help win the war.

Raising money for refugees

The United Jewish Appeal, founded in 1939, raised money to help Jewish refugees in Europe and the United States. Paterson had a large Jewish community active in fundraising and the war effort, and the Morning Call carried a regular section on its religious life and organisations.

In May 1944 the paper reported that Paterson's Jewish youth were being mobilised for the coming appeal, which faced an unprecedented target for relief, rescue and rehabilitation overseas and for two score religious, cultural, civic, health and welfare agencies. Speaking to youth groups, Mr. Bornstein and Mr. Wollruch said young people knew the plight of Jewish children in Nazi-occupied Europe, and that the children who had found safety would rebuild their lives with the money raised. Paterson's young people had done well in the previous year's campaign; this year, they were told, they would have to work twice as hard.

In March 1943 the Paterson Evening News reported that the city's Jewish Council had also pledged its organisations' full support to the Red Cross drive.

One girl's war: Dolores Davidson Most

Dolores Davidson Most, born in 1929, grew up in Paterson during the war and later became one of the city's first female police officers. In an interview recorded by Paterson Great Falls National Historical Park, she remembered:

• Her father's war job. He went to work at Wright's as a polisher. The pay was much better, and there was fruit on the table that had not always been there. After the war he went back to the railroad.
• The Red Cross. As a pupil at School 15, she worked at the Red Cross on Market Street two or three afternoons a week after school. She also brought work home: she and her mother sewed baby booties and knitted.
• The Junior Commandos. In seventh and eighth grade, a patrolman, Mr. Keypers, started a Junior Commando group at her school. She was captain of the girls; Joe Esposito was captain of the boys. Once a month the paper announced a collection, and people left scrap paper at the curb; on other Saturdays they collected scrap iron, even hauling bedsprings out of basements. Mr. Keypers used the money to buy war stamps for the children's books — $18.75 in stamps bought a war bond, though she did not remember ever getting one. What she did remember was the treat afterwards: a hot dog and a chocolate milk at Libby's on McBride Avenue.
• The victory garden. The Paterson Victory Garden Committee urged every household to grow something, even a few tomato plants. Her father grew so many tomatoes that he gave them away to the neighbours — and broke out in a rash from eating them.
• A week as a "farmerette". For a short time she was driven by flatbed truck from City Hall to work on a farm, bunching kohlrabi, a vegetable she had never heard of. She came home badly sunburned, was given only water to drink although the farmer had a cow, and lasted about a week before her mother, seeing her sick, put a stop to it.
• Nights at home. Her father was an air raid warden who went out with his hat and whistle, calling to people to pull down their shades. The family gathered round the radio for shows like Lux Theatre and for the Academy Awards, listening to descriptions of the gowns. Those were good times, she said.

Questions to think about

• How did young people in Paterson contribute to the war effort at home?
• Why did adult organisations work so hard to enlist and mobilise children?
• How do Most's memories of the Junior Commandos match the newspaper's account of the scrap drive?

Sources

• National Park Service, "(H)our History Lesson: Children's Home Front Volunteerism and Service in Paterson, New Jersey, WW II Heritage City", written by Sarah Nestor Lane for the Cultural Resources Office of Interpretation and Education, under the National Council on Public History's cooperative agreement with the National Park Service. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/h-our-history-lesson-children-s-home-front-volunteerism-and-service-in-paterson-new-jersey-ww-ii-heritage-city.htm
• The lesson reproduces "Junior Red Cross Enrollment Opens in City's Schools", The Morning Call, November 3, 1944; "State Official Praises Paterson for Scrap Plan", The Morning Call, October 9, 1942; "Jewish Youth to Work for U.J.A. Campaign", The Morning Call, May 5, 1944; "Concentrate on Your Back Yard for a Victory Garden", The Paterson Evening News, March 24, 1943; "Jewish Council to Aid Red Cross", The Paterson Evening News, March 3, 1943; and an interview with Dolores Davidson Most, Paterson Great Falls National Historical Park.
• The lesson's pictures — a 1942 scrap-drive photograph credited to the Paterson Museum and A. M. Upjohn's Junior Red Cross poster credited to the Bangor Public Library — are not reproduced.
• Words on this page from people and organisations outside the federal government are paraphrased; rewritten in hubnx's own words.