The broader implications of Pearl Harbor Day

Pearl Harbor changed a lot of things.

Some of them changed instantly.

Some of them changed very slowly.

Some of them are still changing, and some of those changes we are still fighting to keep in place, like our attitudes about contraception.

cross posted from penigma.blogspot.com:

World War II is now sufficiently removed that those are mostly numbers, dry statistics which don't reflect a time when not just a few people on our behalf, but the entire nation committed to the war, to sacrifice, to a significant change in lifestyle with rationing, with women joining the workforce to take the place of men at rates previously unknown because that many men had left to go to war. The changes in our society and culture from this need to adapt for the war effort led to subsequent changes in a wide variety of areas, from attitudes about contraception, women in the work force and changes in the direction of feminism, to ending segregation, to language. A lot of things changed because of that attack on Pearl Harbor.

Some years ago I came across an old stack of records from that era belonging to my family, the kind that played at speeds of 78, 33, or 45 revolutions per minute, so that you had to look at the label, and then adjust the turntable speed, and in the case of the 45, the central spindle around which it rotated.

The entertainment of the era, everything from movies to music, was part of the war experience, with movie directors like Alfred Hitchcock, and Frank Capra working on propaganda projects - yes, of course our side did propaganda too. Hitchcock for example made two French language short films for the British ministry of information, with English subtitles, to encourage the french resistance: Bon Voyage, about an heroic RAF officer who escapes from a Nazi POW camp, and is aided by brilliant resistance organization. L'Aventure Magache (Madagascar) was the second, about (obviously) the activities of fictional resistance operations in Madagascar against Nazis and collaborators.

One of the records I found from World War II had caught my attention because of the funny title, "Flat Foot Floogie with the Floy Floy". I found a youtube video of it being performed by Fred Astaire; apparently this was very popular as dance music during WW II, including in canteens for soldiers.