Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, November 29, 1923.

The Fresno Bee, California, November 29, 1923.

It was Thanksgiving Day for 1923, Calvin Coolidge having fixed the very late date for this year on November 5.

By the President of the United States of America

A Proclamation

The American people, from their earliest days, have observed the wise custom of acknowledging each year the bounty with which divine Providence has favored them. In the beginnings, this acknowledgment was a voluntary return of thanks by the community for the fruitfulness of the harvest. Though our mode of life has greatly changed, this custom has always survived. It has made thanksgiving day not only one of the oldest but one of the most characteristic observances of our country. On that day, in home and church, in family and in public gatherings, the whole nation has for generations paid the tribute due from grateful hearts for blessings bestowed.

To center our thought in this way upon the favor which we have been shown has been altogether wise and desirable. It has given opportunity justly to balance the good and the evil which we have experienced. In that we have never failed to find reasons for being grateful to God for a generous preponderance of the good. Even in the least propitious times, a broad contemplation of our whole position has never failed to disclose overwhelming reasons for thankfulness. Thus viewing our situation, we have found warrant for a more hopeful and confident attitude toward the future.

In this current year, we now approach the time which has been accepted by custom as most fitting for the calm survey of our estate and the return of thanks. We shall the more keenly realize our good fortune, if we will, in deep sincerity, give to it due thought, and more especially, if we will compare it with that of any other community in the world.

The year has brought to our people two tragic experiences which have deeply affected them. One was the death of our beloved President Harding, which has been mourned wherever there is a realization of the worth of high ideals, noble purpose and unselfish service carried even to the end of supreme sacrifice. His loss recalled the nation to a less captious and more charitable attitude. It sobered the whole thought of the country. A little later came the unparalleled disaster to the friendly people of Japan. This called forth from the people of the United States a demonstration of deep and humane feeling. It was wrought into the substance of good works. It created new evidences of our international friendship, which is a guarantee of world peace. It replenished the charitable impulse of the country.

By experiences such as these, men and nations are tested and refined. We have been blessed with much of material prosperity. We shall be better able to appreciate it if we remember the privations others have suffered, and we shall be the more worthy of it if we use it for their relief. We will do well then to render thanks for the good that has come to us, and show by our actions that we have become stronger, wiser, and truer by the chastenings which have been imposed upon us. We will thus prepare ourselves for the part we must take in a world which forever needs the full measure of service. We have been a most favored people. We ought to be a most generous people. We have been a most blessed people. We ought to be a most thankful people.

Wherefore, I, Calvin Coolidge, President of the United States, do hereby fix and designate Thursday, the twenty-ninth day of November, as Thanksgiving Day, and recommend its general observance throughout the land. It is urged that the people, gathering in their homes and their usual places of worship, give expression to their gratitude for the benefits and blessings that a gracious Providence has bestowed upon them, and seek the guidance of Almighty God, that they may deserve a continuance of His favor.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this 5th day of November, in the year of our Lord, One Thousand Nine Hundred and Twenty-three, and of the Independence of the United States, the One Hundred and Forty-eighth.

CALVIN COOLIDGE

By the President:

CHARLES E. HUGHES, Secretary of State.

The Casper paper apparently gave its staff the day off, but the Saratoga one did not, and also informed its readers that childhood vaccinations for smallpox were now mandatory.

Wilhelm Marx was chosen as the new Chancellor of Germany.  He's serve twice in the 1920s.

He was charged with criminal activity in the early 30s by the Nazi regime for his leadership of the People's Association for Catholic Germany (Volksverein für das katholische Deutschland) but the charge against him was dropped in 1935.  He died in 1946.  The Catholic association he headed, which had dated back to the 1890s, was recreated as the Volksverein Mönchengladbach after World War Two.

Sunday, September 24, 1922: The September 11, 1922 Revolution (Επανάσταση της 11ης Σεπτεμβρίου 1922)

The Greek Army rebelled in the 11 September 1922 Revolution (Επανάσταση της 11ης Σεπτεμβρίου 1922) so named as Greece remained on the Julian calendar at the time.

This confusing event followed in the wake of public upset at the loss of the Greek effort in Anatolia, proving if nothing else that defeated armies are dangerous to their own governments, if to nobody else.

The rebellion led to the abdication of the king, who was on his second reign, having suffered from military discontent during World War One as well.  He'd opposed entering the war.  The Greek monarchy would be restored a few days later and King George II would take over, who would also have two reigns, one ending in 1924, and a second running from 1935 to 1947.

Berryman cartoon for this day in 1922.

Friday August 15, 1941. The coming war.

Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister of embattled Britain, and Franklin Roosevelt, President of the ostensibly neutral United States, jointly wrote Josef Stalin, the head of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union who had presided over the decimation of its officer corps just before World War Two, stating:

We realize fully how vitally important to the defeat of Hitlerism is the brave and steadfast resistance of the Soviet Union and we feel therefore that we must not in any circumstances fail to act quickly and immediately in this matter on planning the program for the future allocation of our joint resources

It's often noted that the United States was quite involved, obviously, in aiding the fighting Allies prior to December 7, 1941, but running across these day by day entries such as this really do provide quite a revelation.  The US, in a communication such as this, was effectively acting as if it was at war.

It nearly was, although it wasn't a declared belligerent yet.  Just this past week, however, the US had entered into a "charter" with the UK about what the post-war world should look like, and it had made a declaration under the Monroe Doctrine, quite sensibly and in keeping with its historical position, that it would not allow German U-boat attacks in the Western Hemisphere.  But at the same time the House of Representatives had nearly started sending inductees into the Army home, as the first inductees had planned on, when their October conscription dates were up.

Roosevelt remains a controversial President in some quarters, particularly for his role in expanding the government in the Great Depression.  It's interesting how the shock and horror of the Second World War, once we were in it, has pretty much silences his pre-war actions in edging up, and indeed over, the line that crossed into war.  His view and attitude were correct, but the degree to which the US not only flaunted its neutrality, but pretty much ignored it short of an actual declaration of war, is really remarkable.

On the same day, the Philippine Army Air Corps was inducted into the United States Army Air Forces in the Far East.

Ceremony at Camp Murphy in the Philippines on August 15, 1941, Gen. MacArthur presiding.

This gets into the peculiar status of the Philippine military at the time.  The Philippines were slated for independence in 1946, and they had their own military establishment, which had been created in 1935.  Nonetheless, the islands were not yet fully independent, although they were functioning in a quasi independent manner, sort of like pre-1918 British dominions, although less so.

Nonetheless, as war with Japan grew closer, and recent embargoes upon the Japanese made it nearly inevitable at this point, the wisdom of incorporating the infant air force into the US establishment was obvious.  On this day, it was done.  The move was more than symbolic, it actually made the Philippine Air Corps an American military unit.

Friday August 1, 1941. New things.

The United States Navy was about to get a brand new, and very advanced, torpedo bomber in the form of the Grumman TBF.

TBF's at the Natrona County International Airport as fire bombers in the 1960s.  These aircraft are an enduring memory of my childhood. According to a commenter on one of our companion blogs, these were removed from firefighting duties, which were a common post-war use of them, as the Forest Service was concerned over single engine aircraft being used in this role.  Ironically, the Air Tractor is a common firefighting aircraft today.

It was the first flight of the TBF.

It's interesting, in part because the U.S. Navy regarded the existing TBD-1 as obsolete, which by American standards it was, but it had only gone into service in 1935.  The TBD-1, obsolete though it may have been, was a more advanced aircraft than the Fairey Swordfish that had recently proven to be instrumental in the sinking of the Bismarck, even though the Sworfish had gone into service the following year, 1936.

Also of interest the Japanese already regarded the Nakajima B5N2, "Kate", which had gone into service in 1937 as obsolete, even though it was a more advanced aircraft than the TBD.  The B5N was slated for replacement by the new Nakajima B6N.  

All of this goes to show the technological race in the Pacific was significantly different from that in Europe.  The Japanese Navy was highly advanced, as was the U.S. Navy, and they were racing against each other for the most advanced aircraft and equipment in anticipation of the upcoming war.

On the same day, the U.S. Navy established a base at Midway Island in the Pacific and on Trinidad.

Midway, November 1941.

Midway isn't really a friendly location for humans and there was no permanent human presence on the tiny atoll until 1903, when it was first a station for a transpacific telegraph cable and then U.S. Marines, starting in 1908, when the cable company complained about an unauthorized Japanese presence on the island. An effort to dredge a path through the atoll for shipping purposes in the 1870s had previously failed.  In 1935, it became a stopover on the way to China for Pan American flying boats.  Pan American opened a hotel on the island as a result of the needed to service its wealthy customers on what was a luxury passage at the time.

The island remained a Naval station after World War Two and reached peak population in the 1960s. Since that time technological developments have rendered it obsolete as a base and there is no other reason for human habitation.  Its population has returned to 0.

You can read about those events here:

Today in World War II History—August 1, 1941

On the same day, the Jeep went into full production.

Grim wartime depiction by combat artist of the dead being transported by Jeep on Guadalcanal.

Jeep became the most famous U.S. military vehicle of all time, although it was not as important, in real terms, as the 6x6 series of military trucks.  Of note, while the Army's artillery branch had been working on 6x6 trucks since well before the war, being unable to find a suitable civilian truck, the famous military series really went into production in 1941 as well.

The Jeep dates back to a U.S. Army request for a 1/4 ton truck that was only a year old at the time.  The first suitable vehicle was produced by the Bantam company, which had a prewar history of making tiny vehicles and therefore was well suited to design one for the military.  Unfortunately for them, them, Bantam was not a large-scale manufacturer, so even though it came up with an excellent 1/4 truck, they really weren't capable of mass-producing it.

Because of these concerns, the Government provided the Bantam design to Willys and Ford, larger manufacturers.  This was common for defense contracts, with it being often the case that a product designed by one company would be produced by another.

Also common at this time was the technological development of a design once a company had it, and this rapidly occurred. Willys in particular improved on the Bantam truck and produced a new variant that rapidly became the standard one that Ford and Willys manufactured during the war.  Bantam did not produce any significant number of Jeeps, other than the very early ones, as a result.

The Jeep became a ubiquitous American military vehicle and indeed an iconic American 4x4.  Extremely dangerous and unstable in its early variants, it went into multiple roles.  It's sometimes claimed that it "replaced the horse", which at least in officer transportation it did, but the claim is over broad  Indeed, the widespread use of vehicles was sui generis, although there is some slight truth to that claim.

The wartime BRC40, MB and GPW Jeeps yielded to the M38 after the war, which was an extremely similar Jeep. At the same time, Willys introduced the CJ2, a civilian variant of its wartime MB.  The vehicle was a huge success but for some reason Willys itself, which had specialized in rugged vehicles, couldn't make a go of it in the post-war world specializing in them, and ultimately sold the Jeep product line.  The M38 itself yielded to the M38A1, which in civilian use became the familiar CJ5. Today, Chrysler owns the Jeep brand and produces an updated vehicle which is much safer than the prior variants, but which strongly resembles the CJ5.  The last military Jeep was the M151 "Mutt", which was not only highly dangerous, but which was a Ford design that was also manufactured by Kaiser (which also made CJ5s as a successor to Willys) and AMC (which also made CJ5s as a successor to Kaiser).

My first car, the incredibly dangerous M38A1.

As with the first item on this August 1, 1941, thread, I have a personal connection here as well.  I've owned three Jeeps over the years including a CJ2 and a M38A1.  I no longer have either for those first two vehicles, but I still own a 97 TJ.

Jeeps, I'd note, are so associated with the American military of World War Two that even movies made close in time to actual events, such as They Were Expendable, often mistakenly show them in use very early in the war.  In actuality, when World War Two broke out for the United States, the Jeep was so new that there were none of them in the Pacific Theater.

Roosevelt, on this day, restricted export sales of petroleum to the Western Hemisphere and the United Kingdom.  This followed up on recent actions aimed at Japan, but it also had the impact of securing petroleum supplies for the United Kingdom.

The Germans resumed civilian executions on Crete.

California 1935, Wilshire Blvd in color [60fps, Remastered] w/added sound

From when Social Security was new.

A poster from 1935.