The first in print use of the term "Dear John Letter" appeared in a UPI article entitled Hollywood Girls Gain Weight on Tour in Africa.1 It was clear from the use, which was a quote from one of the increasingly corpulent Hollywood Girls that the term was in the common vernacular at the time.
We've touched on the topic of wartime marriages and breakups several times before, but my ability to link them in is restrained, as I can't find them all. We haven't done one on wartime romantic relationships in general. As our Fourth Law of History details, War Changes Everything, but like a lot of things surrounding World War Two, this topic is subject to a lot of myth. According to one scholarly source:
Marriage rates rose in 1940-41 and peaked in 1942, only to slow down during the war and rise to even higher levels in 1946. Divorce rates followed a much smoother pattern, increasing from 1940 to 1946, then quickly declining in 1947.
World War II and Divorce: A Life-Course Perspective by Eliza K. Pavalko and Glen H. Elder, Jr.
Frankly, looking at it, the Second World War didn't impact divorce nearly as much as commonly believed. If it is taken into consideration that World War Two came immediately on the heels of the Great Depression, and that the ages of US troops in the war was higher than commonly imagined, it makes sense. Consider:
While the Great Depression did lower marriage rates, the effect was not long lasting: marriages were delayed, not denied. The primary long-run effect of the downturn on marriage was stability: Marriages formed in tough economic times were more likely to survive compared to matches made in more prosperous time periods.
Love in the Time of the Depression: The Effect of Economic Conditions on Marriage in the Great Depression, Matthew J. Hill.
Indeed, that short snipped is revealing.
There were a lot of marriages contracted before soldiers went overseas, and some people did marry very quickly, which is probably balanced out by a lot of people who were going to get married anyhow getting married before they would be husband deployed. Also, according to The Great Plains during World War II by Prof. R. Douglas Hurt, there was an increase of pre deployment pre marital contact, although the book relied solely on interview data for that claim. Having said that, a Florida academic, Alan Petigny, has noted that "between the beginning of World War II in 1941 and the inaugural issue of Playboy in 1953, the overall rate of single motherhood more than doubled".2
That the war had an impact on behavior in regard to relations outside of marriage is well documented. Prostitution was rampant in every area where troops were deployed, with it being openly engaged in locations like London. Examples of illicit behavior aren't very hard to find at all. The length of the war no doubt contributed to this. Nonetheless, traditional moral conduct dominated throughout the 1940s and after it, with the real, and disastrous, changes really starting in the early 1950s.
That "Dear John" letters weren't uncommon makes a lot of sense, however. The majority, but not all of them, would have been written by single women to single men, i.e., by girlfriend to boyfriend. Those relationships were not solemnized and largely unconsummated, if we use those terms. The war was long and accordingly the separations were as well. Young women in many instances would have aged a few years, as the men would have also, but in conditions that were dramatically different than the men. The women were, to a large degree, temporarily forced outside their homes, if they fit into the demographic that would have remained at home, but in conditions that were considerably more stable than the men. If they went to work, they could have remained at one employer for years, whereas the soldier boyfriend may very well have constantly been on the move. Workplace romances certainly aren't uncommon now, with around 20% of Americans having met their spouses at work (Forbes claims its 43%). Some large percentage of Americans have dated a coworker. Given the long separations, a young woman meeting a man at work, or perhaps at church, or in her group of friends, was undoubtedly a common occurrence during the war, as it was never the case that all men were deployed, even though a very large number were.
FWIW, the Vietnam War is associated with the highest rate of "Dear John" letters, even though troops deployed for only one year in the country. This undoubtedly says something about the change in economic and social conditions from the 1940s to the 1960s.
On a personally anecdotal level, I think I've met three people, now all deceased, who married during the war prior to the husband deploying. One of those marriages failed, but the other two were lifelong.
The 20th Indian Division completed a withdrawal to the Shenan Hills. The 17th Indian Division was conducting a fighting withdrawal.
The Japanese were accordingly engaging in a very successful offensive in northeast Burma. The war in that quarter was far from settled. Be that as it may, as that was going on, the Western Allies were advancing in the Pacific ever close to Japan itself, which Japan was proving unable to arrest. The Japanese situation, therefore, was oddly complicated in that in order to really reverse the tide of the war, they would have had to taken Indian entirely, and then knocked China out of the war, neither of which was realistic in spite of its recent battlefield successes.
As that was going on:
The Aerodrome: 21–25 April 1944. First Helicopter Combat Rescue: 21–25 April 1944.
We don't think of helicopters in World War Two, but they were starting to show up, and in one of their classic roles.
US and Australian troops linked up on the Huon Peninsula.
Fighting in New Guinea, while going in the Allied direction, was proving endless.
The Finnish parliament, in a secret session, rejected Soviet peace terms. Secret or not, the Finnish rejection hit American newspapers that very day. That the Finns and Soviets were talking was very well known to everyone.
The papers were also noting the German invasion of Hungary, and there were rumors that Hungary was going to declare war on Germany, which proved far from true. The Hungarian situation must have caused some concern, however, in Finland.
It was the first flight of the Japanese kamikaze rocket plane, the Yokosuka MXY-7 Ohka (櫻花)
The first flight was an unpowered test.
It might be noted that there's a real logic failure with this design. If you can build a powered rocket suicide plane, you can build a rocket powered drone.
The ice jammed Yellowstone broke over its banks in Miles City, Montana.
The Trappist Monastery of Our Lady of the Holy Spirit was founded near Conyers, Georgia.
Footnotes:
1. The "girls" were Louise Allbritton, an actress who would have been 23 years old at the time, and June Clyde, who would have been 35.
Allbritton married a CBS news correspondent in 1946 and retired from acting. She remained married until her death in 1979. Clyde, who was a pre code actress and dancer, was married (1930) and also remained for the rest of her life. She passed away in 1987.
2. World War One, which was comparatively short, does not seem to have impacted behavior and marriage rates nearly as much, but it did cause a very notable boom in overseas "war bride" marriages anywhere American troops were deployed, including Siberia.
There were, of course, war brides as a result of World War Two, but that's another story.
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