[Name of the Writer]

[Name of Instructor]

[Subject]

[Date]

Food Rationing During World War II

Introduction

World War II transformed the lives, expectations, and prospects not only of the 16 million Americans who entered the military but also of the 116 million civilian men, women, and children. They were just emerging from one of the most dispiriting decades in the history of the United States. With its unemployment rate running up to 25 percent and people literally fainting in the streets from hunger, the Great Depression had sapped Americans' confidence in their political and economic system and in themselves. Family structure was threatened as teenagers left homes that could not feed them and young people had to postpone marriage and babies (David, pp. 615-68).

Civilians devoted even more time to supporting the morale of soldiers, sailors, and Marines. For those servicemen still in the United States the United Service Organizations (USO) of civilian volunteers provided recreation at service clubs. Families arranged with the USO to invite soldiers and sailors to their homes for meals and a taste of home life. Local women fed servicemen passing through on trains at station canteens, or handed homemade food to them through the train windows; in some towns women battled with their neighbors to ensure that they served all in the military, blacks included (Harold G, pp. 27-31)..

Discussion

Compared with the rest of the world, American civilians were flourishing. Unlike most of the world, they were safe. They did not, of course, have everything they wanted. Americans who had done without during the Great Depression because they had no money now did without because little was available to buy, and that little often of poor quality. Even though from 1939 to 1945, the American output of textiles rose 50 percent and that of processed foodstuffs 40 percent, military needs forced the country ...