Farming In The 1940s
Farm History Portal
1930's
- Introduction
- Farm Life
- Accidents & Illnesses
- Building the Lines
- Bringing Electricity
- Changing Farm Work
- Changing Rural Homes
- Chores
- Community Churches
- Crime
- Dancing
- Dating
- Diversity In Religion
- Family Time
- Feeding The Family
- Flour Sack Clothes
- Foodways
- Going To School
- Gypsies
- Having Fun
- Impact of the REA
- Indoor Plumbing
- Jazz
- Migration Out
- Migration In
- Minorities
- Movies
- Prohibition Of Alcohol
- Radio
- School Days
- THE KKK
- School Programs
- Surviving The Weather
- Who Lived In York Co.?
- Machines
- Crops
- Making Money
- Pests
- Water
- World Events
1940's
- Introduction
- Farm Life
- Building Bombs & Planes
- Canteens Greet Gis
- Changes In Eating Habits
- Civil Rights For Minorities
- Conscientious Objectors
- Drive-Ins
- EDUCATION
- Enlistments & The Draft
- Internment In America
- K-12 & Consolidation
- Land Grant Universities
- Local Sports
- Minorities On Base
- More Rights For Women
- Nisei Invade … Nebraska
- Normal Life & War Brides
- Pop Culture At War
- Postwar Food & Fun
- Rationing
- REA Promise Fulfilled
- Rural Bases
- Rural Medicine
- Strains on Rural Housing
- The Blizzard Of ’49
- The GI Bill
- The Home Front
- TV Turns On
- War Ends!
- War Stories
- Fertilizing
- Machines
- A Jeep Is A Jeep, Right?
- Allis Chalmers Tractors
- Case Tractors
- Cultivators
- Fixing Machinery
- Ford-Ferguson Tractors
- Horses Lose Their Jobs
- John Deere Tractors
- Haying Equipment
- Hydraulics
- IH Farmall Tractors
- Planters
- Postwar Technology
- REA In The Field & Barn
- Self-Propelled Combines
- Surplus Everywhere
- Tractor Innovations
- Vise Grip
- Making Money
- Crops
- Water
- Pests
1950's & 1960's
- Introduction
- Crops
- Farm Life
- Harvest Technology
- Machines
- Allis-Chalmers Tractors
- Corn Combines
- Cotton Harvesting
- Ford Tractors
- From Barns To Behlen Buildings
- Harvesting Wheat
- J. I. Case Tractors
- John Deere Tractors
- Massey-Harris becomes Massey-ferguson
- Minimum Tillage Changes Planters & Cultivators
- Other Tractors In The 1950s And 60s
- Tractor Pulling
- Tractors
- Making Money
- Ag Lobbies Washington
- Agribusiness
- Food For Peace
- Farm Families Going To The City
- Farmers Teach Wall Street Futures
- Farming For The Government
- Food Stamps
- IBP & Boxed Beef
- Ike’s Farm Programs
- JFK’s Farm Programs
- Johnson’s Farm Programs
- Sales Day
- Supermarkets Dominate
- The Rise & Fall Of The Omaha Stockyards
- Truman’s Farm Program
- Planter Technology
- The Golden Age Of Pesticides
- World Events
- Water
- Center Pivots Take Over
- Connections Between Surface And Groundwater
- Exporting Water
- First Pivots Installed
- How Pivots Work
- Making Circles Into Squares
- Nebraska’s Unique Natural Resource Districts
- Other Center Pivot Innovators
- Robert Daugherty & Valmont
- State To State Water Agreements
- The 1950s Worldwide Boom In Irrigation
- Valmont’s Center Pivot Patent Runs Out
- Water Wars
1970's - Today
- Farming in the 70s to Today
- Farm Life
- Crops
- Making Money
- Machines
- Partial Bibliography
- Pests & Weeds
- Planter Technology
- Water
- World Events
WWII Causes a Revolution in Farming
Everything changed on Dec. 7, 1941.
Everything changed on the American farm – and around the world for that matter – when America entered World War II. A European war that began in 1939 became a world war. Life for individuals all around the world changed. Even far from the fighting, in the middle of the North American continent at York, Nebraska, people knew that their lives and livelihoods had changed.
- The war finally brought an end to the Great Depression. People were willing pay more in taxes and buy war bonds to support the war effort. Federal spending helped factories. There was greater demand for farm products, and American farmers shouldered the load of feeding the world.
- Life at home became the “Home Front” where daily existence became part of the war effort. Basic commodities like sugar and gasoline were rationed to support the war. Military bases sprang up in rural areas.
- The war caused a revolution in productivity on the farm and finally brought an end to the horse-drawn era of farming. More and more farm workers left for the cities or the Army, and a tractor became the only way to get things done on the farm.
- The beginning of the war coincided with the end of the 1930s drought, but farmers remembered the dry years and more and more irrigation systems were built.
- Finally, the war effort produced new technologies that after the war revolutionized agriculture as well as urban and rural life. New technology created an explosion in productivity as farmers could do much more work in fewer and fewer hours.
The unprovoked attack was so tramatic to the nation that almost overnight people abandoned their traditional trend toward isolating themselves from “foreign wars.” War had come home. One measure of that shift in the nation is how popular culture responded. Newsreels and Hollywood movies took up the cause. Patriotic songs were instantly popular. Even blues artists like Dr. Clayton wrote remarkably astute political songs like “Pearl Harbor Blues.”
Everything changed again in 1945.
When the war ended, first in Europe in May and then in Japan in September, the world made a swift and sometimes painful transition to a peacetime economy. War industries tried to find civilian uses for the technologies they had developed. In the process they revolutionized agriculture. Service men and women returned home with new skills and knowledge. Social groups, like minorities and women, began demanding civil rights and equity. Everything changed once again.
Because life changed because of World War II, people who lived through it have vivid memories of when it started. On Dec. 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor – a tiny speck in the middle of the vast Pacific Ocean – became a household name all around the globe.
James Chenault (left) was a young man in California, and he remembers people running up and down the street yelling, “War! War!” His family was so afraid of the possibility that Japan would invade California that they made plans to return to Nebraska.
Kelly Holthus (right) was around eight years old when the news came, but he remembers it “just like it happened yesterday.” He knew it was “something big” when all the parents from his rural neighborhood gathered at the one-room school to talk about the events.
Gordon Schmidt and John Steingard (left) remember that people knew immediately the country was at war and how it would be “open season on the Japs.” The unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbor brought out a strain of ugly racial hatred and distrust in the U.S.
Harry Hankel (right) was already in the Army and expecting to get out in two months. Wrong. But he knew that the news about Pearl Harbor meant he would remain in the Army for the duration of the war. Even though he had signed up one year, but “I was in for four years and seven months.”
Don Geery (left) heard the news over their battery-powered radio. Rural electric lines had not reached their house yet. “My father had his ear down to that radio and was telling us what was going on,” Don says. “There was never any doubt in anybody’s mind that – what the United States and our allies had to do.”
Kaz Tada (right) was a second generation American of Japanese descent, and his life was changed by Pearl Harbor. Despite the fact that Kaz was an American citizen, the attack put him and his family under suspicion. The authorities “jumped right in there, and they confiscated our short-wave radios and cameras,” Kaz says. “And then the funds of the Isei [first generation Japanese-American immigrants] were frozen, almost immediately.” Kaz’ father owned a grocery store and not longer had access to his bank account. In addition, Kaz’ grandfather, who had been an army officer in Japan, was arrested by the FBI, shipped to Montana and eventually sent back to Japan.
Written by Bill Ganzel, the Ganzel Group. A partial bibliography of sources is here.
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