Timeline 1942
Return to home
1942 Jan 2, The
Philippine capital of Manila and the US Naval base at Cavite were
captured by Japanese forces.
(AP, 1/2/98)(HN, 1/2/02)
1942 Jan 4, Japanese forces began
the evacuation of Guadalcanal
(HN, 1/4/00)
1942 Jan 5, U.S. and Filipino
troops completed their withdrawal to a new defensive line along the
base of the Bataan peninsula.
(HN, 1/5/99)
1942 Jan 5, 55 German tanks
reached North-Africa.
(MC, 1/5/02)
1942 Jan 5, Tina Modotti (b.1896),
Italian born actress, model, photographer and secret agent, died in
Mexico City. She had been expelled from Mexico in 1930 but returned
incognito in 1939. In 1999 her biography by Pino Cacucci was translated
into English.
(SFEC, 7/25/99, BR p.1)(SFC, 9/2/06,
p.E3)(http://tinyurl.com/lklsy)
1942 Jan 6, The Pan American
Airways "Pacific Clipper" arrived in New York under Captain Robert
Ford. He flew west from New Zealand to avoid Japanese attacks and
became the first commercial plane to make a round-the-world trip.
(AP, 1/6/98)(SFEM, 2/13/00, p.41)
1942 Jan 7, Vasili Alexeyev,
weightlifter (Olympic-gold-72, 76), was born in USSR.
(MC, 1/7/02)
1942 Jan 7, The World War II siege
of Bataan began in the Philippines.
(AP, 1/7/98)
1942 Jan 9, US Joint Chiefs of
Staff became established.
(MC, 1/9/02)
1942 Jan
10, Jim Croce, (d.1973) rock vocalist (Time in a Bottle, Workin' At The
Car Wash Blues), was born in Phila.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Croce)
1942 Jan 11, Japan declared war
against the Netherlands, the same day that Japanese forces invaded the
Dutch East Indies (later Indonesia) at Borneo.
(AP, 1/11/98)(HN, 1/11/00)
1942 Jan 12, President Roosevelt
created the National War Labor Board.
(AP, 1/12/98)
1942 Jan 14, President Franklin D.
Roosevelt ordered all U.S. aliens to register with the government.
(HN, 1/14/99)
1942 Jan 15, Jawaharlal Nehru
succeeded Mohandas K. Gandhi as head of India's National Congress Party.
(AP, 1/15/02)
1942 Jan 16, William Knudsen
became the 1st civilian appointed as general in US army.
(MC, 1/16/02)
1942 Jan 16, Actress Carole
Lombard and her mother were among some 20 people killed when their
plane crashed near Las Vegas while returning from a tour to promote war
bonds.
(AP, 1/16/00)
1942 Jan 16, Japan’s advance into
Burma began. [see Jan 19]
(HN, 1/16/99)
1942 Jan 17, Muhammad Ali [Casius
Clay], U.S. boxer, "The Greatest," who is the only three-time
heavyweight champion, was born.
(HN, 1/17/99)
1942 Jan 18, General MacArthur
repelled the Japanese in Bataan. The United States took the lead in the
Far East war criminal trials.
(HN, 1/18/02)
1942 Jan 19, Japanese forces
invaded Burma. [see Jan 16]
(MC, 1/19/02)
1942 Jan 20, Top Nazis met at
Grossen-Wannsee, outside Berlin, and there formulated the infamous
"Final Solution" to the Jewish question. Chaired by SS General Reinhard
Heydrich, the one-day conference was designed to address the Nazi
efforts at removing the Jews. The 15 top-ranking men of the German
Reich agreed upon a blueprint for the extermination of Europe’s Jews.
Their "final solution" called for exterminating Europe's Jews. Until
this time, the plan had been to deport all Jews to the island of
Madagascar off Africa, but by 1942 this plan was rejected in favor of
transporting Jews to the east where the able-bodied would become slave
laborers for the Reich. SS chief Heinrich Himmler would be in charge.
Those unfit to work would be, the conference minutes noted,
"appropriately dealt with." This phrase was left unexplained, but there
was no doubt of its sinister meaning. After approving genocide as Nazi
policy, the conference attendees adjourned for lunch. The minutes were
taken by Adolf Eichmann.
(AP, 1/20/98)(WSJ, 4/28/97, p.A17)(HNPD,
1/20/99)(MC, 1/20/02)
1942 Jan 20, There was a Japanese
air raid on Rabaul, New Britain.
(MC, 1/20/02)
1942 Jan 21, Count Basie and His
Orchestra recorded "One O’Clock Jump" in New York City for Okeh
Records.
(AP, 1/21/98)
1942 Jan 21, A Bronx magistrate
ruled all pinball machines illegal.
(MC, 1/21/02)
1942 Jan 21, In North Africa,
German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel launched a drive to push the British
eastward.
(HN, 1/21/99)
1942 Jan 23, At Novi Sad, Serbia,
some 1200 people (predominantly Jewish), rounded up over a period of
three days, were shot along the shores of the Danube. Their bodies were
dumped into the frozen waters. Sandor Kepiro (b.1914), a Hungarian
gendarmerie officer, participated in the mass murder. In 1944 he was
sentenced to 10 years in prison for his part in the atrocities, but
conviction was later annulled.
(http://tinyurl.com/o5n5j3)(AP, 9/15/09)
1942 Jan 24, A special court of
inquiry into America's lack of preparedness for the Japanese attack on
Pearl Harbor placed much of the blame on Rear Adm. Husband E. Kimmel
and Lt. Gen. Walter C. Short, the Navy and Army commanders.
(AP, 1/24/00)
1942 Jan 26, The first American
expeditionary force to go to Europe during World War II went ashore in
Northern Ireland.
(AP, 1/26/98)(HN, 1/26/99)
1942 Jan 29, German and Italian
troops took Benghazi in North Africa.
(HN, 1/29/99)
1942 Jan, Chile and Argentina were
the only two Latin American countries that did not comply at once with
the Rio de Janeiro Conference recommendation to those countries who had
not already done so to sever diplomatic and commercial relations with
the Axis powers, Germany, Italy and Japan. Chile eventually broke Axis
relations in January 1943 and Argentina complied in January 1944. The
conference of Western Hemisphere foreign ministers also called for
suppression of pro-Axis activity in the Americas, establishment of an
Inter-American defense board and economic cooperation within the
hemisphere.
(HNQ, 9/24/00)
1942 Jan, The high Nazi
bureaucracy received word of the decision to exterminate all Jews at
the Wannsee Conference.
(WSJ, 12/31/96, p.5)
1942 Feb 1, Planes of the U.S.
Pacific fleet attacked Japanese bases in the Marshall and Gilbert
Islands.
(HN, 2/1/99)
1942 Feb 2, A Los Angeles Times
column urged security measures against Japanese-Americans, arguing that
a Japanese-American "almost inevitably ... grows up to be a Japanese,
not an American."
(AP, 2/2/99)
1942 Feb 2, US auto factories
switched from commercial to war production.
(MC, 2/2/02)
1942 Feb 4, In Egypt Sir Miles
Lampson, British high commissioner, staged a virtual coup d’etat
against King Farouk. In 1998 David Freeman wrote a romantic historical
novel: "One of Us," that was loosely set on this background.
(WSJ, 2/25/98, p.A20)
1942 Feb 8, Terry Melcher, Rip
Chords, Doris Day's son, was born.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1942 Feb 8, Congress advised FDR
that Americans of Japanese descent should be locked up en masse so they
wouldn't oppose the US war effort.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1942 Feb 8, The Japanese landed on
Singapore. By 1941, Gen. Yamashita was the commanding general of
Japan’s Twenty-Fifth Army. His plans for taking Singapore were already
underway.
(HN, 2/8/98)
1942 Feb 9, The U.S. Joint Chiefs
of Staff held its first formal meeting to coordinate military strategy
during World War II.
(AP, 2/9/99)
1942 Feb 9, FDR reimposed daylight
saving time (DST) in the US calling it "war time" with clocks turned
one hour forward. It remained in effect until Sep 30, 1945. [see 1966]
(AP, 2/9/99)(WSJ, 3/31/05,
p.D8)(www.energy.ca.gov/daylightsaving.html)
1942 Feb 9, The former French
cruise ship Normandie, launched in 1935, burned in New York Harbor
during its conversion to an Allied trip transport ship. It was once
regarded as most elegant ocean liner ever built. In 1947 it was cut up
for scrap. In 2007 John Maxtone-Graham authored “Normandie.”
(AP, 2/10/97)(WSJ, 12/8/07, p.W13)
1942 Feb 9, Chiang Kai-shek met
with Sir Stafford Cripps, the British viceroy in India. Detachment 101
harried the Japanese in Burma and provided close support for regular
Allied forces.
(HN, 2/9/97)
1942 Feb 9, Japanese troops landed
near Makassar, South Celebes.
(MC, 2/9/02)
1942 Feb 10, RCA Victor presented
Glenn Miller and his Orchestra with a "gold record" for their 1941
recording of "Chattanooga Choo Choo," which had sold more than 1
million copies.
(AP, 2/10/99)
1942 Feb 10, The war halted
civilian car production at Ford. Henry Ford opposed America's entry
into World War II until the attack on Pearl Harbor, which inspired him
to begin an all-out effort to manufacture planes and vehicles for the
war effort.
(HN, 2/10/97)
1942 Feb 10, The former French
liner Normandie capsized in New York Harbor a day after it caught fire
while being refitted for the U.S. Navy.
(AP, 2/10/97)
1942 Feb 11, "Archie" comic book
debuted.
(MC, 2/11/02)
1942 Feb 11, The German
battleships Gneisenau, Scharnhorst and Prinz Eugen began their famed
channel dash from the French port of Brest. Their journey took them
through the English Channel on their way back to Germany.
(HN, 2/11/99)
1942 Feb 12, Painter Grant Wood
(b.1892), creator of "American Gothic" (1930), died in Iowa City, Iowa,
a day before his 51st birthday.
(AP, 2/12/02)
1942 Feb 12, Three German battle
cruisers escaped via Channel to Brest, N. Germany.
(MC, 2/12/02)
1942 Feb 13, Hitler's invasion of
England was cancelled.
(MC, 2/13/02)
1942 Feb 14, The Japanese attacked
Sumatra. Aidan MacCarthy’s RAF unit flew to Palembang, in eastern
Sumatra, where 30 Royal Australian Air Force Lockheed A-28 Hudson
bombers were waiting. The elation was short-lived as Japanese soldiers
were parachuting into the jungle that surrounded the airfield.
(HN, 2/14/98)
1942 Feb 15, British forces in
Singapore surrendered to Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita. Yamashita
prevailed, when British Lt. Gen. Sir Arthur Percival and 130,000 Empire
troops surrendered. It was the largest surrender in British history.
(HN, 2/15/98)(AP, 2/15/98)
1942 Feb 16, German submarines
attacked an Aruba oil refinery and sank the tanker Pedernales.
(MC, 2/16/02)(SSFC, 11/10/02, p.C11)
1942 Feb 16, Tojo outlined Japan’s
war aims to the Diet, referring to "new order of coexistence" in East
Asia. During the Japanese war crimes trials, Tojo himself took
responsibility, as premier, for anything either he or his country had
done. He asserted, however, with the other defendants, that they—and
Japan—had made war only in "self-defense."
(HN, 2/16/98)
1942 Feb 17, Sidney Newsom
(b.1877), California architect, died. He and his brother Noble created
homes that recalled Spanish haciendas, English cottages, French
chateaus and American colonial homesteads.
(SFC, 2/4/05,
p.F1)(https://digital.lib.washington.edu/architect/architects/1794/)
1942 Feb 18, Japanese troop landed
on Bali.
(MC, 2/18/02)
1942 Feb 19, Tommy Dorsey and his
orchestra recorded "I'll Take Tallulah."
(MC, 2/19/02)
1942 Feb 19, President Roosevelt
signed executive order 9066 that gave the military the authority to
relocate and intern Japanese-Americans. The order resulted in the
incarceration of more than 110,000 Japanese-Americans living in
California, Oregon, Washington and Arizona. By the end of March, 1942,
the Japanese-Americans were moved to 10 relocation camps throughout the
U.S. interior. The mass expulsion of Japanese-Americans from the
West Coast ended on January, 2, 1945. [see Feb 20]
(AP, 2/20/98)(SFC, 2/19/98, p.A13)(HNQ, 9/3/99)
1942 Feb 19, Port Darwin, on the
northern coast of Australia, was bombed by about 150 Japanese
warplanes; at least 243 people were killed. General George C. Kenney,
who pioneered aerial warfare strategy and tactics in the Pacific
theater, ordered 3,000 parafrag bombs to be sent to Australia, where he
thought they might come in handy against the Japanese. Darwin was
virtually leveled by 64 bombing raids over 21 months.
(HN, 2/19/98)(SFEC, 9/10/00, p.T10)(AP, 2/19/08)
1942 Feb 19, Japanese troops
landed on Timor. Australian commandos battled the Japanese with support
from local people. Japanese reprisals killed 60,000 civilians, 13% of
the population.
(SFC, 5/17/02, p.A15)(MC, 2/19/02)
1942 Feb 20, Franklin D. Roosevelt
authorized the internment of Japanese Americans on the West Coast. [see
Feb 19]
(HN, 2/20/98)
1942 Feb 20, Lt. Edward O’Hare
downed five out of nine Japanese bombers that were attacking the
carrier Lexington, which earned him the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Lieutenant Edward H. "Butch" O’Hare became the first Wildcat ace.
(HN, 2/20/98)
1942 Feb 22, President Franklin
Roosevelt ordered Gen. Douglas MacArthur to leave the Philippines.
(HN, 2/22/99)
1942 Feb 22, India’s Capt. Sam
Manekshaw (1914-2008) was severely wounded in a counteroffensive
against Japanese forces on the Sittong River in Burma. In 1969
Manekshaw became the 8th chief of the Indian army.
(SFC, 7/1/08, p.B5)
1942 Feb 23, A Japanese submarine
shelled an oil refinery at Ellwood, near Santa Barbara, Calif., the
first Axis bombs to hit American soil.
(HN, 2/23/98)(MC, 2/23/02)
1942 Feb 23, Stefan Zweig
(b.1881), Austrian Jewish writer (Die Welt von Gestern), committed
suicide with his wife in Brazil. Zweig's nostalgic but rather
impersonal memoirs of the "Golden Age of Security", The World of
Yesterday, was published posthumously in 1943. His last novel (The
Ecstasy of Transformation) was published posthumously in Germany in
1982. In 2008 it was translated into English as “The Post-Office Girl.”
(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/szweig.htm)(WSJ, 6/21/08,
p.W9)(Econ, 5/23/09, p.91)
1942 Feb 24, The Voice of America
went on the air for the first time with broadcasts in German. The US
State Dept. made William Winter (d.1999) its first Voice of America
three months before the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
(AP, 2/24/98)(SFC, 11/9/99, p.A23)(MC, 2/24/02)
1942 Feb 24, Some 1,600 Pittsburg,
Ca., residents of Italian descent were evacuated. Nationwide some
600,000 of 5 million Italians were undocumented and deemed "enemy
aliens" until Oct 12.
(SSCM, 10/21/01, p.11,19)
1942 Feb 26, Don Mason, WWII Navy
flier, sent the message: "Sighted sub sank same."
(SC, 2/26/02)
1942 Feb 26, German battle cruiser
Gneisenau was deactivated by bomb.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1942 Feb 26, Werner Heisenberg
informed Nazis about uranium project "Wunderwaffen."
(SC, 2/26/02)
1942 Feb 27, The 1st transport of
French Jews left to Nazi Germany.
(MC, 2/27/02)
1942 Feb 27, Battle of Java Sea
began. 13 US warships sank-2 Japanese.
(MC, 2/27/02)
1942 Feb 27, British Commandos
raided a German radar station at Bruneval on the French coast. The
warrior spies of the Abwehr, Germany’s intelligence agency, were the
Brandenburg commandos.
(HN, 2/27/98)
1942 Feb 28, There was a race riot
at the Sojourner Truth Homes in Detroit.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1942 Feb 28, The German submarine
U-578 torpedoed and sank the US destroyer Jacob Jones off the New
Jersey coast. Only 11 of some 102 crew members survived.
(SFC, 1/15/05,
p.B8)(http://uboat.net/allies/warships/ship/2174.html)
1942 Feb 28, Japanese landed in
Java, the last Allied bastion in Dutch East Indies.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1942 Feb, The first transport of
Jews arrived at Auschwitz, Poland, and the adjoining Birkenau camp. Dr.
Josef Mengele (d.1979), the "angel of death," worked at Auschwitz and
fled secretly to Sao Paolo, Brazil, after the war. Rudolf Hoess was the
last commander of Auschwitz and kept a diary that was used in the 1961
trial of Adolf Eichmann.
(SF E&C, 1/15/1995, A-10)(SFC, 4/8/97,
p.A10)(WSJ, 4/28/97, p.A17)
1942 Feb, The Soviet government
established the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC) to drum up int’l.
support as the Red Army struggled against the German onslaught. As the
war progressed the group collected evidence of atrocities and genocide
and planned to publish its “Black Book.” Incomplete versions appeared
in the 1980s and the first complete version was published in Lithuania
in 1993. In Russia it was published as “The Unknown Black Book.” In
2008 an English translation was edited by Joshua Rubenstein and Ilya
Altman.
(WSJ, 1/19/08, p.W8)
1942 Mar 1, J. Milton Cage Jr.’s
"Imaginary Landscape No 3" premiered in Chicago.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1942 Mar 1, Baseball decided that
players in military can't play when on furlough.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1942 Mar 1, The 3 day Battle of
Java Sea ended as US suffered a major naval defeat. Japanese troops
occupy Kalidjati airport in Java.
(HN, 3/1/98)(SC, 3/1/02)
1942 Mar 1, Tito established the
2nd Proletariat Brigade in Bosnia.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1942 Mar 1, Suriname camp for NSB
people opened to save Jews.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1942 Mar 2, John Irving, novelist
(The World According to Garp), was born.
(HN, 3/2/01)
1942 Mar 2, Lou Reed [Louis
Firbank], vocalist, guitarist (Walk on the Wild Side, Velvet
Underground), was born in Freeport, NY.
(SC, 3/2/02)
1942 Mar 2, 14th Academy Awards:
"How Green was My Valley", Gary Cooper and Joan Fontaine won.
(SC, 3/2/02)
1942 Mar 2, Admiral Helfrich
departed Java for Ceylon.
(SC, 3/2/02)
1942 Mar 3, Canada's Avro
Lancaster military plane made its 1st combat flight.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1942 Mar 3, The RAF raided the
industrial suburbs of Paris.
(HN, 3/3/99)
1942 Mar 5, Josip Broz "Tito"
established the 3rd Proletariat Brigade in Bosnia.
(MC, 3/5/02)
1942 Mar 5, Japanese troop marched
into Batavia.
(MC, 3/5/02)
1942 Mar 7, Michael Eisner, CEO
(Walt Disney), was born in Mt. Kisko, NY.
(MC, 3/7/02)
1942 Mar 7, Tamara Faye LaValley
(d.2007) was born in International Falls, Minn. She later married
fellow bible college student Jim Bakker. Together they established a
Christian talk variety show, the PTL Club, which collapsed in 1987 amid
a sex and money scandal.
(SSFC, 7/22/07, p.B7)
1942 Mar 7, Japanese troops landed
on New Guinea.
(HN, 3/7/98)
1942 Mar 7, 15 Mk-VB Spitfires
reached Malta.
(MC, 3/7/02)
1942 Mar 8, Japanese captured
Rangoon, Burma, during World War II.
(AP, 3/8/98)(HN, 3/8/98)
1942 Mar 9, Construction of the
Alaska Highway began.
(MC, 3/9/02)
1942 Mar 11, As Japanese forces
continued to advance in the Pacific during World War II Gen. Douglas
MacArthur left Corregidor in the Philippines for Australia. MacArthur,
who subsequently vowed, "I shall return," kept that promise more than 2
1/2 years later. MacArthur relinquished command in the Philippines to
Gen’l. Jonathon Wainwright.
(SFEC, 12/15/96, p.T7)(AP,
3/11/98)(http://tinyurl.com/736ws)
1942 Mar 11, 1st deportation train
left Paris for the Auschwitz Concentration Camp.
(MC, 3/12/02)
1942 Mar 11, Japanese troops
landed on North Sumatra.
(MC, 3/12/02)
1942 Mar 12, Salvatore "the Bull"
Gravano, mobster (testified against John Gotti), was born.
(MC, 3/12/02)
1942 Mar 13, Julia Flikke of the
Nurse Corps became the first woman colonel in the U.S. Army.
(HN, 3/13/98)
1942 Mar 15, Alexander van
Zemlinsky (70), Austrian-US composer (African Dance), died.
(MC, 3/15/02)
1942 Mar 17, John Wayne Gacy,
serial killer (32 boys), was born in Chicago, Ill.
(MC, 3/17/02)
1942 Mar 17, Gen. Douglas
MacArthur arrived in Australia to become supreme commander of Allied
forces in the southwest Pacific theater during World War II.
(AP, 3/17/97) (HN, 3/17/98)
1942 Mar 17, Belzec Concentration
Camp opened. 30,000 Lublin Polish Jews were transported.
(MC, 3/17/02)
1942 Mar 17, The Nazis began
deporting Jews to the Belsen camp.
(HN, 3/17/98)
1942 Mar 18, The third military
draft began in the U.S. because of World War II.
(HN, 3/18/98)
1942 Mar 18, Black players, Jackie
Robinson and Nate Moreland, requested a tryout with the Chicago White
Sox. They were allowed to work out.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1942 Mar 19, FDR ordered men
between 45 and 64 to register for non military duty.
(MC, 3/19/02)
1942 Mar 20-22, There was a major
German assault on Malta.
(MC, 3/20/02)(MC, 3/21/02)(MC, 3/22/02)
1942 Mar 21, Convoy QP9 departed
Great Britain to Murmansk.
(MC, 3/21/02)
1942 Mar 23, During World War II
the US government began moving the first of some 112,000
Japanese-Americans from their West Coast homes to detention centers.
(AP, 3/23/97)(AH, 4/07, p.14)
1942 Mar 23, The Japanese occupied
the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean.
(HN, 3/23/98)(SS, 3/23/02)
1942 Mar 23, Some 2,500 Jews of
Lublin were massacred or deported.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1942 Mar 25, Aretha Franklin,
American singer, the "Queen of Soul," was born in Memphis, Tenn.
(HN, 3/25/01)(SSFC, 6/30/02, Par p.30)
1942 Mar 25-26, The 1st 700 Jews
from Polish Lvov-district reached concentration camp Belzec. The
Germans began sending Jews to Auschwitz in Poland.
(HN, 3/25/98)(MC, 3/25/02)(SS, 3/26/02)
1942 Mar 26, Erica Jong [Mann],
poet, novelist (Fear of Flying, How to Save Your Own Life), was born in
NYC.
(HN, 3/26/01)(SS, 3/26/02)
1942 Mar 26, 20 tons of gelignite
killed 21 in a stone quarry in Easton, PA.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1942 Mar 26, A German offensive
took place in North-Africa under Colonel-General Rommel.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1942 Mar 27, Michael York, actor
(Cabaret, Logan's Run, 3 Musketeers), was born in England.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1942 Mar 27-28, Allies raided the
Nazi submarine base at St. Nazaire, France.
(HN, 3/27/98)(MC, 3/27/02)
1942 Mar 28, Samuel Ramey, bass
(La Scala, Met Opera), was born in Colby, Kansas.
(MC, 3/28/02)
1942 Mar 28, British naval forces
continued the raid on the Nazi-occupied French port of St. Nazaire.
British Bomber Command launched an attack on the German city of Lubeck
with 234 RAF bombers.
(AP, 3/28/97)(HN, 3/28/98)(MC, 3/28/02)
1942 Mar 28, A British ship, the
HMS Capbeltown, a Lend-Lease American destroyer, which was specifically
rammed into a German occupied dry-dock in France, exploded, knocking
the area out of action for the German battleship Tirpitz.
(HN, 3/28/00)
1942 Mar 29, British cruiser
Trinidad torpedoed itself in the Barents Sea.
(MC, 3/29/02)
1942 Mar 29, German submarine
U-585 sank.
(MC, 3/29/02)
1942 Mar 30, Graeme Edge, rock
drummer (Moody Blues-Your Wildest Dreams), was born in England.
(MC, 3/30/02)
1942 Mar 30, SS murdered 200
inmates of Trawniki labor camp.
(MC, 3/30/02)
1942 Mar, The US government
launched its "Salvage for Victory" campaign to collect tin, rubber,
scrap iron, rags and paper for the war effort.
(Ind, 8/26/00,5A)
1942 Mar, British and US
intelligence received information on Nazi plans for the Holocaust: "It
has been decided to eradicate all the Jews." This was part of a
dispatch from a Chilean consul in Prague, Gonzalo Montt Rivas, to
Santiago of a German decree that Jews abroad could no longer be German
subjects.
(SFC, 7/3/01, p.A8)
1942 Mar, Japan established
relations with the Vatican, the 1st non-Christian state to do so. The
first ambassador's name was Ken Harada.
(Econ, 7/21/07,
p.59)(www.reformation.org/vatican-and-japan.html)
1942 Spring, Soviet soldiers
retreated for 3 days through a corridor 50-yards wide in the Mysnoi Bor
under constant German shelling. The retreat was from a botched campaign
to free Leningrad, 150 miles to the north. The official death toll was
20,000, but some claim as many as 300,000.
(WSJ, 10/1/96, p.A20)
1942 Apr 1, The U.S. Navy began a
partial convoy system in the Atlantic.
(HN, 4/1/99)
1942 Apr 2, Glenn Miller and his
orchestra recorded "American Patrol" at the RCA Victor studios in
Hollywood.
(AP, 4/2/97)
1942 Apr 3, Marsha Mason, actress
(Blume in Love, Cinderella Liberty), was born in St Louis, Mo.
(MC, 4/3/02)
1942 Apr 3, The Japanese began
their all-out assault on the U.S. and Filipino troops at Bataan.
(HN, 4/3/99)
1942 Apr 7, There was a heavy
German assault on Malta.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1942 Apr 9, In the Battle of
Bataan, some 70,000 soldiers gathered at the bottom of the Bataan
peninsula during World War II. American and Philippine defenders on
Bataan capitulated to Japanese forces; the surrender was followed by
the notorious 55-mile "Bataan Death March" which claimed nearly 10,000
lives. 12,000 American soldiers surrendered to the Japanese and some
1000 died on the march. [see Apr 10]
(SFEC, 12/15/96, p.T7)(AP, 4/9/97)(HN, 4/9/98)(SSFC,
6/17/01, Par p.4)
1942 Apr 10, The 65-mile Bataan
Death March began to a prison camp near Cabanatuan. The prisoners were
forced to march 85 miles in six days with only one meal of rice during
the entire journey. Some 10k-15k soldiers perished on the march. Bataan
is a peninsula of western Luzon in the Philippines. It was surrendered
to the Japanese in this year and retaken by American forces in 1945.
[see Apr 9]
(HFA, ‘96, p.28)(SFEC, 12/15/96, p.T7)(SFC, 4/25/97,
p.A26)(MC, 4/10/02)
1942 Apr 11, Detachment 101 of the
OSS, a guerrilla force, was activated in Burma.
(HN, 4/11/99)
1942 Apr 12, Japan killed about
400 Filipino officers in Bataan.
(MC, 4/12/02)
1942 Apr 13, Bill Conti, composer
(For Your Eyes Only, Rocky IV), was born in Providence, RI.
(MC, 4/13/02)
1942 Apr 14, Destroyer Roper sank
German U-85 of US east coast.
(MC, 4/14/02)
1942 Apr 15, Kenneth Lay, the son
of a Baptist minister, was born. He grew up in Rush, Missouri, and in
1986 became the CEO of Texas-based Enron Corp.
(SSFC, 2/3/02, p.A19)
1942 Apr 15, George VI awarded the
George Cross to the citizens of Malta.
(HN, 4/15/98)
1942 Apr 16, The Japanese
occupying army on Java installed film censorship.
(MC, 4/16/02)
1942 Apr 16, Britain’s King George
V awarded the Island of Malta the George Cross in recognition for
heroism under constant German air attack. It was the first such award
given to any part of the British Commonwealth.
(HN, 4/16/99)(HNQ, 7/8/01)
1942 Apr 16, Swiss Nazis in
Payerne killed Jewish cattle trader Arthur Bloch. In 2009 novelist
Jacques Chessex (1934-2009) recounted the event in his novel “A Jew
Must Die.”
(AP, 10/10/09)(http://tinyurl.com/yzz3kvl)
1942 Apr 18, First issue of the
newspaper for U.S. armed forces, Stars and Stripes, was published.
(HN, 4/18/98)
1942 Apr 18, The first US air
strike against Japan, an air squadron from the USS Hornet led by Lt.
Col. James H. Doolittle (d.1993), raided Tokyo and other Japanese
cities. 16 U.S. Army B-25 bombers broke through Japanese defenses to
strike Tokyo and other cities in broad daylight. The North-American
B-25B Mitchells were launched from the deck of the aircraft carrier
Hornet, and after striking their targets, flew on to China. 2 of the 80
men drowned. 3 of 8 captured by the Japanese were executed and 1 died
in a prison camp. Doolittle later became the commander general of the
Eighth Air Force. In 1943 Ted Lawson authored “Thirty Seconds Over
Tokyo,” an account of the bombing of Tokyo.
(AP, 4/18/97)(SFC, 5/15/02, p.A23)(SSFC, 3/30/03,
p.A1)(SFC, 8/12/06, p.P8)
1942 Apr 18, The 16th plane of the
Doolittle air strike against Japan landed outside Vladivostok in the
Soviet Union following its mission. Nolan Herndon (1918-2007), the
bombardier, later reported that their plane was used to test the Soviet
resolve as an ally. The 5-man crew was held for over 13 months before
escaping to a British Embassy in what later became Iran.
(SFC, 10/16/07, p.D8)
1942 Apr 20, Pierre Laval, the
premier of Vichy France, in a radio broadcast, established a policy of
"true reconciliation with Germany."
(HN, 4/20/99)
1942 Apr 20, Heavy German assault
on Malta.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1942 Apr 20, The battle for Moscow
ended. It officially lasted from September 30, 1941, to April 20, 1942,
but in reality spanned more than those 203 days of unremitting mass
murder, and marked the first time that Hitler's armies failed to
triumph with their Blitzkrieg tactics. In 2007 Andrew Nagorski authored
“The Greatest Battle: Stalin, Hitler, and the Desperate Struggle for
Moscow That Changed the Course of World War II.”
(WSJ, 1/11/08, p.W6)
1942 Apr 23, A 4-day allied
bombing of Rostock began.
(MC, 4/23/02)
1942 Apr 23, Luftwaffe bombed
Exeter.
(MC, 4/23/02)
1942 Apr 24, Barbra Streisand,
singer, actress, was born in Brooklyn, NY.
(MC, 4/24/02)
1942 Apr 24, Luftwaffe bombed
Exeter.
(MC, 4/24/02)
1942 Apr 26, Bobby Rydell
(Ridarelli), singer, was born. His songs included: "Wild One," "We Got
Love," and "Volare."
(440 Int’l. Internet, 4/26/97, p.1)
1942 Apr 26, Luftwaffe bombed Bath.
(MC, 4/26/02)
1942 Apr 27, The 1st convoys of
Japanese detainees arrived at the Tanforan detention center south of
San Francisco. The assembly center remained in operation for 169 days
after which detainees were transferred to relocation camps. Most of the
Tanforan detainees were transferred to Abraham, Utah.
(Ind, 2/2/02, 5A)
1942 Apr 27, Tornado destroyed
Pryor, Oklahoma, killing 100 and injuring 300.
(MC, 4/27/02)
1942 Apr 27, Belgium Jews were
forced to wear stars.
(MC, 4/27/02)
1942 Apr 28, Nightly "dim-out"
began along the East Coast.
(MC, 4/28/02)
1942 Apr 29, Japanese troops
marched into Lashio and cut off the Burma Road.
(MC, 4/29/02)
1942 Apr, Operation Bolero was the
name of the logistics mission to transfer equipment and fighting men
from Canada and the United States to England in preparation for an
cross-Channel invasion in 1943. Started in April, 1942, this colossal
logistical effort was undertaken by the Services of Supply (SOS), part
of the U.S. Army.
(HNQ, 7/13/00)
1942 Apr, A stenographic record of
Hitler’s conferences with his generals from this time until Apr, 1945,
was published in 2003 as: "Hitler and His Generals." It was edited by
Helmut Heiber and David M. Glantz."
(WSJ, 2/5/03, p.D10)
1942 Apr, In Germany the Gestapo
closed the Grosse Hamburgerstrasse School, the last Jewish school
operating in Berlin. A film was made in 1996 of surviving pupils
reuniting at the site.
(WSJ, 5/30/97, p.A16)
1942 May 2, Admiral Chester J.
Nimitz, convinced that the Japanese would attack Midway Island, visited
the island to review its readiness.
(HN, 5/2/99)
1942 May 2, Japanese troops
occupied Mandalay Burma.
(MC, 5/2/02)
1942 May 3, Executive Order 9066,
signed by Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt, was issued by Lt. Gen’l. John
DeWitt from his headquarters in the SF Presidio. It called for the
evacuation of Japanese-Americans from Los Angeles effective May 9. Some
110,000-112,000 Japanese-Americans were settled in 10 relocation camps,
the first of which was in Manzanar in Owens Valley, Ca. In the Bay Area
most Japanese-Americans were sent to the Tanforan racetrack where they
were put up in stables and later relocated to Topaz, Utah. Soon after,
the War Relocation Authority hired Dorothea Lange, a photographer
already well-known for her striking Depression-era photos of migrant
workers, to document the internment process. Lange's poignant photos
reflected her disagreement with government policy and brought her into
conflict with her employers.
(SFC, 10/30/96, p.C2)(SFEC, 4/13/97, Z1 p.6)(SFC,
11/19/96, p.A17)(HNPD, 4/24/99)
1942 May 3, The Luftwaffe bombed
Exeter.
(MC, 5/3/02)
1942 May 3, Nazis executed 72 in
reprisal in Sachsenhausen, Netherlands. Johan H. Westerveld, lt.-Col,
leader Order Service, was among the executed.
(MC, 5/3/02)
1942 May 4, The U.S. began food
rationing.
(HN, 5/4/98)
1942 May 4, The
Battle of the Coral Sea, the first naval clash fought entirely with
carrier aircraft, began during World War II.
(AP, 5/4/97)(HN, 5/4/98)
1942 May 5, Tammy Wynette, country
singer (Stand by your Man), was born in Redbay, Alabama.
(MC, 5/5/02)
1942 May 5, Sales of sugar resumed
in the United States under a rationing program.
(AP, 5/5/97)(HN, 5/5/98)
1942 May 5, General Joseph
Stilwell learned that the Japanese had cut his railway out of China and
was forced to lead his troops into India.
(HN, 5/5/99)
1942 May 5, The first Japanese
soldiers landed on the Philippine island of Corregidor defended by only
13,000 soldiers under Gen’l. Wainwright. More than 1,000 Americans and
Filipinos died in defense of the island.
(SFEC, 12/15/96, p.T7)
1942 May 6, Ariel Dorfman, Chilean
writer (Death and the Maiden), was born.
(HN, 5/6/01)
1942 May 6, On Corregidor US
Gen’l. Jonathan Wainwright surrendered his forces, some 15,000
Americans and Filipinos, to the Japanese. This began a 3-year ordeal
for 4 doctors as POWs under the Japanese. In 2005 John A. Glusman
authored “Conduct Under Fire,” and account of their survival as POWs.
(AP, 5/6/97)(SSFC, 7/10/05,
p.E4)(http://tinyurl.com/736ws)
1942 May 7, In the Battle of the
Coral Sea, Japanese and American navies attacked each other with
carrier planes. It was the first time in the history of naval warfare
where two enemy fleets fought without seeing each other. This battle
stopped Japanese expansion.
(HN, 5/7/99)(MC, 5/7/02)
1942 May 7, A Nazi decree ordered
all Jewish pregnant women of Kovno Ghetto executed.
(MC, 5/7/02)
1942 May 7, Felix Paul von
Weingartner, Austria conductor, composer, died.
(MC, 5/7/02)
1942 May 8, Battle of the Coral
Sea between the Japanese Navy and the U.S. Navy ended as a tactical
victory for the Japanese. They sank more tons of ships than the U.S.
did. It was a strategic victory for the U.S. in that the Japanese were
halted in their drive south. The aircraft carrier Lexington was sunk by
Japanese air attack at Coral Sea.
(HN, 5/8/99)(MC, 5/8/02)
1942 May 8, German summer
offensive opened in Crimea.
(MC, 5/8/02)
1942 May 9, John Ashcroft, later
Missouri governor (1984-1992) senator (1995-2000) and US Attorney Gen’l
(2001-2004), was born in Chicago, Ill.
(USAT, 11/5/04, p.4A)
1942 May 12, A Nazi U-boat sank an
American cargo ship at mouth of Mississippi River.
(MC, 5/12/02)
1942 May 12, David Ben-Gurion left
the Jewish state in Palestine.
(MC, 5/12/02)
1942 May 12, The Soviet Army
launched its first major offensive of the war and took Kharkov in the
eastern Ukraine from the German army. The occupation lasted until Aug
23, 1943.
(HN, 5/12/99)(MC, 5/12/02)
1942 May 12, 1,500 Jews were
gassed in Auschwitz.
(MC, 5/12/02)
1942 May 13, Pitcher Jim Tobin
belted 3 HRs in a game.
(SS, Internet, 5/13/97)
1942 May 13, A helicopter made its
1st cross-country flight.
(MC, 5/13/02)
1942 May 14, Aaron Copland’s
"Lincoln Portrait" was first performed by the Cincinnati Symphony
Orchestra, conducted by Andre Kostelanetz, who had commissioned the
work.
(AP, 5/14/98)
1942 May 14, US Congress voted to
establish the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC).
(AP, 5/14/07)
1942 May 14, The British, in
retreat from Burma, reached India.
(HN, 5/14/98)
1942 May 15, Gasoline rationing
went into effect in 17 states, limiting sales to 3 gallons a week for
nonessential vehicles.
(AP, 5/15/97)(HN, 5/15/98)
1942 May 17, Dutch SS vowed
loyalty to Hitler.
(MC, 5/17/02)
1942 May 18, New York ended night
baseball games for the rest of World War II.
(HN, 5/18/98)
1942 May 18, Allied forces bombed
the harbor city of Kupang (Koepang), Timor.
(www.kensmen.com/may42.html)
1942 May 19, Sir Joseph Larmor
(b.1857), professor of mathematics, died in Ireland. His contributions
bridged the old and the new physics. He published three papers all
entitled “A dynamical theory of the electric and luminiferous medium”
between 1894 and 1897. These papers presented his theory of the
electron, which gained further weight in 1897 when J J Thomson
experimentally identified the electron.
(http://tinyurl.com/y9y5wg)(WSJ, 10/13/06, p.A13)
1942 May 20, Glenn Miller and His
Orchestra recorded "(I've Got a Gal in) Kalamazoo" at Victor Studios in
Hollywood.
(AP, 5/20/02)
1942 May 20, US Navy 1st permitted
black recruits to serve.
(MC, 5/20/02)
1942 May 20, Japan completed the
conquest of Burma.
(HN, 5/20/98)
1942 May 25, Bill Young, rocker,
was born.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1942 May 25, Brian "Blinky"
Davison, rocker, was born.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1942 May 26, Tank battle at Bir
Hakeim: African corps vs. British army.
(MC, 5/26/02)
1942 May 27, Nazi overlord and SS
general Reinhard Heydrich was killed in Prague by Czech commandos, who
had parachuted into Czechoslovakia and ambushed his car. Hitler
promptly ordered the deaths of 10,000 residents of Lidice, near Prague.
Heydrich died of his wounds a week later. The commandos had been
sheltered in Lidice and as a result the entire population was either
executed or driven out. This has become a hallmark of Nazi brutality.
Heydrich was the man charged with "The Final Solution of the Jewish
Problem." Heydrich was responsible for the development of an espionage
system outside Germany. As an SS general he was the first administrator
of the concentration camps and the program to eliminate Jews from
Europe.
(HNQ, 10/20/99)(MC, 5/27/02)
1942 May 27, German General Erwin
Rommel began a major offensive in Libya with his Afrika Korps.
(HN, 5/27/99)
1942 May 28, Jean F. van Royen,
German secretary PTT (camp Amersfoort), died.
(MC, 5/28/02)
1942 May 29, Kevin Conway, actor
(Flash Point, Cage of Angels), was born in NYC.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1942 May 29, The movie "Yankee
Doodle Dandy," starring James Cagney, premiered at a war-bonds benefit
in New York.
(AP, 5/29/99)
1942 May 29, Bing Crosby, the Ken
Darby Singers and the John Scott Trotter Orchestra recorded Irving
Berlin’s "White Christmas" in Los Angeles for Decca Records.
(AP, 5/29/98)
1942 May 29, Actor John Barrymore
died in Hollywood at age 60.
(HN, 5/29/00)(AP, 5/29/01)
1942 May 29, The German Army
completed its encirclement of the Kharkov region of the Soviet Union.
The Red Army had lost over 250,000 men including many prisoners.
(HN, 5/29/99)
1942 May 30, US aircraft carrier
Yorktown left Pearl Harbor.
(MC, 5/30/02)
1942 May 30, The Royal Air
Force launched the first 1,000 plane raid over Germany. 1,047 RAF
bombers bombed Cologne.
(HN, 5/30/98)(MC, 5/30/02)
1942 May 30, Reichsfuhrer Heinrich
Himmler arrived in Prague.
(MC, 5/30/02)
1942 May 31, In Australia 3 midget
submarines slipped into the Sidney Harbor after being launched from a
fleet of five larger Japanese submarines offshore. Two were spotted and
attacked, leading the two-man crews to commit suicide. A 3rd midget
submarine managed to fire two torpedoes at the US heavy cruiser USS
Chicago, one of which exploded beneath an Australian depot ship HMAS
Kuttabul, killing 21 sailors. In 2006 the M24 midget submarine was
found by scuba divers in deep waters off the coast. In 2007 the
Australian government decided to leave the M24 and its 2 Japanese
sailors undisturbed on the seabed.
(AFP, 11/24/06)(AFP, 5/23/07)
1942 May 31, Luftwaffe bombed
Canterbury.
(MC, 5/31/02)
1942 May, Japanese documents in
1998 revealed that their military used poison gas in a northern China
battlefield. China claimed that poison gas was used 2,900 times.
(SFC, 6/15/98, p.A14)
1942 Jun 1, America began sending
Lend-Lease materials to the Soviet Union.
(HN, 6/1/98)
1942 Jun 1, The US Supreme Court,
in Skinner v. Oklahoma ex rel. Williamson, struck down Oklahoma’s
Habitual Criminal Sterilization Act.
(WSJ, 9/25/08,
p.A18)(http://supreme.justia.com/us/316/535/case.html)
1942 Jun 2, The American aircraft
carriers Enterprise, Hornet and Yorktown moved into their battle
positions for the Battle of Midway.
(HN, 6/2/99)
1942 Jun 3, Japanese carrier-based
planes strafed Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands as a diversion of
the attack on Midway island.
(HN, 6/3/99)
1942 Jun 4, The Battle of Midway
began. It was Japan’s first major defeat in World War II. Four Japanese
carriers were lost. The carrier USS Yorktown was hit by 3 Japanese
bombs and put on tow to Pearl Harbor. It was torpedoed three days later
and sank in waters 16,650 deep. The Yorktown was found in 1998 by a
team led by oceanographer Robert Ballard, who had also found the
Titanic and the Bismarck. The story of the Battle of Midway was told by
Walter Lord in "Incredible Victory." In 2005 Alvin Kernan authored “The
Unknown Battle of Midway.”
(AP, 6/4/97)(HN, 6/4/98)(SFC, 6/5/98, p.A3)(SFEC,
6/4/00, p.C1)(WSJ, 11/29/05, p.D8)
1942 Jun 6, The 1st nylon
parachute jump was made in Hartford, Ct., by Adeline Gray.
(MC, 6/6/02)
1942 Jun 6, Japanese troops landed
on Kiska, Aleutians.
(MC, 6/6/02)
1942 Jun 6, Japanese forces
retreated in the World War II Battle of Midway.
(AP, 6/6/97)
1942 Jun 7, The USS Yorktown was
sunk off of Midway Atoll.
(F, 10/7/96, p.174)
1942 Jun 7, The Japanese invaded
Attu and Kiska in the Aleutian Islands.
(HN, 6/7/98)
1942 Jun 8, Andrew Weil, physician
and author (Spontaneous Healing), was born.
(HN, 6/8/01)
1942 Jun 8, Bing Crosby recorded
"Adeste Fideles" and "Silent Night" in Los Angeles for Decca Records.
(AP, 6/8/00)
1942 Jun 8, In Paris on the first
day Helene Berr was forced to wear the yellow star to distinguish Jews:
"My God, I didn't know this would be so hard. I was very brave all day.
I held my head high and looked people so straight in the eyes they
turned away. But it's hard ... This morning, I went out with Mother.
Two kids in the street pointed at us saying 'Hey? You see? Jewish.'"
(AP, 1/9/08)
1942 Jun 9, German-Neth press
reported that 3 million Dutch were sent to East-Europe.
(MC, 6/9/02)
1942 Jun 9, The Japanese high
command announced that "The Midway Occupation operations have been
temporarily postponed."
(HN, 6/9/99)
1942 Jun 10, German Gestapo
massacred 173 male residents of Lidice, Czechoslovakia, in retaliation
for the killing of SS Gen Reinhard Heydrich. All together, 340 people
died in the Nazi reprisal (192 men, 60 women and 88 children). The
death toll resulting from the effort to avenge the death of Heydrich is
estimated at 1,300. This count includes relatives of the partisans,
their supporters, Czech elites suspected of disloyalty and random
victims like those from Lidice.
(AP, 6/10/97)(HN,
6/10/98)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidice)
1942 Jun 11, The United States and
the Soviet Union signed a lend-lease agreement to aid the Soviet war
effort in World War II.
(AP, 6/11/97)
1942 Jun 11-Oct 20, In Malta the
German and Italian air blockade and repeated bombing failed to break
the people-who lived in caves and catacombs through the worst. Hitler’s
planned airborne invasion-Operation Hercules-was finally called off.
(HNQ, 4/8/99)
1942 Jun 12, American bombers
struck the oil refineries of Ploesti, Rumania for the first time.
(HN, 6/12/98)
1942 Jun 12, Anne Frank received
her diary as a birthday present in Amsterdam.
(MC, 6/12/02)
1942 Jun 13, President Roosevelt
created the Office of War Information, and appointed radio news
commentator Elmer Davis to be its head. The OSS, Office of Strategic
Services, was formed.
(AP, 6/13/97)(MC, 6/13/02)
1942 Jun 13, Four men landed on a
Long Island beach from a German submarine with plans to sabotage NYC’s
water system and industrial sites across the Northeastern US. [see Jun
27]
(SFC, 11/30/01, p.A1)
1942 Jun 13, 1st V-2 rocket launch
from Peenemunde, Germany, reached 1.3 km.
(MC, 6/13/02)
1942 Jun 14, Anne Frank began her
diary.
(MC, 6/14/02)
1942 Jun 14, The first bazooka
rocket gun, produced in Bridgeport, Ct., demolished a tank from its
shoulder-held position.
(MC, 6/14/02)
1942 Jun 15, Xaviera Hollander,
[DeVries], celebrity "author" (Happy Hooker), was born in Surabaya,
Indonesia.
(MC, 6/15/02)
1942 Jun 16, Lt. Edwin P. Ramsey
led the last US cavalry charge at the village of Morong in the
Philippines. His mounted platoon of 27 men routed a force of hundreds
of Japanese soldiers.
(SFEC, 2/23/97, BR p.4)
1942 Jun 17, Rod Padgett, poet,
was born.
(HN, 6/17/01)
1942 Jun 17, Yank a weekly
magazine for the U.S. armed services, began publication. Hartzell
Spence (d.2001 at 93), executive editor of Yank, a new US Army
publication, soon introduced the term "pinup" for the photo inserts of
beautiful women and added the "Sad Sack" cartoon strip.
(HN, 6/17/98)(SFC, 5/29/01, p.A17)
1942 Jun 17, Four men landed on a
Florida beach from a German submarine with plans to sabotage US
industrial sites. [see Jun 27]
(SFC, 11/30/01, p.A1)
1942 Jun 18, Roger Ebert, film
critic, was born in Urbana, Ill.
(SFEC, 3/7/99, Par p.26)
1942 Jun 18, Paul McCartney,
songwriter and singer and member of the Beatles, was born. He went on
to form Wings before heading on to a solo career.
(HN, 6/18/99)
1942 Jun 18, The U.S. Navy
commissioned its first black officer, Harvard University medical
student Bernard Whitfield Robinson.
(HN, 6/18/99)
1942 Jun 18, Eric Nessler of
France stayed aloft in a glider for 38h 21m.
(MC, 6/18/02)
1942 Jun 18, John Kubris (28),
Czech resistance fighter, killed Nazi SS leader Reinhard Heydrich, died.
(MC, 6/18/02)
1942 Jun 18, Adolf Opalka, Czech
resistance fighter, was shot down.
(MC, 6/18/02)
1942 Jun 19, Prime Minister
Winston Churchill arrived in Washington D.C. to discuss the invasion of
North Africa with President Roosevelt.
(HN, 6/19/98)
1942 Jun 19, In Czechoslovakia PM
Alois Elias, sentenced to death in October 1941 for high treason and
espionage, was executed. In 2006 his ashes were buried with state
honors.
(AP, 5/7/06)
1942 Jun 20, Brian Wilson (Beach
Boys), was born.
(MC, 6/20/02)
1942 Jun 20, Adolf Eichmann
proclaimed the deportation of Dutch Jews.
(MC, 6/20/02)
1942 Jun 21, President Roosevelt
and Prime Minister Churchill met in Washington, DC.
(MC, 6/21/02)
1942 Jun 21, German General Erwin
Rommel captured the port city of Tobruk in North Africa and 25,000
Allied troops.
(HN, 6/21/98)(Camelot, 6/21/99)
1942 Jun 22, The first delivery of
V-Mail was in 1942.
(HFA, ‘96, p.32)
1942 Jun 22, A Japanese submarine
shelled Fort Stevens, Oregon, at the mouth of the Columbia River.
(HN, 6/22/98)(MC, 6/22/02)
1942 Jun 22, A Jewish Brigade,
attached by British Army, formed.
(MC, 6/22/02)
1942 Jun 24, Mick Fleetwood
(musician: drums: group: Fleetwood Mac: Dreams, Don't Stop), was born.
(MC, 6/24/02)
1942 Jun 24, The German Africa
Corps occupied Egypt.
(MC, 6/24/02)
1942 Jun 25, Major General Dwight
Eisenhower was appointed commander of US forces in Europe.
(MC, 6/25/02)
1942 Jun 25, Some 1,000 British
Royal Air Force bombers raided Bremen, Germany, during World War II.
(AP, 6/25/97)
1942 Jun 26, The Grumman F6F
Hellcat fighter flew for the first time.
(HN, 6/26/98)
1942 Jun 27, Bruce Johnston,
rocker (Beachboys-In My Room), was born.
(SC, 6/27/02)
1942 Jun 27, The FBI announced the
capture of eight Nazi saboteurs who had been put ashore from 2
submarines, one off New York’s Long Island and the other off of
Florida. The men were tried by a military court and 6 were secretly
executed in a DC jail. Ernest Burger and George Dasch were sentenced to
30 years in prison for their help in revealing the plot. They were
pardoned in 1948 by Pres. Truman.
(AP, 6/27/97)(SFC, 11/30/01, p.A18)
1942 Jun 27, The Allied Convoy
PQ-17 left Iceland for Murmansk and Archangel. As their escorts turned
away, the ships of the doomed Allied convoy PQ-17 followed orders and
began to disperse in the Arctic waters.
(HN, 6/27/98)
1942 Jun 28, German troops
launched an offensive to seize Soviet oil fields in the Caucasus and
the city of Stalingrad.
(HN, 6/28/98)
1942 Jun 30, Col-gen Von Paulus'
6th Army stormed into the Ukraine.
(MC, 6/30/02)
1942 Jun, The US authorized an
additional 200 blimps, most of which were built by Goodyear Co. of
Akron, Ohio. When the war began the Navy had 10 blimps.
(Ind, 1/27/00, 5A)
1942 Jun, In Poland by this month
100,000 people of the Warsaw ghetto had died due to disease or
starvation.
(SFC, 7/10/97, p.A7)
1942 Summer, Members of Kiev’s
Dynamo soccer team were brought out from forced labor to play a series
of exhibition games. The last game was against Flakelf, a Luftwaffe
team, which lost to Dynamo 5-2. Dynamo members were later arrested. One
died of torture and 3 more were killed near the Babi Yar ravine. In
2002 Andy Dougan authored "Dynamo: Triumph and Tragedy in Nazi-Occupied
Kiev."
(WSJ, 9/6/02, p.W10)
1942 Jul 1, Genevieve Bujold,
actress (King of Hearts, Choose Me, Coma), was born in Montreal.
(MC, 7/1/02)
1942 Jul 1, German troops captured
Sevastopol, Crimea, in the Soviet Union.
(HN, 7/1/98)
1942 Jul 2, Allied convoys QP-13
and PQ-17 passed each other while the German battleships Tirpitz and
Hipper prepared to attack PQ-17 in the North Atlantic.
(HN, 7/2/98)
1942 Jul 4, Irving Berlin’s
musical review "This Is the Army" opened at the Broadway Theater in New
York.
(AP, 7/4/00)
1942 Jul 4, Allied convoy PQ-17
scattered when its escort ships were withdrawn, leaving the convoy to
face German U-boats alone.
(HN, 7/4/98)
1942 Jul 4, 1st American bombing
mission over enemy-occupied Europe (WW II). US air offensive against
Nazi-Germany began.
(Maggio)
1942 Jul 5, 1st performance of
Heitor Villa-Lobos' Choros 6/9/11.
(MC, 7/5/02)
1942 Jul 5, Ian Fleming graduated
from a training school for spies in Canada.
(MC, 7/5/02)
1942 Jul 6, Anne Frank's family
went into hiding in After House, Amsterdam.
(MC, 7/6/02)
1942 Jul 9, Anne Frank (13), her
family and 4 other Jews went into hiding in the attic above her
father's office in an Amsterdam warehouse.
(HN, 7/9/01)(MC, 7/9/02)
1942 Jul 10, General Carl Spaatz
became the head of the U.S. Air Force in Europe.
(HN, 7/10/98)
1942 Jul 10, Himmler ordered the
sterilization of all Jewish woman in Ravensbruck Camp.
(MC, 7/10/02)
1942 Jul 11, In the longest
bombing raid of World War II, 1,750 British Lancaster bombers attacked
the Polish port of Danzig. The Polish submarine Orzel escaped from
internment and went on to fight the Germans against long odds.
(HN, 7/11/98)
1942 Jul 12, Richard Stoltzman,
clarinetist (Tashi), was born in Omaha, Nebraska.
(MC, 7/12/02)
1942 Jul 13, Harrison Ford, actor
(Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Frantic), was born in Chicago, Ill.
(MC, 7/13/02)
1942 Jul 13, 5,000 Jews of Rovno,
Polish Ukraine, were executed by Nazis.
(MC, 7/13/02)
1942 Jul 13, SS shot 1,500 Jews in
Josefov, Poland.
(MC, 7/13/02)
1942 Jul 15, The first supply
flight from India to China over the 'Hump' was flown to help China's
war effort.
(HN, 7/15/99)
1942 Jul 16, The first large-scale
roundups of Jews began under protests by only a half-dozen Catholic
church leaders. French police arrested 8,000 Jews over 2 days in Paris
in the Velodrome d’Hiver round-up.
(SFEC, 9/28/97, p.A22)(MC, 7/16/02)(Econ, 7/24/04,
p.49)
1942 Jul 16, Jews were transported
from Holland to an extermination camp.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1942 Jul 18, The German
Messerschmitt Me 262 Schwalbe, the first jet-propelled aircraft to fly
in combat, made its first flight. Walter Nowotny was a rising your star
in the Luftwaffe, chosen by Hitler to be the point man to lead the new
jet fighter under the tutelage of General of Fighters Adolf Galland who
was assigned to prove the airplane in battle. The Axis hopes were
dashed when Nowotny was attacked by American pilots during landing and
crashed. Col. Edward R. "Buddy" Haydon was one of those American pilots.
(www.fighter-planes.com/info/me262.htm)(HNQ, 9/2/02)
1942 Jul 19, German U-boats were
withdrawn from positions off the U.S. Atlantic coast due to effective
American anti-submarine countermeasures.
(HN, 7/19/98)
1942 Jul 20, Time put Russian
composer Dmitri Shostakovitch on its cover.
(MC, 7/20/02)
1942 Jul 20, The first detachment
of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), later known as WACs, began
basic training at Fort Des Moines, Iowa.
(HN, 7/20/02)(AP, 7/20/02)
1942 Jul 22, Gasoline rationing
involving the use of coupons began along the Atlantic seaboard.
(AP, 7/22/99)
1942 Jul 22, The Americans
approved Operation Torch, the British alternative to an invasion of
Europe. The design of Operation Torch was to secure all of North Africa
for the Allies. In 2002 Rick Atkinson authored "An Army At Dawn," an
account of Operation Torch.
(HN, 2/26/98)(WSJ, 11/19/02, p.D6)
1942 Jul 22, Warsaw Ghetto Jews
(300,000) were sent to death at Treblinka extermination Camp.
(MC, 7/22/02)
1942 Jul 23, Harry James and his
Orchestra recorded "I Had the Craziest Dream" in Hollywood for Columbia
Records.
(AP, 7/23/02)
1942 Jul 23, Treblinka
Concentration Camp was destroyed.
(MC, 7/23/02)
1942 Jul 24, The Soviet city of
Rostov was captured by German troops.
(HN, 7/24/98)
1942 Jul 26, Roman Catholic
churches protested the Dutch bishops’ stand against the spread of
Judaism.
(MC, 7/26/02)
1942 Jul 26, RAF bombed Hamburg.
(MC, 7/26/02)
1942 Jul 27, Benny Goodman and his
Orchestra and vocalist Peggy Lee recorded "Why Don't You Do Right" in
New York for Columbia Records.
(AP, 7/27/02)
1942 Jul 27, The advance of German
army was halted in the first battle of El Alamein, Egypt.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_El_Alamein)
1942 Jul 28, Nazis liquidated
10,000 Jews in Minsk, Russia.
(SC, 7/28/02)
1942 Jul 30, President Roosevelt
signed a bill creating a women’s auxiliary agency in the Navy known as
"Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service" or WAVES for short.
(AP, 7/30/97)
1942 Jul 30, The US
passenger-freighter Robert E. Lee with 268 passengers was sunk by the
German U-166 submarine. 15 crew members and 10 passengers died. In 2001
wreckage of the U-166 was found in the Gulf of Mexico and it appeared
that it was sunk by Coast Guard PC-566 right after the attack. U-166
had 52 crew members. [see Aug 1, 1942]
(SFC, 6/9/01, p.A5)
1942 Jul 30, German SS
einsatzgruppen death battalions killed 25,000 Jews in Minsk, Belorussia.
(MC, 7/30/02)
1942 Jul 31, At midnight the
record studios fell silent in a struggle with James Caesar Petrillo
(d.1984), head of the American Federation of Musicians. Petrillo
insisted that the record industry pay a ¼ to ¾ cent
royalty to the musicians union. Decca signed an agreement in Aug, 1943,
and Columbia and Victor surrendered Nov 11, 1944.
(WSJ, 7/31/02, p.D10)
1942 Jul 31, The German SS gassed
some 1,000 Jews in Minsk, Belorussia.
(MC, 7/31/02)
1942 Jul, Dr. Paul Fildes led a
British test of anthrax in a bomb on Gruinard Island in northwest
Scotland. The island became contaminated from tests and Britain
acquired it for £500. Cleanup was undertaken in 1986 and the
island was returned to its original owners in 1990.
(WSJ, 10/18/01, p.A23)(Econ, 5/8/04, p.78)
1942 Jul, Maurice Papon
(1910-2007), French civil servant, in his first report to German
occupiers, noted that he had “dejudaised” 204 businesses, while 493
others were “in the process of dejudaisation.”
(Econ, 2/24/07, p.99)
1942 Jul, Hitler made his fateful
decision to split the armies engaged in the offensive and to occupy the
city of Stalingrad with the weaker of the 2 groups.
(WSJ, 1/14/07, p.P8)
1942 Aug 1, Jerry Garcia, lead
singer of the Grateful Dead, was born.
(HN, 8/1/98)
1942 Aug 1, Ensign Henry C. White,
while flying a J4F Widgeon plane, sank U-166 as it approaches the
Mississippi River, the first U-boat sunk by the U.S. Coast Guard. In
the summer of 1942, German submarines put saboteurs ashore on American
beaches. [see Jul 30, 1942]
(HN, 8/1/98)(SFC, 6/9/01, p.A5)
1942 cAug 1, Jose Diaz, a young
Mexican national, was killed in southern Ca. His death was associated
with a brawl between the Downey Boys and the 38th Street gang. 24 young
men from the 38th Street neighborhood were indicted in the Sleepy
Lagoon murder case and a dozen men served 21 months in prison before
their convictions were overturned. The vent formed the basis for a play
by Luis Valdez and the film "Zoot Suit."
(SFC, 5/23/01, p.C5)
1942 Aug 2, Isabel Allende, author
of "The House of the Spirits," was born.
(HN, 8/2/00)
1942 Aug 4, The 1st train with
Jews departed Mechelen, Belgium, to Auschwitz.
(MC, 8/4/02)
1942 Aug 5, Janusz Korczak and the
children he cared for were taken away by the Nazis from an orphanage in
the Warsaw Ghetto. He chose to stay with the children in his care as
they went together into the gas chambers at Treblinka. In 2002 a
memorial in Warsaw was dedicated to Korczak and the children.
(AP, 8/6/02)
1942 Aug 6, Goering proclaimed
occupied areas "thoroughly empty to plunder."
(MC, 8/6/02)
1942 Aug 6, The Soviet city of
Voronezh fell to the German army.
(HN, 8/6/98)
1942 Aug 7, Garrison Keillor,
American humorist and writer, was born.
(HN, 8/7/00)
1942 Aug 7, B.J. (Billy Joe)
Thomas, singer (Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head, Hooked on a
Feeling), was born.
(MC, 8/7/02)
1942 Aug 7, The U.S. 1st Marine
Division under General A. A. Vandegrift landed on the islands of
Guadalcanal and Tulagi in the Solomon islands. This was the first
American amphibious landing of the war and the start of the first major
allied offensive in the Pacific during World War II. The initial
landing party included Navajo Codetalkers. This was the 1st land
Japanese defeat of WWII; Japan was building an air base with designs on
isolating the Australian continent.
(AP, 8/7/97)(HN, 8/7/98)(WSJ, 10/12/99, p.A24)(MC,
8/7/02)
1942 Aug 7, Transport 16 departed
with French Jews to Nazi-Germany.
(MC, 8/7/02)
1942 Aug 7, The Nazi 36th Police
Battalion, made up of ethnic Estonians, massacred some 2,500 Jews at
Novogrudok, Belarus (according to the Simon Wiesenthal Foundation).
(SSFC, 2/15/04, p.A4)
1942 Aug 8, U.S. Marines captured
the Japanese airstrip on Guadalcanal.
(HN, 8/8/98)
1942 Aug 8, Six convicted Nazi
saboteurs who had landed in the United States were executed in
Washington, D.C. Two others received life imprisonment.
(AP, 8/8/97)
1942 Aug 8, Gerhart Riegner
(d.2001 at 90), World Jewish Congress official in Geneva, cable the US
vice consul to describe Hitler’s plan to deport an estimated 4 million
Jews to Eastern Europe and to annihilate them.
(SFC, 12/4/01, p.A19)
1942 Aug 9, Mahatma Gandhi and 50
others were arrested in Bombay after the passing of a "quit India"
campaign by the All-India Congress.
(MC, 8/9/02)
1942 Aug 9, Carmelite nun Teresa
Benedicta of the Cross, whose given name was Edith Stein (b.1891), was
executed by the Nazis at Auschwitz for her Jewish heritage. A Roman
Catholic convert from Judaism, Stein was an educator, nun, philosopher
and spiritual writer and is generally regarded as a modern saint and
martyr. Born in Germany on October 12, 1891, she joined the Carmelites
in 1934 and wrote a number of important philosophical and spiritual
works, including "Finite and Eternal Being." With Hitler’s 1942 order
for the arrest of all non-Aryan Catholics, Stein was seized and shipped
to the concentration camp at Auschwitz where she died in the gas
chamber with her sister Rosa. A woman of singular intelligence and
learning, she left behind a body of writing notable for its doctrinal
richness and profound spirituality. She was beatified by Pope John Paul
II at Cologne on May 1, 1987. She was made a saint in 1998.
(HNQ, 10/6/98)(SFC, 10/12/98, p.A1)
1942 Aug 10, Gen. Bernard Law
Montgomery became commandant British 8th leader in N. Africa.
(MC, 8/10/02)
1942 Aug 11, Some 999 Jews were
taken from Mechelen transit camp in Belgium.
(MC, 8/11/02)
1942 Aug 11, During World War II,
Vichy government official Pierre Laval publicly declared that "the hour
of liberation for France is the hour when Germany wins the war."
(AP, 8/11/99)
1942 Aug 11, The German submarine
U-73 attacked a Malta bound British convoy and sank the HMS Eagle, one
of the world's first aircraft carriers.
(HN, 8/10/98)
1942 Aug 11-Sep 30, The SS began
exterminating 3,500 Jews in Zelov Lodz, Poland.
(MC, 8/11/02)
1942 Aug 12, British premier
Churchill arrived in Moscow to meet Stalin.
(MC, 8/12/02)
1942 Aug 13, Walt Disney's
animated feature "Bambi" premiered at Radio City Music Hall in New
York.
(AP, 8/13/99)
1942 Aug 14, Dwight D. Eisenhower
was named the Anglo-American commander for Operation Torch, the
invasion of North Africa.
(HN, 8/14/98)
1942 Aug 15, The Japanese
submarine I-25 departed Japan with a floatplane in its hold. It was
assembled upon arriving off the West Coast of the US, and used to bomb
U.S. forests.
(HN, 8/15/99)
1942 Aug 16, The US Navy L-8
patrol blimp crash-landed at 419 Bellevue St., Daly City, Ca., after
drifting in from the ocean. The ship’s crew, Lt. Ernest Dewitt Cody
(27) and Ensign Charles E. Adams (38), were missing and no trace of
them was ever found.
(GDCH, 1986, p.17)(Ind, 5/3/03, p.5A)
1942 Aug 17, U.S. Eighth Air Force
bombers attacked Rouen, France.
(AP, 8/17/02)
1942 Aug 17, Marine Raiders
attacked Makin Island (Kiribati) in the Gilbert Islands from two
submarines. [see Aug 18]
(HN, 8/17/98)
1942 Aug 18, Carlson's Raiders
landed on Makin (Kiribati) in the Gilbert islands and killed 350
Japanese. [see Aug 17]
(MC, 8/18/02)
1942 Aug 18, Japan sent a crack
army to Guadalcanal to repulse the U.S. Marines fighting there.
(HN, 8/18/98)
1942 Aug 19, 19 US Marines died
during a commando raid on Makin atoll in the Gilbert Islands. The raid
was 2,000 miles behind enemy lines and 9 Marines were left behind. The
1943 movie, “Gung Ho,” was based on the raid and starred Randolph
Scott as Lt. Col. Evans Carlson, leader of the raid. In 2001 the bodies
of 13 Marines, who died on Makin, were reburied at Arlington National
Cemetery.
(SFC, 12/26/00, p.A1)(SFC, 8/18/01, p.A3)
1942 Aug 19, About 5,000 Canadian
and 2,000 British soldiers launched a disastrous raid against the
Germans at Dieppe, France. Over 3,600 men perished in this
battle. The information gathered from this landing was considered
valuable for planning the successful Allied landings in Northern
Africa, Sicily, and Normandy, France. Brit. Col. Pat Porteous
(d.2000) received a Victoria Cross for his valor in the attack which
was aimed at gaining experience for the later D-Day invasion.
(AP, 8/19/97)(HN, 8/19/98)(SFC, 10/16/00, p.A22)(MC,
8/19/02)
1942 Aug 19, Gen. Paulus ordered
the German 6th Army to conquer Stalingrad.
(MC, 8/19/02)
1942 Aug 20, Isaac Hayes, composer
(Shaft), was born in Covington, TN.
(MC, 8/20/02)
1942 Aug 20, Plutonium was first
weighed. Glenn T. Seaborg was a co-discoverer of Plutonium.
(HFA, ‘96, p.36)(SFC, 8/26/97, p.A17)
1942 Aug 21, U.S. Marines turned
back the first major Japanese ground attack on Guadalcanal in the
Battle of Tenaru.
(HN, 8/21/98)
1942 Aug 22, Brazil declared war
on the Axis powers. She was the only South American country to send
combat troops into Europe.
(HN, 8/22/98)
1942 Aug 22, Mikhailmichel Fokine
(b.1880), Russian ballet dancer, choreographer, died.
(MC, 8/22/02)
1942 Aug 23, Patricia McBride,
ballerina (NYC Ballet Co), was born in Teaneck, NJ.
(MC, 8/23/02)
1942 Aug 23, The 1st US flights
landed on Guadalcanal.
(MC, 8/23/02)
1942 Aug 23, German forces began
an assault on the major Soviet industrial city of Stalingrad. From Aug.
to Feb. 1943, The Battle of Stalingrad, 600 miles southeast of Moscow,
was fought and ended with the encirclement and destruction of the
German 6th Army Group. Stalingrad has since been renamed to Volgograd.
In 1998 Antony Beevor published "Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege." The
German in charge was Gen’l. Friedrich Paulus. 600 Luftwaffe bombers
killed some 40,000 people in the first week of fighting.
(WSJ, 2/21/96, p.A-15)(WSJ, 7/8/98, p.A13)(HN,
8/23/98)(MC, 8/23/02)
1942 Aug 24, In the battle of the
Eastern Solomons, the third carrier-versus-carrier battle of the war,
U.S. naval forces defeated a Japanese force attempting to screen
reinforcements for the Guadalcanal fighting.
(HN, 8/24/98)
1942 Aug 25, German SS began
transporting Jews of Maastricht, Neth.
(chblue.com, 8/25/01)
1942 Aug 25, W. van Daalen,
opposition leader on Celebes, was beheaded.
(MC, 8/25/02)
1942 Aug 26, Haile Selassie issued
a new proclamation outlawing slavery in Ethiopia. Slavery was first
outlawed in 1924.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R28)(http://nazret.com/history/)
1942 Aug 26, Haile Selassie
established the State Bank of Ethiopia.
(http://nazret.com/history/)
1942 Aug 26, 7,000 Jews were
rounded up in Vichy, France.
(MC, 8/26/02)
1942 Aug 26, Japanese troops
landed on New Guinea, Milne Bay.
(MC, 8/26/02)
1942 Aug 26, A Russian counter
offensive began in Moscow.
(MC, 8/26/02)
1942 Aug 27, Cuba declared war on
Germany, Japan and Italy.
(MC, 8/27/01)
1942 Aug 29, The American Red
Cross announced that Japan had refused to allow safe conduct for the
passage of ships with supplies for American prisoners of war.
(HN, 8/29/98)
1942 Aug 31, The British army
under General Bernard Law Montgomery defeated Field Marshal Erwin
Rommel’s Afrika Korps in the Battle of Alam Halfa in Egypt.
(HN, 8/31/98)
1942 Aug 31, U boats sunk this
month 108 ships (544,000 ton).
(MC, 8/31/01)
1942 Aug, Following the
Battle of Midway, American forces at Guadalcanal--code-named
"Cactus"--took delivery of 12 Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bombers and
their escort of 19 Grumman F4F-4 Wildcat fighters, the advance
squadrons of Marine Air Group (MAG) 23. Within 12 hours the fledgling
"Cactus Air Force" helped finish off a Japanese infantry assault.
(HNQ, 8/15/01)
1942-1943 Aug-Feb, The Battle of Guadalcanal
transformed the US military services to world class status. The story
of WW II is told in "Clash of Titans: World War II at Sea" by Walter J.
Boyne.
(WSJ, 6/1/95, p.A-12)
1942 Aug, Irene Nemirovsky (39),
French-Jewish author, died at Auschwitz. She had recently authored
"Suite Francaise" while waiting in rural France for what she knew was
her imminent arrest and deportation. It is a powerful account of the
effect on ordinary people of the military collapse of June 1940, the
panicked flight from Paris and the arrival of the German army. In 2004
Nemirovsky was awarded a top French literary award. In 2006 Jonathan
Weiss authored “Irene Nemirovsky: Her Life and Works.”
(AFP, 11/8/04)(SSFC, 9/24/06, p.M1)
1942 Sep 1, A federal judge in
Sacramento, Calif., upheld the wartime detention of Japanese-Americans
as well as Japanese nationals.
(AP, 9/1/97)
1942 Sep 2, German troops entered
Stalingrad.
(MC, 9/2/01)
1942 Sep 4, Soviet planes bombed
Budapest in the war’s first air raid on the Hungarian capital.
(HN, 9/4/98)
1942 Sep 5, Eduardo Mata, Mexico
City Mexico, conductor (Improvisaciones), was born.
(MC, 9/5/01)
1942 Sep 5, Werner Herzog,
director (Burden of Dreams, Stroszek, Woyzeck), was born.
(MC, 9/5/01)
1942 Sep 5, British & US
bombed Le Havre & Bremen.
(MC, 9/5/01)
1942 Sep 7, The Red Army pushed
back the German line northwest of Stalingrad. The Krummer Lauf allowed
German infantry and motorized artillery units to actually fire around
corners.
(HN, 9/7/98)
1942 Sep 9, A Japanese float
plane, launched from a submarine, made its first bombing run on a U.S.
forest near Brookings, Oregon. Japanese planes drop incendiary bombs on
Oregon in an attempt to set fire to the forests of the Northwest. The
forests failed to ignite, but Pacific Coast citizens stepped-up their
blackout drills in preparation for future Japanese raids.
(HN, 9/9/99)(MC, 9/9/01)
1942 Sep 10, RAF dropped 100,000
bombs on Dusseldorf.
(MC, 9/10/01)
1942 Sep 10, British troops landed
on Madagascar.
(MC, 9/10/01)
1942 Sep 11, Wheeler Bryson Lipes
(1921-2005), a US Navy pharmacist's mate, saved the life of sailor
Darrell Dean Rector (19) by operating, following a medical manual, in
the officer’s mess aboard the Seadragon below the surface of the South
China Sea. George Weller (d.2002), war correspondent, won the Pulitzer
in 1943 for his account of the operation. The films “Destination Tokyo”
(1943) and “Run Silent, Run Deep” (1958) memorialized the surgery.
(AP, 12/20/02)(SFC, 4/19/05, p.B5)
1942 Sep 12, Free-Poland &
Belgium asked Pope to condemn Nazi-war crimes. He did not.
(MC, 9/12/01)
1942 Sep 13, Battle of Edson's
Ridge began at Guadalcanal.
(http://www.gnt.net/~jrube/indx2.html)
1942 Sep 14, The 3-day Battle of
Edson's Ridge at Guadalcanal continued.
(http://www.gnt.net/~jrube/indx2.html)
1942 Sep 14, Armies of Nazi
Germany began their siege of the Russian city of Stalingrad. [see Sep
2, 13]
(MC, 9/14/01)
1942 Sep 15, The USS Wasp was
torpedoed by a Japanese submarine at Guadalcanal; the US Navy ended up
sinking the badly damaged aircraft carrier.
(www.b-26marauderarchive.org/PM/PM2105/PM4223.htm)(AP, 9/15/07)
1942 Sep 16, The Japanese base at
Kiska in the Aleutian Islands was raided by American bombers.
(HN, 9/16/98)
1942 Sep 17, US Army Lt. Gen.
Leslie R. Groves (1896-1970) made a temporary Brigadier General and was
placed in charge of the Manhattan Engineer District, which became known
as the Manhattan Project, the fledgling US atomic bomb program.
(ON, 8/09,
p.7)(http://unjobs.org/authors/leslie-r.-groves)
1942 Sep 17, British Prime
Minister Winston Churchill met with Soviet Premier Josef Stalin in
Moscow as the German Army rammed into Stalingrad.
(HN, 9/17/98)
1942 Sep 20, In France a shipment
of 1,000 French and foreign Jews, including 163 children, was arranged.
They were sent to Drancy, north of Paris, and then to Auschwitz.
(SFC, 2/1/97, p.A14)
1942 Sep 21, British forces
attacked the Japanese in Burma.
(HN, 9/21/98)
1942 Sep 21, Nazis executed 116
hostages in Paris.
(MC, 9/21/01)
1942 Sep 23, At Auschwitz Nazis
began experimental gassing executions.
(MC, 9/23/01)
1942 Sep 23, The Russian counter
offensive at Stalingrad began.
(MC, 9/23/01)
1942 Sep 25, The War Labor Board
ordered equal pay for women in the United States.
(HN, 9/25/98)
1942 Sep 27, Glenn Miller and his
Orchestra performed together for the last time, at the Central Theater
in Passaic, N.J., prior to Miller’s entry into the Army.
(AP, 9/27/97)
1942 Sep 27, The S.S. Stephen
Hopkins, a Liberty Ship with an all-San Francisco crew, engaged the
German raider Stier and her tender, Tannenfels. It shelled and brought
down the Stier and hit the Tannenfels before it was sunk. Of a crew of
58, only 15 survived. They reached the shore of Brazil after a 31-day
voyage in an open lifeboat.
(SFC, 9/27/96, p.B1)
1942 Sep 27, Australian forces
defeated the Japanese on New Guinea in the South Pacific.
(HN, 9/27/98)
1942 Sep 28, Luftwaffe bombed
Stalingrad.
(MC, 9/28/01)
1942 Sep 30, Adm. Nimitz' B-17
found Guadalcanal by consulting a National Geographic map.
(MC, 9/30/01)
1942 Sep 30, The German SS
exterminated some 3,500 Jews in Zelov Lodz, Poland, in 6 week period.
(MC, 9/30/01)
1942 Sep, More than 400 villagers
died of bubonic plague in China’s eastern Zhejiang province after
Japanese warplanes of medical Unit 731 dropped germ bombs. Unit 731 was
stationed on the outskirts of Harbin, China, until the Soviet Union
entered the war. The unit deposited typhus into the water supply
flowing into Manchuria. In 2000 Yoshio Shinozuka testified to seeing
men infected with the plague and then being dissected while still
alive. Harbin had 26 affiliates across China and its germ bombs
(anthrax, cholera, typhus and bubonic plague) killed an estimated
270,000 people. Biological warfare activities of Unit 731 were unknown
to most Japanese citizens until 1981, when author Seiichi Morimura
exposed its dark history in a book, "The Devil's Gluttony".
(SFEC, 12/8/96, p.C8)(SFC, 8/30/97, p.A12)(SFC,
8/15/98, p.A12)(SFC, 12/22/00, p.D6)(SFC, 6/12/01, p.A8)(AP, 8/27/02)
1942 Sep, In Albania the
Communist Party organized a National Liberation Movement as a popular
front resistance organization.
(www, Albania, 1998)
1942 Sep, Japanese detainees from
the California assembly center at Tanforan race track began their
transfer to Abraham, Utah, 140 miles south of SLC.
(Ind, 2/2/02, 5A)
1942 Sep, In Theresienstadt,
Czechoslovakia, some 50,000 Jews were held by the German SS in crowded
conditions and half the inmates died that year from disease.
(SFC,10/24/97, p.A11)
1942 Sep, 98 U-boats were sunk
this month.
(MC, 9/30/01)
1942 Sep, Michael Kolnhofer joined
the German Waffen-SS and served as an armed guard at the Sachsenhausen
concentration camp near Berlin until Jan, 1944.
(SFC, 1/1/97,p.A3)
1942 Oct 1, Bell P-59 Airacomet
fighter, 1st US jet, made its maiden flight.
(MC, 10/1/01)
1942 Oct 1, Little Golden Books
(children books) began publishing.
(MC, 10/1/01)
1942 Oct 1, The German Army ground
to a complete halt within the city of Stalingrad.
(HN, 10/1/98)
1942 Oct 2, The "Queen Mary"
sliced the cruiser "Curacao" in half, killing 338.
(MC, 10/2/01)
1942 Oct 3, President Roosevelt
established the Office of Economic Stabilization and authorized
controls on farm prices, rents, wages and salaries.
(AP, 10/3/97)
1942 Oct 3, In Germany the
rocket-development team of Werner von Braun conducted the 1st
successful test flight of an A-4/V-2 missile from the Peenemunde test
site. It flew perfectly over a 118-mile course to an altitude of 53
miles (85 km). The 13-ton, 46-foot long V2 rocket was the world’s 1st
long-range ballistic missile.
(HN, 10/3/98)(AM, 5/01, p.63)(WSJ, 2/21/09, p.A5)
1942 Oct 5, 5,000 Jews of Dubno,
Russia, were massacred.
(MC, 10/5/01)
1942 Oct 7, Maxwell Anderson's
"Eve of St Mark," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 10/7/01)
1942 Oct 7, US and British
government announced the establishment of United Nations.
(MC, 10/7/01)
1942 Oct 7, A single salvo
Katyusha rocket destroyed a Nazi battalion in Stalingrad.
(MC, 10/7/01)
1942 Oct 8, Fight at Matanikau,
Guadalcanal (John Hersey Into the Valley).
(MC, 10/8/01)
1942 Oct 10, 1,300 Austrian Jews
were transported to Theresienstadt.
(MC, 10/10/01)
1942 Oct 11, In the World War II
Battle of Cape Esperance in the Solomon Islands, U.S. cruisers and
destroyers decisively defeated a Japanese task force in a night surface
encounter.
(AP, 10/11/97)(HN, 10/11/98)
1942 Oct 12, Louis Armstrong (40)
married Lucille Wilson (24).
(SFEM, 1/25/98, p.69)
1942 Oct 12, During World War II,
President Roosevelt delivered one of his so-called "fireside chats" in
which he recommended drafting 18- and 19-year-old men.
(AP, 10/12/99)
1942 Oct 12, US Navy defeated
Japanese in WW II Battle of Cape Esperance.
(AP, 10/12/02)
1942 Oct 12, During World War II,
Attorney General Francis Biddle announced that Italian nationals in the
United States would no longer be considered enemy aliens.
(AP, 10/12/97)
1942 Oct 13, In the first of four
attacks, two Japanese battleships sail down the slot and shelled
Henderson field on Guadalcanal, in an unsuccessful effort to destroy
the American Cactus Air Force.
(HN, 10/13/99)
1942 Oct 15, Dirk Bannink, nurse
and local councilor Deventer, Netherlands, was executed.
(MC, 10/15/01)
1942 Oct 16, The ballet "Rodeo,"
with music by Aaron Copland and choreography by Agnes de Mille,
premiered at New York's Metropolitan Opera House.
(AP, 10/16/02)
1942 Oct 16, In India a cyclone
devastated Bengal and about 40,000 lives were lost.
. (www.emergency-management.net/cyclone.htm)
1942 Oct 17, In Switzerland Eduard
von Steiger, Justice Minister and minister of police, told leaders of
the Swiss Fatherland Assoc. that the government had decided on a
"fundamental slowing" of Jewish immigration.
(SFC, 6/10/98, p.a10)
1942 Oct 18, Hitler orders allied
commandos to be killed.
(MC, 10/18/01)
1942 Oct 19, The Japanese
submarine I-36 launched a floatplane for a reconnaissance flight over
Pearl Harbor. The pilot and crew reported on the ships in the harbor,
after which the aircraft was lost at sea.
(HN, 10/19/98)
1942 Oct 21, Eight American and
British officers landed from a submarine on an Algerian beach to take
measure of Vichy French to the Operation Torch landings.
(HN, 10/21/00)
1942 Oct 22, The 1st ships of
invasion fleet for Oran (Algeria) left Scotland.
(MC, 10/22/01)
1942 Oct 23, Michael Crichton,
writer, was born. His work includes "Jurassic Park" and "The Andromeda
Strain."
(HN, 10/23/00)
1942 Oct 23, The Western Task
Force, destined for North Africa, departed from Hampton Roads,
Virginia. The command of the Western Task Force, part of an invasion of
North Africa during World War II known as Operation Torch, was given to
General George Patton. Placed under the command of General George
Patton, the Western Task Force had the advantage of having a man at the
top who would stop at nothing to see that the mission was accomplished,
a quality that would be needed in the days ahead. Naval operations were
in the hands of Rear Adm. H. Kent Hewitt, an easygoing man who, in the
beginning, found it difficult to work with Patton, but with increasing
familiarity became a solid partner.
(HN, 10/23/98)(HNQ, 12/8/00)
1942 Oct 23, Ralph Rainger (41),
pianist and song writer, was among 12 people killed when their DC-3
crashed after being clipped by a B-34 bomber flown by Army Lt. William
Wilson, who had wanted to thumb his nose at Louis Reppert, a flight
school buddy and co-pilot of the DC-3. An Army court-martial panel
later exonerated Wilson, who had been charged with manslaughter.
Rainger’s songs included “Love in Bloom” and “Thanks for the Memories,”
which Bing Crosby made a hit in 1934.
(WSJ, 12/30/08, p.D7)
1942 Oct 23, During World War II,
Britain launched a major offensive against Axis forces at El Alamein in
Egypt.
(AP, 10/23/97)
1942 Oct 24, The 2nd day of battle
at El Alamein (Egypt).
(MC, 10/24/01)
1942 Oct 25, In the 3rd day of
battle at El Alamein (Egypt), the British continued an offensive move.
(MC, 10/25/01)
1942 Oct 25, Battle of Henderson
Field, Guadalcanal began.
(MC, 10/25/01)
1942 Oct 25, Field marshal Erwin
Rommel returned to North-Africa.
(MC, 10/25/01)
1942 Oct 26, Japanese planes badly
damaged the US ship Hornet in the Battle of Santa Cruz Islands, in the
South Pacific Solomon Islands. 300 survivors were rescued by the
destroyer Barton. The Hornet sank early the next morning.
(HN, 10/26/98)(AP, 10/26/07)(SFC, 10/14/05, p.B6)
1942 Oct 26, In the Battle of
Santa Cruz the USS South Dakota shot down a record 32 enemy planes
(MC, 10/26/01)
1942 Oct 26, Japanese attacked
Guadalcanal, sinking two U.S. carriers. It was the 2nd day in the
Battle of Henderson Field.
(HN, 10/26/98)(MC, 10/26/01)
1942 Oct 26, Mitchell Paige
(1918-2003), US Marine platoon sergeant, held his position against
Japanese forces at Guadalcanal as all his men were killed or wounded,
until reinforcements arrived. He received a battlefield commission and
later a Medal of Honor. In 1975 he authored the autobiography "A Marine
Named Mitch."
(SFC, 11/19/03, p.A29)
1942 Oct 26, In the 4th day of the
battle at El Alamein (Egypt) the Australians made a breakthrough.
(MC, 10/26/01)
1942 Oct 27, In the 5th day of
battle at El Alamein: heavy battles and Australians advanced.
(MC, 10/27/01)
1942 Oct 27, In Starachowice,
Poland, Nazi soldiers separated out weak Jews from the strong. The
strong were sent to work and the weak were sent to the extermination
camp at Treblinka.
(WSJ, 11/25/03, p.A1)
1942 Oct 28, The 6th day of the
battle at El Alamein. British offensive under Montgomery.
(MC, 10/28/01)
1942 Oct 29, The Alaska highway
was completed. [see Nov 21]
(MC, 10/29/01)
1942 Oct 29, In the 7th day of
battle at El Alamein Montgomery led an assault.
(MC, 10/29/01)
1942 Oct 29, Nazis murdered some
16,000 Jews in Pinsk, Soviet Union.
(MC, 10/29/01)
1942 Oct 30, On the 8th day of
battle at El Alamein a new Australian assault began.
(MC, 10/30/01)
1942 Oct 31, David Ogden Stiers,
actor (Winchester-M*A*S*H, Doc), was born in Peoria, Ill.
(MC, 10/31/01)
1942 Oct 31, 94 U boats were sunk
this month (619,000 ton).
(MC, 10/31/01)
1942 Oct 31, the 9th day in battle
at El Alamein (Egypt).
(MC, 10/31/01)
1942 Oct, Pres. Roosevelt signed
special legislation that allowed General Motors to take a complete tax
write-off for the loss of Opel, its Nazi subsidiary. The tax reduction
amounted to some $22.7 million, an amount equal to about $285 billion
in 2007.
(SSFC, 1/7/07, p.E6)
1942 Oct, Under the command of
Maj. Gen. Edward M. Almond, the U.S. Army's 92nd Infantry
Division began combat training and went into action in Italy in the
summer of 1944. The 92nd was the only African-American infantry
division to see combat in Europe in World War II. Nicknamed "Buffalo
Soldiers," the 92nd, which had fought in France during World War I, was
once again activated in 1942. More than 909,000 black Americans were
selected for duty in the racially segregated U.S. Army during World War
II. The vast majority of African Americans in uniform were assigned to
segregated construction or supply units or placed in units that
performed unpleasant duties such as graves registration. The 92nd
continued a long and proud tradition by retaining the buffalo as its
divisional symbol. Its circular shoulder patch, which featured a black
buffalo on an olive drab background, was called The Buffalo--as was the
division’s official publication. The 92nd even kept a live buffalo as a
mascot.
(HNQ, 1/22/99)(HNQ, 6/20/01)
1942 Oct, In Albania non-communist
nationalist groups formed to resist the Italian occupation.
(www, Albania, 1998)
1942 Oct, In Belarus on Yom Kippur
2,900 Jews were killed in Domachevo.
(SFEC, 2/14/99, p.A23)
1942 Oct, An advance team of 4
Norwegian commandos parachuted into Norway as part of Operation Grouse
to destroy the German-operated heavy-water Vemork plant on the Mane
River near Rjukan.
(ON, 4/07, p.2)
1942 Oct, In Poland by this month
some 300,000 occupants of the Warsaw ghetto had been shipped off to the
gas chambers at Treblinka.
(SFC, 7/10/97, p.A7)
1942 Nov 1, The 10th day of battle
at El Alamein (Egypt).
(MC, 11/1/01)
1942 Nov 2, Lt. General Dwight D.
Eisenhower arrived in Gibraltar to set up an American command post for
the invasion of North Africa.
(HN, 11/2/98)
1942 Nov 2, An amphibious aircraft
foundered in rough weather, in the waters surrounding what is now the
Mingan Archipelago National Park Reserve in the eastern Gulf of Saint
Lawrence. The plane was based at Presqu'Ile, Maine, in the US, and
serviced an airfield in the village of Longue-Pointe-de-Mingan, Quebec.
Four of the crew escaped the flooding plane and were rescued by local
fishermen rowing out from shore in open boats in rough seas. Five
others perished, trapped inside. In 1941 and 1942, the US had
constructed a series of airfields in Eastern Canada to ferry aircraft
to Allied air forces in Northern Europe, as part of the so-called
"Crimson Route." Wreckage of the downed plane was found in 2009.
(AFP, 8/7/09)
1942 Nov 2, 11th day of battle at
El Alamein, Egypt: British made an assault on Tel el Aqqaqir.
Montgomery defeated Rommel in battle of Alamein Egypt.
(MC, 11/2/01)
1942 Nov 3, The 12th day of battle
at El Alamein (Egypt): Scottish assault.
(MC, 11/3/01)
1942 Nov 3, Martin Cruz Smith,
novelist, was born. His work included "Gorky Park."
(HN, 11/3/00)
1942 Nov 4, The 13th day of battle
at El Alamein: Axis Africa corps retreated from El Alamein in North
Africa in a major victory for British forces commanded by Field Marshal
Bernard Montgomery.
(AP,
11/4/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_El_Alamein)
1942 Nov 5, Art Garfunkel,
American singer and actor, was born. He teamed with Paul Simon in the
1960s to form the group 'Simon and Garfunkel.'
(HN, 11/5/02)
1942 Nov 5, George M. Cohan (64),
composer, actor, dancer, died.
(MC, 11/5/01)
1942 Nov 5, Richard Carver (28),
the stepson of Britain’s Gen. Montgomery, was captured by the Afrika
Corps, a day after the battle of El Alamein. A year later after serving
time in an Italian prison, he journeyed some 400 miles to reunite with
Gen. Montgomery. In 2009 Tom Carver, his son, authored “Where the Hell
Have You Been” Monty, Italy and One Man’s Incredible Escape.”
(Econ, 10/24/09, p.97)(http://tinyurl.com/ykwz9t7)
1942 Nov 5, Nazis raided on Greek
Jews in Paris.
(MC, 11/5/01)
1942 Nov 6, Nazis executed 12,000
Minsk ghetto Jews.
(MC, 11/6/01)
1942 Nov 7, FDR became the 1st US
president to broadcast in a foreign language, French.
(MC, 11/7/01)
1942 Nov 8, Operation Torch began
during World War II as U.S. and British forces landed in French North
Africa. Gen’l. Eisenhower landed with American troops in Algiers,
Casablanca.
(AP, 11/8/97)(HN, 11/6/98)(WSJ, 6/4/98, p.A19)(MC,
11/8/01)
1942 Nov 8, Hitler proclaimed the
fall of Stalingrad from Munich beer hall.
(MC, 11/8/01)
1942 Nov 8, Vichy-France dropped
diplomatic relations with US.
(MC, 11/8/01)
1942 Nov 9, Transport #44 departed
with French Jews to Nazi Germany.
(MC, 11/9/01)
1942 Nov 10, US and British troops
occupied Oran, Algeria.
(MC, 11/10/01)
1942 Nov 10, Winston Churchill
delivered a speech in London in which he said, "I have not become the
King's First Minister to preside over the liquidation of the British
Empire."
(AP, 11/10/02)
1942 Nov 10, Admiral Jean Darlan
ordered French forces in North Africa to cease resistance to the
Anglo-American forces. Admiral Jean Francois Darlan, leader of the
armed forces of Vichy France, was assassinated in Algiers in 1942.
(HN, 11/10/98)
1942 Nov 11, 745 French Jews were
deported to Auschwitz.
(MC, 11/11/01)
1942 Nov 11, Germany completed its
occupation of France.
(AP, 11/11/04)
1942 Nov 12, The World War II
naval Battle of Guadalcanal began. The Allies eventually won a major
victory over the Japanese. The battle was described by Ira Wolfert in
news reports and his 1943 book "Battle for the Solomons."
(SFC,11/28/97, p.B8)(AP, 11/12/07)
1942 Nov 13, US Pres. Roosevelt
signed a measure lowering the minimum draft age from 21 to 18.
(AP, 11/13/07)
1942 Nov 13, Lt Gen. Dwight D.
Eisenhower flew to Algeria to conclude an agreement with French Admiral
Jean Darlan. The Admiral was assassinated soon after.
(HN, 11/13/99)
1942 Nov 13-15, Japanese-US sea
battle at Savo-Island in Guadalcanal.
(MC, 11/14/01)
1942 Nov 14, Last Vichy French
troops in Algeria surrendered.
(MC, 11/14/01)
1942 Nov 15, Daniel Barenboim,
Israeli pianist and conductor, was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
(HN, 11/15/00)(MC, 11/15/01)
1942 Nov 15, An American fleet
defeats a Japanese naval force in a clash off Guadalcanal. The five
Sullivan brothers, onboard USS Juneau, were all killed in the action.
(HN, 11/15/99)
1942 Nov 17, Martin Scorsese, film
director, was born. His films include "Taxi Driver" and "Raging Bull."
(HN, 11/17/00)
1942 Nov 18, Jeffrey Siegel,
pianist (Chicago Symph), was born in Chicago Ill.
(MC, 11/18/01)
1942 Nov 18, Thornton Wilder's
"Skin of our Teeth," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 11/18/01)
1942 Nov 18, An AT-7 Beechcraft
military training plane crashed in the Mendel Glacier in California’s
Kings Canyon National Park. The 4-member training flight left Mather
Field in Sacramento, Ca., and was never heard from again. On Sep 24,
1947, a hiker discovered wreckage of the plane on a glacier in Kings
Canyon. On Oct 16, 2005, a climber on the Mendel Glacier discovered a
body believed to be one of the crew members. He was later identified as
Leo M. Mustonen (22) of Brainerd, Minn. The others were John M.
Mortenson (25) of Moscow, Idaho, William R. Gamber (23) of Fayette,
Ohio, and Ernest G. Munn of St. Clairsville, Ohio. A 2nd body was found
under receding snow in 2007 and was identified Ernest G. Munn.
(SFC, 10/20/05, p.A14)(SSFC, 10/23/05, p.B2)(SFC,
11/12/05, p.A1)(SFC, 2/9/06, p.A4)(SFC, 8/21/07, p.B2)(SFC, 3/10/08,
p.B2)
1942 Nov 19, Calvin Klein, fashion
designer (Calvin Klein Jeans, CK), was born in Bronx, NYC.
(MC, 11/19/01)
1942 Nov 19, Sharon Olds, poet,
was born. Her work included "The Dead and The Living" and "The
Gold Cell."
(HN, 11/19/00)
1942 Nov 19, Bruno Schulz
(b.1892), Polish writer and graphic artist, was shot dead by a German
officer, a rival of Schulz’s German protector. In 1992 Theatre de
Complicite created their play “The Street of Crocodiles” based on the
life and work of Schulz.
(Econ, 9/1/07,
p.76)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Schulz)
1942 Nov 19, During World War II,
Russian forces launched their winter offensive against the Germans
along the Don front. Soviet forces took the offensive at Stalingrad
(AP, 11/19/97)(HN, 11/19/98)
1942 Nov 20, Joseph Biden, later
US Senator for Delaware, was born in Scranton, Pa. In 2008 Barack Obama
named Biden as his vice presidential running mate.
(SSFC, 8/24/08, p.A15)
1942 Nov 20, Meredith Monk,
choreographer, composer and performing artist, was born in Lima, Peru.
(MC, 11/20/01)
1942 Nov 20, British 8th Army
recaptured Benghazi, Libya.
(MC, 11/20/01)
1942 Nov 20, Hitler named field
marshal Erich von Manstein to command.
(MC, 11/20/01)
1942 Nov 20, The 26th Russian
Armored Corps recaptured Perelazovski. A million Russians breached
German lines in a Soviet army offensive.
(MC, 11/20/01)
1942 Nov 21, Tweety Bird, cartoon
character, was born.
(MC, 11/21/01)
1942 Nov 21, The Alaska-Canadian
Highway across Canada was formally opened.
(HFA, ‘96, p.42)(AP, 11/21/97)
1942 Nov 22, Gen-major Rodin's
26th Panzer corps recaptured Ostrov. Hitler ordered Rommel's Africa
Korps to fight to last man.
(MC, 11/22/01)
1942 Nov 23, The film "Casablanca"
premiered in New York City. [see Nov 26]
(HN, 11/23/00)
1942 Nov 23, US Coast Guard
Woman's Auxiliary (SPARS) was authorized.
(MC, 11/23/01)
1942 Nov 23, Gen. Von Paulus asked
Hitler's permission to surrender at Stalingrad. The German 4th and 6th
Army were surrounded at Stalingrad.
(MC, 11/23/01)
1942 Nov 24, Field marshal Erich
von Manstein arrived in Starobelsk.
(MC, 11/24/01)
1942 Nov 26, The film Casablanca
with Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart was made. It had its world
premiere at the Hollywood Theater in New York. It was based on a play
by Murray Burnett (d.1997 at 86) titled: "Everybody Comes to Rick’s."
The 1931 song "As Time Goes By" by Herman Hupfield was used. It won an
Oscar for best movie.
(SFC, 2/14/97, p.D5)(SFC, 9/30/97, p.A21)(AP,
11/26/97)
1942 Nov 26, President Roosevelt
ordered nationwide gasoline rationing, beginning Dec 1.
(AP, 11/26/97)
1942 Nov 26, The German ship SS
Donau prepared to leave the Oslo wharf with 332 Norwegian Jews bound
for death camps.
(AP, 8/24/06)
1942 Nov 27, Jimi Hendrix, rock
musician famous for "All Along the Watch Tower" and "Foxy Lady," was
born in Seattle, Wa.
(HN, 11/27/98)(SFC, 11/28/02, p.E13)
1942 Nov 27, During World War II,
the French navy at Toulon scuttled its ships and submarines to keep
them out of the hands of the Nazis.
(AP, 11/27/97)
1942 Nov 28, 491 people died in a
fire that destroyed the Cocoanut Grove nightclub in Boston. The cause
of the fire was never officially determined, though many blamed a
busboy who survived the blaze.
(AP, 11/28/97)(DT, 11/28/97)
1942 Nov 29, Coffee rationing went
into effect in the U.S., and lasted until the next summer.
(http://tinyurl.com/yccxgv)
1942 Nov, A Royal Air Force bomber
and 2 gliders, carrying 34 British commandos, crash landed in Norway.
This was part of Operation Freshman, which planned a raid on the
heavy-water plant at Vemork. The survivors were captured by German
soldiers and executed by the Gestapo.
(ON, 4/07, p.2)
1942 Nov, In Bronsk, Poland, 2500
Jews living in a shtetl (small village), were rounded up by the Nazis
and gassed at Treblinka. In 1996 a 3-hr Frontline documentary film was
aired that revisited the sight of the vanished Jewish life.
(SFC, 4/14/96, EM, p.6)(SFC, 4/17/96, p.E-3)
1942 Nov, German troops arrived in
Tunisia. The nation was home to some 100,000 Jews at the time. The
Germans imposed anti-Semitic policies that included fines, forcing Jews
to wear Star of David badges and confiscating property. More than 5,000
Jews were sent to forced labor camps, where 46 are known to have died.
About 160 Tunisian Jews in France were sent to European death camps.
(AP, 1/30/07)
1942 Dec 1, Nationwide gasoline
rationing went into effect in the United States.
(AP, 12/1/97)(HN, 12/1/98)
1942 Dec 2, A self-sustaining
nuclear chain reaction was demonstrated for the first time at the
University of Chicago. On the squash court underneath a football
stadium of the University of Chicago, the first nuclear chain reaction
was set off. At 3:45 p.m., control rods were removed from the "nuclear
pile" of uranium and graphite, revealing that neutrons from fissioning
uranium split other atoms, which in turn split others in a chain
reaction. The reaction was part of the Manhattan Project, the United
States' top-secret plan to develop an atomic bomb. The group of
scientists was led by Enrico Fermi and they proved that building an
atomic bomb would be feasible. Dr. Alexander Langsdorf was one of the
designers of the first 2 nuclear reactors that followed the first
sustained nuclear chain reaction at the Univ. of Chicago. The first and
last atomic bombs ever used in war were dropped on Japan in 1945.
(TMC, 1994, p.1942)(SFC, 5/26/96, p.C-10)(AP,
12/2/97)(HNPD, 12/2/98)
1942 Dec 2, The Allies repelled a
strong Axis attack in Tunisia, North Africa.
(HN, 12/2/98)
1942 Dec 4, President Roosevelt
ordered the dismantling of the Works Progress Administration, which had
been created to provide jobs during the Depression.
(AP, 12/4/97)
1942 Dec 4, U.S. bombers struck
the Italian mainland and Naples for the first time in World War II.
(AP, 12/4/97)(HN, 12/4/98)
1942 Dec 5, Arthur Seyss-Inquart
ordered students in Nazi Germany to work.
(MC, 12/5/01)
1942 Dec 6, Peter Handke,
playwright and poet, was born.
(HN, 12/6/00)
1942 Dec 7, Harry Chapin, rock
vocalist (Taxi, Cat's in the Cradle), was born in NYC.
(MC, 12/7/01)
1942 Dec 7, The U.S. Navy launched
the USS New Jersey, the largest battleship ever built.
(HN, 12/7/98)
1942 Dec 9, Dick Butkus, NFL hall
of fame linebacker (Bears) and sportscaster, was born in Chicago, Ill.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1942 Dec 9, The Aram Khachaturian
ballet "Gayane," featuring the surging "Saber Dance," was first
performed by the Kirov Ballet.
(AP, 12/9/97)
1942 Dec 10, George W. Merck,
former president of Merck Pharmaceutical and head of the War Research
Service, requested the Chemical Warfare Service to develop a biological
warfare program.
(AH, 6/03, p.46)
1942 Dec 18, Hitler met with
Mussolini and Pierre Laval.
(HN, 12/18/98)
1942 Dec 19, British advanced 40
miles into Burma in a drive to oust the Japanese from the colony.
(HN, 12/19/98)
1942 Dec 20, 1st Japanese began
the bombing of Calcutta.
(MC, 12/20/01)
1942 Dec 21, The US Supreme Court
ruled all states had to recognize divorces granted in Nevada.
(AP, 12/21/05)
1942 Dec 22, The Soviets drove
German troops back 15 miles at the Don River.
(HN, 12/22/98)
1942 Dec 24, Jean LXF Darlan,
French admiral and leader of the armed forces of Vichy France, was
murdered by Gaullists in Algiers.
(HN, 7/5/98)(MC, 12/24/01)
1942 Dec 25, Pope Pius XII issued
an encyclical with a strong attack on Nazism but no explicit mention of
Jews.
(WSJ, 5/8/97, p.A23)
1942 Dec 27, The 1st Japanese
women camp at Ambarawa went into use.
(MC, 12/27/01)
1942 Dec 28, Ober Kommando
Wehrmacht ordered strategic flights out of the Caucasus.
(MC, 12/28/01)
1942 Dec 30, Five thousand
screaming girls shouted "Frankie! Frankie!" when Sinatra appeared with
Benny Goodman’s band at New York’s Paramount Theater.
(SFC, 5/16/98, p.A13)
1942 Dec 31, After five months of
battle, Emperor Hirohito allowed the Japanese commanders at Guadalcanal
to retreat.
(HN, 12/31/98)
1942 Dec, Dr. Ira Baldwin
(1896-1999), plant bacteriologist at the Univ. of Wisconsin, was
selected to head US biological warfare.
(AH, 6/03, p.46)
1942 Dec, Hu Jintao was born in
China’s eastern Anhui province. He served as vice-president under Jiang
Zemin and became president in 2003.
(SSFC, 3/11/01, p.D8)(Econ, 11/5/05, p.46)
1942 John Irving, author, was born
in Exeter, N.H. In 1978 he authored his novel "The World According to
Garp," which was made into a 1982 film.
(SSFC, 7/8/01, DB p.66)
1942 Edward Hopper painted his
"Nighthawks."
(WSJ, 6/28/95, p.A-16)
1942 Henri Matisse created his
painting “Danseuse dans le fauteuil.” It sold for $22 million at a
Sotheby’s auction in 2007.
(SFC, 11/8/07, p.E3)
1942 Frank R. Paul did the "City
of the Future" cover for an issue of Amazing Stories sci-fi magazine.
(SFEC, 1/3/99, DB p.27)
1942 Maxfield Parrish painted “The
Study for the River at Ascutney.” It was stolen in 1984 and turned up
un 2004 valued at around $50,000.
(SFC, 9/9/04, p.A1)
1942 Gordon Parks, photographer,
writer, composer and filmmaker, shot "American Gothic," a photo of a
charwoman in a government building posed against an American flag with
a mop and a broom.
(SFC,10/15/97, p.D3)
1942 John Malcolm Brinnin (d.1998
at 81) published his first collection of poems: "The Garden Is
Political."
(SFC, 6/29/98, p.A19)
1942 Francis Chase Jr. authored
“Sound and Fury,” an informal history of radio broadcasting.
(WSJ, 11/1/08, p.W12)
1942 Robert Frost published his
collection of poems titled: "A Witness Tree."
(WSJ, 4/30/96, p.A-12)
1942 Margaret Walker Alexander
(1915-1998), black author, was wrote her poem "For My People."
(SFC, 12/1/98, p.B2)
1942 Charles MacArthur wrote his
play "Johnny On the Spot."
(WSJ, 7/31/97, p.A16)
1942 Thornton Wilder wrote his
play "The Skin of Our Teeth." It was an allegory of the history of the
human race experienced by a New Jersey family.
(WSJ, 7/1/98, p.A1)
1942 Albert Camus (1913-1960),
Algeria-born French writer, authored "The Stranger" and "The Myth of
Sisyphus." He established himself as a spokesman for a philosophy of
the absurd along with Jean-Paul Sartre.
(WSJ, 12/12/97, p.A16)(WSJ, 10/21/06, p.P14)
1942 Camilo Jose Cela (d.2002),
Spanish author, published "The Family of Pascual Duarte" in Argentina
because it was considered too violent and crude for Spain. Cela won the
Nobel Prize in Literature in 1989. Cela’s style was called
"tremendismo" and clashed with the lyrical writing of previous Spanish
writers.
(SFC, 1/19/02, p.A23)
1942 Peter Drucker (1909-2005),
Austria-born management visionary, authored his 2nd book “The Future of
Industrial Man.”
(Econ, 11/19/05, p.72)
1942 Marion Hargrove (d.2003 at
83) authored "See Here, Private Hargrove," a light-hearted account of
Army basic training. It became a best-seller and was made into a 1944
movie.
(SFC, 8/29/03, p.A28)
1942 Rudolph H. Hartman, an
investigator for the Treasury Dept., wrote a report titled "The Kansas
City Investigation: Pendergast's Downfall, 1938-1939" as a report to
his superiors, Elmer Irey and Treasury Sec. Henry Morgenthau. In 1999
Robert H. Ferrell published an edition of the work.
(WSJ, 7/19/99, p.A13)
1942 The Hungarian novel "Embers"
by Sandor Marai was published in Budapest. Marai committed in San Diego
in 1989. An English translation was published in 2001.
(WSJ, 10/26/01, p.W10)
1942 Alfred Kazin (1915-1998)
authored “On Native Grounds,” a history of the rise of literary realism
in America.
(WSJ, 1/12/08,
p.W9)(www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=784)
1942 Beryl Markham (d.1986)
authored "West With the Night," an memoir of her life as a hunter,
horse trainer and aviator in Africa.
(SFC, 3/9/02, p.A24)
1942 Mary McCarthy published her
first novel "The Company she Keeps."
(SFEC, 4/30/00, BR p.3)
1942 Samuel Eliot Morison wrote
"Admiral of the Ocean Sea." It is on Christopher Columbus and supports
Watling Island as the historic landfall San Salvador.
(NH, 10/96, p.23)
1942 Charles Norman (1904-1996),
poet and biographer, published his volume of war poetry: "The Savage
Century."
(SFC, 9/16/96, p.A15)
1942 Robert Musil, Austrian author
of "The Man Without Qualities" set in Vienna around 1913, died. His
book was unfinished but got published in short form in English in 1953.
A full 2 volume set ($60) was published in 1995.
(WSJ, 4/12/95, A-12)
1942 Dawn Powell wrote her novel
"A Time to Be Born."
(WSJ, 10/19/98, p.A24)
1942 Joseph Schumpeter
(1883-1950), former Austrian minister of finance (1919-1920), authored
"Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy," in which he predicted the
decline of the family. He introduced here the concept of “creative
destruction:” that old ways of doing things are constantly being swept
away for new ones.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Schumpeter)(Econ, 11/24/07, SR
p.11)
1942 John Steinbeck wrote "The
Moon Is Down." The book was not a success, nor was his "The Short Reign
of Pippin IV" successful.
(SFEC, 6/21/98, DB p.35)
1942 Robert St. John (1902-2003),
American war journalist, authored "From the Land of Silent People," an
account of his war experiences in the Balkans.
(SFC, 2/10/03, p.B5)
1942 Jean Anouilh wrote his play
"Antigone." It was staged in Paris in 1944 during the German occupation.
(SFC, 9/27/96, p.C6)(WSJ, 8/12/98, p.A13)
1942 The opera Brundibar by Hans
Krasa was 1st performed at a Prague orphanage. It had been intended for
a 1938 government competition. It was later performed at the Terezin
concentration camp. Krasa died at Auschwitz Oct 17, 1944.
(WSJ, 2/7/03, p.D8)
1942 Agnes de Mille choreographed
the ballet "Rodeo."
(SFC, 10/14/96, p.B1)
1942 The film "Mrs. Miniver" with
Greer Garson was directed by William Wyler. It won 5 awards including
an Oscar for best picture of the year. Garson won an Oscar for her
role. The film was based on the life of Joyce Anstruther (1901-1953),
pen name Jan Struther, who wrote for London’s Times newspaper in the
late 1930s. In 2002 Ysenda Maxtone Graham authored "The Real Mrs.
Miniver: Jan Struther’s Story."
(SFEC, 3/23/97, DB p.38)(SFC, 3/14/01, p.E1)(TVM,
1975, p.382)(SSFC, 11/3/02, p.M6)
1942 The US Dept. of Agriculture
produced the film “Hemp for Victory,” which urged farmers to grow hemp
after Japan’s seizure of the Philippines curtailed supply.
(Econ, 6/23/07, p.40)
1942 Helen Forrest (d.1999 at 82)
was rated the top female vocalist by Down Beat with Frank Sinatra as
the top male. Forrest published her autobiography: "Springtime in the
Rockies," in 1982.
(SFC, 7/13/99, p.A19)
1942 Saunders Samuel King (d.2000
at 91), Oakland gospel singer, made a hit with "S.K. Blues." It was the
same year that his wife, Margie King, killed herself.
(SFC, 9/4/00, p.B4)
1942 Aram Khatchaturian composed
"Gayane" that included "Sabre Dance."
(SI-WPC, 12/6/96)
1942 Richard Strauss, German
composer, wrote his final opera "Capriccio" with a libretto by Clemens
Krauss. In the work a poet and composer declare their love for a
countess who will decide the "words vs. music" debate.
(WSJ, 1/21/98, p.A20)
1942 Bing Crosby recorded "White
Christmas." It became the top-selling single record until the 1997
"Candle In the Wind" by Elton John and Bernie Taupin was re-written for
the funeral of Princess Diana.
(SFC, 1/29/98, p.C1)
1942 Ella Mae Morse (1924-1999)
recorded her hit "Cow-Cow Boogie." It was the 1st million-seller for
Capital Records.
(SFC, 10/19/99, p.A23)
1942 The first Hewlett Packard
factory was built in Silicon Valley.
(SFC, 1/8/98, p.C3)
1942 Kaiser Shipyards in Richmond,
Ca., set a ship construction record by building the Robert E. Peary
Liberty Ship in 4 days and 15 hours. A total of 747 ships were built at
the Richmond facility. The improved Victory ships were developed late
in the war and in 1998 the Red Oak Victory cargo ship was de-mothballed
for exhibit at the Richmond Point Molate Naval Station.
(SFC, 7/13/98, p.A12)
1942 W. Donald Fletcher
(1908-1996) and Van Duyn Dodge founded the Coro Foundation to encourage
citizen involvement and more capable political leadership.
(SFC, 8/29/96, p.C4)
1942 The Stanford basketball team
won the NCAA championship.
(SFC, 3/27/98, p.A1)
1942 US and Filipino forces held
the island of Corregidor for five months under Japanese siege.
(NG, 10/1988, geographica)
1942 French North Africa was taken
by an expeditionary force led by Eisenhower.
(TMC, 1994, p.1942)
1942 The US government declared
potato chips to be an essential food.
(WSJ, 9/5/96, p.A4)
1942 The US Congress outlawed the
opium poppy. There was a time before this when the US Dept. of
Agriculture taught farmers how to grow opium.
(SFC, 3/15/97, p.E3)
1942 The US government halted all
passenger car and civilian truck production.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1942 Congress passed the
Stabilization Act, which limited wage increases to keep prices in check
during the war. The act permitted the adoption of employer-paid
insurance plans in lieu of wage increases.
(WSJ, 8/18/97, p.A14)
1942 A Revenue Act was passed that
for the first time subjected working-class Americans to federal income
tax.
(WSJ, 3/11/98, p.A20)
1942 The US Supreme Court ruled
that subsistence wheat farming fell under federal regulation because it
affected the interstate wheat trade. In 2005 the court used the same
logic against medical marijuana.
(Econ, 6/11/05, p.31)
1942 James Francis Byrnes, after
serving as a U.S. Supreme Court Justice in 1941 and ‘42, went on to
become director of the Office of Economic Stabilization and secretary
of state. Byrnes, a close associate of President Franklin D.
Roosevelt, left the bench to lead the Office of Economic Stabilization
in 1942-‘43 and then the Office of War Mobilization from 1943-‘45.
Byrnes was a key leader in the U.S. mobilization for war and a close
confidante to FDR on foreign policy. He served as secretary of state
for President Harry Truman from 1945-‘47.
(HNQ, 2/15/00)
1942 Fred Korematsu, a shipyard
welder from Oakland, refused to obey the US government internment order
for Japanese Americans. He was arrested, convicted of a felony and
interned in Utah. He reopened the case in 1983 and got his conviction
reversed.
(SFEC, 3/8/98, p.W27)
1942 Clare Boothe Luce (d.1987)
was elected to Congress.
(SFEC, 6/1/97, BR p.4)
1942 Robert C. Byrd of West
Virginia began winning elections when his local chapter of the Ku Klux
Klan picked him as its leader. He was elected a US Senator in 1959.
(Econ, 11/15/08, p.36)
1942 The US FDA approved Premarin,
an estrogen drug made from the urine of pregnant mares.
(WSJ, 10/21/06, p.R3)
1942 Japanese pilot, Nobuo Fujita
(d.1997 at 85), flew bombing runs over Oregon and set fires in the
coastal forests. In 1962 he visited the area he had bombed with deep
shame and sincere apologies and gave his 400-year-old samurai sword to
the town of Brookings.
(SFC, 10/3/97, p.B13)
1942 In California Earl Warren was
elected governor. A 1997 biography was written by Ed Cray: "Chief
Justice: A Biography of Earl Warren."
(SFEC, 6/8/97, BR p.1)
1942 Construction began on the new
Friant Dam near Fresno, Ca. Completion of the dam in 1944 ended the
salmon run on the San Joaquin River. Legislation in 2008 hoped to
restore the river’s salmon run.
(SFC, 5/8/08, p.B1)
1942 Camp Lejeune, a US Marine
Corps Base, was established near Jacksonville, N.C.
(www.atsdr.cdc.gov/sites/lejeune/)
1942 In Wyoming the Heart Mountain
Relocation Center began to serve as an internment camp for some 10,000
Japanese Americans. It’s story was later documented by Mamoru Inouye in
"The Heart Mountain Story" with photographs by Hansel Mieth and Otto
Hagel.
(SFC, 2/17/98, p.E4)
1942 Anthony W. LeVier (d.1998 at
84) flew the first P-38 Lightening, which saw combat over Britain. He
also flew the first T-33 Thunderbird.
(SFC, 2/11/98, p.A24)
1942 Igor Sikorsky, founder of
Sikorsky Aircraft in Stratford, Conn., produced a film that promoted
the capabilities of his VS-300 helicopter.
(HN, 11/17/98)
1942 Dennis Pulestin (d.2001 at
95) helped design the DUKW amphibian landing craft commonly known as
the Duck.
(SSFC, 6/17/01, p.A27)
1942 Hecker Products Corp., a soap
maker, acquired and took the name of Best Foods.
(WSJ, 5/28/96, p. R-45)
1942 Heidi Schoop (1906-1996)
began her Heidi Schoop Art Creations in Hollywood and continued to
1958. She made plaster dolls, then pottery figurines and bowls. The
Swiss-born ceramic artist fled Nazi Germany in the 1933,
(SFC, 1/7/09, p.G2)(http://tinyurl.com/7v266s)
1942 The Kodacolor process
produced the 1st color print.
(SFC, 7/26/04, p.F4)
1942 Lionel Corp. of New Jersey
ceased the production of toy electric trains to save metal for the war
effort. The company went out of business in 1969 and sold the brand
name.
(WSJ, 5/7/99, p.W14)
1942 Napalm, a jellied gasoline,
was developed by Harvard and Army chemists who combined naphthene and
palmitate. It was later used in the Vietnam war.
(SFC, 4/4/01, p.A3)
1942 Gertrude Scharff Goldhaber
(d.1998 at 86), research physicist at the Univ. of Illinois, discovered
that spontaneous fission is associated with the emission of neutrons.
(SFC, 2/7/98, p.21)
1942 Four engineers at Standard
Oil, including Donald L. Campbell (d.2002 at 98), invented a process
called fluid catalytic cracking, which became essential to increasing
the yield of high-octane gasoline from crude oil.
(SFC, 9/20/02, p.A25)
1942 Dr. Paul Hodges (1894-1997)
introduced a photo-timer that automatically calculated the optimal
X-ray exposure for a high-quality diagnostic image. He was the founding
chairman of the radiology department at the Univ. of Chicago Medical
Center and also invented an X-ray film viewer and an automatic film
exposure instrument.
(SFC, 1/27/97, p.A20)
1942 Hedy Lamarr, actress, and
George Antheill, composer, patented a shielding concept in wireless
radio communications. It later provided the foundation for
spread-spectrum technology used in modern wireless communications.
(WSJ, 2/21/97, p.B15B)
1942 A circus fire sent crazed
elephants stampeding through downtown Cleveland.
(SFC, 6/2/96, p.T-11)
1942 Samuel P. Welles (d.1997),
paleontologist, discovered and described the first known skeleton of
Dilophosaurus wetherilli. The reptile was later featured as the
poison-spitting dinosaur in the film "Jurassic Park." He wrote many
books and articles on the Mesozoic dinosaurs.
(SFC, 8/13/97, p.C2)
1942 Moses Annenberg, owner of the
Philadelphia Enquirer, died. His son Walter took over as editor and
publisher.
(SFC, 10/2/02, p.A2)
1942 Dr. John R. Brinkley
(b.1885), Kansas scam artist, died. He was known as the "goat gland
doctor" for touting sexual vitality with goat gland implants. He also
built one of the nation’s 1st radio stations KFKB (Kansas Folks Know
Best). In 2002 R. Alton Lee authored "The Bizarre Careers of John R.
Brinkley."
(WSJ, 5/24/02, p.W11)
1942 Charlie Christian (25), jazz
electric guitarist, died of tuberculosis. In 2002 a four-CD set was
released titled: "Charlie Christian: The Genius of the Electric Guitar."
(WSJ, 10/4/02, p.W13)
1942 Bruce Fahnestock was killed
by an American fighter plane that mistook his ship for a Japanese
vessel. He and his brother Sheridan had been engaged since the 1930s by
the American Museum of Natural History to document the indigenous music
of the South Pacific Islands.
(Nat. Hist. 3/96, p.24)
1942 Joseph A. Faurot (70), former
NYC detective, died. He introduced fingerprint technology from London
to NYC and the rest of the US.
(ON, 4/04, p.11)
1942 Photographer Tina Modotti
(1896-1942) died.
(SFEM, 6/30/96, p.6)
1942 Lev Nussimbaum (37),
Orientalist and writer (aka Essad Bey or Kurban Said), died in Italy,
while researching a biography of Mussolini. In 2005 Tom Reiss authored
“The Orientalist,” a biography of Nussimbaum, whose books included the
novel “Ali and Nino” (1937), translated to English in 1970.
(WSJ, 2/17/05, p.D8)(SSFC, 3/6/05, p.B3)
1942 Walter Richard Sickert
(b.1860), English Impressionist painter, died. In 2002 Patricia
Cornwell, crime writer, reported that he was Jack the Ripper, the
murderer of 5 London prostitutes in 1888.
(WSJ, 9/27/01, p.A16)(SSFC, 2/24/02, Par p.2)
1942 Sabina Spielrein,
Russian-Jewish psychoanalyst and theorist, died. She was a patient of
Jung and a friend of Freud and is credited by some to have been the
real inventor of such concepts as the Freudian death instinct and the
Jungian notion of the universal myth. She was burned to death with her
daughters by the Nazis in the synagogue of her native Rostov.
(WSJ, 3/22/96, p.A-10)
1942 Emil von Stauss (65), chief
of Deutsche Bank, died. He was a friend of Hitler and helped finance
the Nazi war machine. He had acquired a 9% stake in the Wertheim retail
chain in a forced sale.
(WSJ, 3/29/02, p.A8)
1942 Andree Geulen-Herscovici was
a teacher in Brussels when she witnessed a Gestapo raid on a school.
That prompted her to join a rescue organization and for more than two
years she took in over 300 Jewish children and hid them in Christian
homes and monasteries under assumed identities. In 2007
Geulen-Herscovici (86) was granted honorary Israeli citizenship.
(AP, 4/18/07)
1942 In Brazil Companhia do Vale
do Rio Doce, a state mining concern, was founded. It was pivotal in
developing the Amazon Basin.
(SFC, 1/7/97, p.A10)
1942 Sir William Beveridge
(1879-1963) laid the foundations of Britain’s post-war welfare state.
In 1953 he authored “Power and Influence.”
(Econ, 11/12/05,
p.78)(www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/TUbeveridge.htm)
1942 Oxfam was started by a group
in Oxford, and began as the "Oxford Committee for Famine Relief". In
towns all over the UK, groups of people collected parcels of food and
clothes to send to families whose lives had been destroyed by the war.
(www.oxfam.org)
1942 After capturing and
imprisoning Vietnamese Communist leader Ho Chi Minh in 1942, the
Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek was pressured into releasing
him by America‘s Office of Strategic Services (OSS). The OSS was formed
during WWII to engage in intelligence operations and was the forerunner
of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Ho Chi Minh was leading
Vietnamese resistance against the Japanese and was captured while in
China setting up his Communist-inspired Viet Minh movement. The OSS
sought his release so he could continue his fight against the Japanese.
The Viet Minh also benefited from U.S. arms and equipment.
(HNQ, 1/25/00)
1942 A treaty set the 1,050-mile
border between Ecuador and Peru, but a 49-mile stretch in the
Cordillera del Condor region was not demarcated.
(SFC, 10/17/98, p.A14)
1942 In France the Nazis banned
English language films. "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" was the last
English-language film shown.
(WSJ, 5/20/97, p.A18)
1942 In Germany artifacts of the
German Baroque were taken from the Green Vault in Dresden to Fortress
Konigstein. In 1958 the Soviets returned the lot to Communist Dresden.
(Econ, 9/16/06, p.95)
1942 The Biblical Zoo in Jerusalem
was created by Aharon Shulov as a center for children of all
denominations.
(SFC, 6/3/96, p.A19)
1942 Rommel and Montgomery faced
off in Egypt and Libya.
(TMC, 1994, p.1942)
1942 In Indonesia there was a
Japanese internment camp for women on the island of Sumatra. 200 of the
600 inmates died of disease of starvation. Helen Colijn told of her
stay there in the 1997 book "Song of Survival: Women Interned." Her
experiences inspired the 1997 film "Paradise Road."
(SFEC, 4/13/97, Par p.16)(SFC, 4/18/97, p.A19)
1942 In the Netherlands the
Catholic hierarchy of Amsterdam spoke against the Nazi treatment of
Jews. This led to a redoubling of roundups and deportations.
(WSJ, 4/25/97, p.A18)
1942 In Northern Ireland Joe
Cahill and 5 other IRA members were sentenced to death for the killing
of a police officer. Tom Williams was hanged and the rest had their
sentences commuted to life. Cahill was freed in 1949.
(SFC, 7/26/04, p.B4)
1942 In Poland Jan Karski (d.2000
at 86), former Polish diplomat, disguised as a Nazi guard and snuck
into the Izbica death camp and twice entered the Warsaw Ghetto. He
witnessed the mass killings and torture of Jews and reported his story
to political and religious leaders in the West. His book "Story of a
Secret State" appeared in the US in 1944.
(SFC, 7/15/00, p.A23)
1942 In Scotland the testing of
anthrax was sanctioned on the island of Gruinard amid fears the Germans
might attack the UK with biological or chemical weapons. A film was
made of their work and it remained classified until 1997.
(AH, 6/03,
p.46)(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/1457035.stm)
1942 Nazi documents of this
year showed that the Einsatzgruppe, a Nazi-run Serbian police unit,
killed 6,280 Serbian Jewish women and children by gassing them with
carbon monoxide in a specially designed van. The unit was allegedly run
by Peter Egner, who emigrated to the US in 1960, and received
citizenship in 1966. In 2009 Serbian authorities sought his extradition.
(AP, 4/14/09)
1942 Switzerland passed a
euthanasia law to enable those with just a few weeks to live the
opportunity of a dignified death. Swiss law made assisted suicide
lawful under some conditions.
(WSJ, 11/22/02, p.A1)(Econ, 10/15/05, p.59)
1942 Thailand declared war on
Britain and US, but Thai ambassador in Washington refuses to deliver
declaration to US government.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/country_profiles/1243059.stm)
1942 The Ukrainian Insurgent Army,
or UPA, was created and battled both Soviet and Nazi forces during the
war. Hostility toward the partisans later ran deep because they
initially sought support from the Nazis, believing the Germans would
grant Ukraine independence.
(AP, 10/15/07)
1942-1943 In Norway under the Quisling government 767
Jews were deported to Auschwitz. An estimated 1,100 Jews fled to Sweden
and bureaucrats looted the possessions of 1,179 Jewish families and 71
Jewish companies.
(SFC, 6/25/97, p.A10)
1942-1943 Irena Sendler (29), posing as a
nurse, visited the Warsaw Ghetto and persuaded parents that their
children had better chances of survival outside its walls. She and 20
helpers smuggled some 2,500 children out of the ghetto and placed them
with Polish families. In 2003 Sendler was awarded Poland's highest
order. In 2007 Sendler (97) was honored by parliament at a ceremony
during which Poland's president said she deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.
(AP, 11/11/03)(AP, 3/14/07)
1942-1944 The Jasenovac concentration camp southeast
of Zagreb was commanded by Capt. Dinko Sakic for 8 months. Croatia
extradited him from Argentina in 1998. Sakic commanded the Stara
Gradiska concentration camp and was deputy commander of the Jasenovac
camp. Sakic was found guilty in 1999 of carrying out or condoning the
torture and slaying of inmates.
(SFEC, 4/12/98, p.A20)(SFC, 6/17/98, p.C2)(SFC,
11/3/98, p.C12)(SFC, 3/16/99, p.A9)(SFC, 10/5/99, p.A12)
1942-1944 SS Captain Bruno Melmer was in charge of
valuables stolen from Nazi victims. Gold objects were turned over to
the Reichsbank, which sent it to the Degussa smelting company for
processing into gold bars.
(SFC, 5/26/98, p.A6)
1942-1944 Gen’l. Eduard Dietl (d.1944) led the German
20th mountain army and was later found to be responsible for the
slaughter of hundreds of prisoners in northern Europe.
(SFC, 3/19/97, p.A14)
1942-1944 Maurice Papon, Vichy police supervisor in
Bordeaux, was later charged with the arrest and deportation of 1,690
French Jews. Under the Vichy regime some 75,000 (76,000) were deported
to Nazi death camps. Rene Bousquet was the national Vichy police chief.
(SFC, 1/24/97, p.A15)(WSJ, 10/1/97, p.A1)
1942-1945 Ronald Reagan, a second lieutenant in the
army reserve during WWII, did not serve in combat because of his
disqualification due to poor eyesight. Reagan, who had become a
Hollywood star through his roles in the films Knute Rockne-All American
Hero (1940) and King’s Row (1941), made armed forces training films
from 1942-45. Born in Tampico, Illinois, on February 6, 1911, Reagan
went on to become the 40th president of the United States.
(HNQ, 8/20/99)
1942-1945 The Manzanar Internment Camp in Inyo County
was one of ten that held some 120,000 Japanese-Americans during this
period. The Tule Lake Segregation Camp was another. In 1999 Marnie
Mueller, born in the Tule Lake camp, published the novel "The Climate
of the Country," set at Tule Lake in this time. In 2000 Lawson Fusao
Inada edited "Only What We Could Carry: The Japanese-American
Internment Experience." In 2000 Kimi Kodani Hill edited "Topaz Moon:
Chiura Obata’s Art of the Internment."
(SFC, 7/29/97, p.A18)(SFEC, 5/2/99, BR p.5)(SFEC,
10/1/00, BR p.5)
1942-1945 Some 22,000 Japanese-Canadians were
interred during WW II. Their property was confiscated and sold to pay
for the camps. At the end of the war they were not allowed to return to
their former communities. The 1981 novel "Obasan" by Joy Kogawa was
about their experiences.
(SFC, 2/8/99, p.E1,3)
1942-1945 The US promised Filipino fighters
citizenship with full military benefits during WW II. Shortly after the
war the US Congress withdrew this pledge.
(SFEC,12/14/97, Z1 p.4)
1942-1945 J.G. Ballard (b.1930), English novelist
born in Shanghai, was interned by the Japanese. His 1984
autobiographical novel "Empire of the Sun" described his experiences.
(SFEC, 6/28/98, BR p.10)
1942-1945 Victor Klemperer (b.1881), a professor in
Dresden, in 2000 authored part 2 of his diaries that covered this
period: "I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1942-1945."
His first volume went up to 1941 and was published in 1998.
(WSJ, 3/22/00, p.A20)
1942-1945 In Taiwan the Kinkaseki copper mine was
worked by prisoners of war under Japanese dictate. Of the 523 men who
went into the mine in Dec 1942, only about 100 were alive at the end of
the war.
(SFEC, 1/11/98, p.A25)
1942-1964 The "Bracero Program," run under the
auspices of the US Dept. of Labor, sent Mexican workers to the US to
help the labor shortage created by World War II. From 1942-1949 10% of
their wages was deposited with the National Bank of Rural Credit,
Banrural (Banco Nacional de Credito Agricola, a predecessor of
Banrural). Workers in 1999 demanded to know the status of the fund.
Mexican banking officials in 1999 reported no evidence of the funds. In
2001 a suit for $500 million was filed for deposits and interest from
1942-1949.
(SFC, 8/6/99, p.A16)(SFC, 10/6/99, p.A16)(SSFC,
7/15/01, p.A4)(SFC, 1/16/04, p.A19)
Go to 1943