JOURNAL ASSIGNMENTS Read the assigned pages. As you finish each reading, make a journal entry. Your journal may contain artwork, poetry, short stories, newspaper editorials, letters, speeches, audio or video tapes,

anything you wish. Most of you will use a diary format that is, writing down your personal reactions to what you read. The point is to show me that you have read the assignments and thought about the significance of what you have read. You MUST include: --How the document relates to lectures --The significance of the document --Your reaction to what you read --A quote from the document-include the most significant quote from the document and WHY you think it is significant If your journal is in the standard diary format, it should be about EIGHT double- spaced, typed pages long, in standard (not oversized) typeface and with ONE- inch margins. If you are using some other format, or a mixture, use your judgment concerning length/amount. See me if you have questions. **IMPORTANT***. DO NOT MERELY SUMMARIZE WHAT YOU HAVE READ!!!!! SUMMARIES WILL EARN YOU NO BETTER THAN A "C." Late journals, unless arrangements have been made with me, will cost you points. Other issues to think about as you read: --If you had been alive at this time, what would have been your reaction? Would your opinion be different if these events occurred today? Why? --What surprised/shocked/upset you the most? Why? --Is this source important to historians? Why or why not? --Are there other sources that should have been included in the assignment? Why? --What is the writer's agenda (goal)? Do you think he/she was successful? --Who would have agreed with this writer? Why? --Who would have disagreed with this writer? Why? --What impact, if any, did this event (letter, law, etc...) have? --How might the events have turned out differently? --How have your impressions and views changed?/n 472 Eyewitness to America "My first actual piece of war work . . .” THE HOMEFRONT 1943 West Lynn, Massachusetts NELL GILES ell Giles, a writer for the Boston Globe, took a job at a General Elec- during World War II in jobs traditionally held by men. Today our training class was divided into two shifts . . . night and day. . . and put to work on the bench, though what we do is just for practice. My first job was being taught the value of motions. The foreman sat me down before an arrangement of screws, tiny wires and things called "brackets." With a small “jeweler's screw driver" I was to take fifty of the things apart and then put them together again. Then I was to take them apart for the second time, and on the next assembling I would be timed. Putting them together is supposed to take 36 min- and can be done by the experts in 23. but it took me 45. Getting them back together again is even worse because the wires get tangled up, and you wouldn't believe a screw driver could slip utes . . . around so! Then the foreman assigned me to the ratchet screw driver, which is a wonderful way to let off steam. I was a whiz at that. All you do is exert a little pressure with this "ratchet" which hangs on a spring in front of you, and out pops the screw. It makes a big noise and you feel the house is falling down around your ears and you hope it does! If every home were equipped with a ratchet screw driver, how it would clear the air of verbal steam letting-off! Every move we make in completing one of these "jobs" has been carefully figured out by the methods department and put on a blue pri blo for are rat ar of W Eyewitness to America 473 print, which is constantly before us. "With the left hand place new block on table as right hand removes completed block. . ." and so forth, through every move. As far as possible, the duties of each hand are the same, though in opposite directions. You see that there is a rhythm in all this. Again we are told how to use finger movements, rather than shoulder, because they are twice as fast. . . . Without thinking, we try to beat the rhythm of the next girl, if we are doing the same kind of work. There are four screws in the block and I tried to keep one p-r-r with the ratchet screw driver ahead of my chum who used to work in an automobile office. That's proba- bly why I made a dozen mistakes. But I could hear her try to catch up with my p-r-r-s. and she did! The foreman walks up and down the room all the time, watching our work and showing us how to do it a little better. He is a long, tall man who's lived in Texas and has kept the drawl. Every now and then he goes to the room next to this one to take a smoke but he's never had more than a puff without hearing the wrong kind of noise from a screw driver and having to come in again. He knows by the noise whether you are taking a screw in or out, whether you are pressing down too hard or not hard enough and at what angle you're holding the screw driver! Also, he can tell by one or two "p-r-r-s" how long it will take you to do fifty blocks. . . . Today we were graduated from our training class and assigned to parts of the factory. We are still "in training" but there's quite a dif- ference. This week we were paid a learner's rate per hour for the time we spent in training, but next week we'll be paid according to what we do. I have explained that there is a basic pay per any pieces you do above a predetermined number you are paid extra, ac- brackets cording to the "job." A job is an assignment of work... 500 to be assembled, for example. One person does only one operation, though this may entail several parts. hour. For But there is more than a financial difference in our status now. Before today, we have done nothing that will actually be used in air- craft... all of it was "practice" and the same material used over again by the next class. But now what we do will go to war. There is 474 Eyewitness to America • no one around to tell us six or seven times how to do something either. . . . I found that out before noon today! My first actual piece of war work started at 7 minutes past 11. The foreman assigned me to a table and said: "Blow the metal chips off these parts." That sound like Greek to you. Well, it did to me, may too. Blow them off. . . you mean just BLOW them off? In the box were about 500 metal gadgets. The nearest description I can give you is that they looked a little like the thing a typewriter ribbon is wound on, only they were more involved. Just as I was trying to figure out how I'd have enough breath to blow metal chips off all those things, I saw a hose attached to the table . . . and of course it was full of com- pressed air. It looked very simple to press the button and blow off the chips. But the first blast of air blew the gadget right out of my hand! And then somebody walking by said, "Hey, stop blowing that out here!" So I learned to hold the hose down. Then a foreman .. there are several here . . . said don't be so DAINTY . . . take a fist- ful and BLOW! . . . grease ... I don't want to give you the impression that people who work in a war production factory are all nice and sweet and patriotic, any more than you must think that all soldiers are brave. Money has much to do with how hard people work in a factory, but I honestly think there is an INCREASE in the spirit determined to win this war. Not a day passes but you'll hear somebody say to a worker who seems to be slowing down, "There's a war on, you know!" The foreman of each floor gets a monthly quota for production, which he breaks down into weeks and days or nights. At the present time, our factory is two weeks ahead of schedule, but since war doesn't run on schedule, that is not too comfortable a margin. In spite of the terrific pressure to get things out in a hurry, the first demand is for quality. Everything must be EXACTLY right. Tonight I got a much deserved call down for drilling a hole in the wrong place. The set-up man gave me a little metal gadget into which I was to drill seven holes. As usual, there was a fixture to hold the gadget and to indicate where the holes were to go. But unfortunately, the top of the fixture had a pattern for two holes, and I was to drill only of cour for s em AW tr Eyewitness to America 475 thing only one of them. An hour later I began to wonder WHICH one, and of course I'd been drilling the wrong hole. I said to the man, "Well, maybe these pieces of metal can be used for something else . . ." and he said, "yeah, maybe the Army can use 'em for dust cloths." The S off me, box You and but s, I n- he "You are with the 'point' of an infantry battalion . ." A WALK TO SAN STEFANO July 31, 1943 Sicily STAFF SERGEANT JACK FOISIE late 1942, American forces invaded North Africa to join the British I troops Korps. By Allies con- trolled the region, and by mid-July were ready to launch an invasion of Italy from it. The first step was to land 250,000 British and American troops on the island of Sicily. Foisie, a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle before the war, wrote this dispatch for Stars and Stripes and his old paper. It is not a pleasant walk, these last four miles to San Stefano. You are with the "point" of Company G of an infantry battalion advancing up the road. You are about two hours behind the retreating Germans. You think another company has come down from the hills and beat you into town, but you're not quite sure. You march in extended order and you keep looking for snipers in the hills and mines under your feet. Your eyes soon get tired from looking, first at the hills and then at your road. You come to a blown-out bridge with combat engineers already at work carving out a bypass. There is a sign that reads: "Mines cleared four feet on side." You stay exactly along the middle. After passing the curve you hear a muffled explosion behind you. You run back and find that the rear end of a bulldozer has run off the four-foot safety/n