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1941–1945 · at anchor — the rationing record stands in the Wars section
What the works made to wear. The documented wartime production of the Ball Band works, as Peter De Kever's city history itemizes it and this history's Ball Band file carries it, ran beyond the fuel cells the plant is remembered for: Army raincoats, Navy deep-sea diving suits, and aviator boots — three garments, made on Mishawaka ground, for the war. The footwear works that the 1909 census had named the city's most important manufacture was, a generation later, clothing the services from the same ground.
The pointer, kept honest. The home-front cloth record — rationing as Mishawaka lived it, the Red Cross chapter's garment and surgical-dressing work — stands in this history's Wars section, which names its own gap there: the chapter's quotas and workrooms stand in the wartime Mishawaka Enterprise and the chapter's records, sources this build has not reached. This section adds nothing to that record and claims none of it; the local cloth drives of the brief are not documented at press size in anything reached, and they are printed here as absent rather than embroidered.
Sources:
- Peter J. De Kever's city history, as carried in the Ball Band section of this history (the wartime production itemization).
- The Wars section of this history (the rationing pointer and its named gap).