The wars at home: the camp that was elsewhere, the plants by street, the flu, and the rolls

1917 — 1945 · HOME-FRONT BEATS AT SPINE SIZE

The camp beat — a negative with the camps named: No training camp ever stood in Mishawaka. The town's soldiers were made soldiers elsewhere, and the Gold Star roll names the elsewhere on its own lines: Paul F. Oppelt died of pneumonia at Camp Merritt, New Jersey, on 28 March 1918; Julius Van Camp died at Camp Taylor, Kentucky, on 24 February 1918; William Franklin Shelton, a city water-works employee, died of influenza at Camp Taylor on 14 October 1918. The camp in this city's war record is a place its men were sent to and, in the roll's hardest entries, the place some of them died — in Kentucky and New Jersey, never at home, because home had no camp to send them to.

The war plants, by plant and street: In the second war the home front had two addresses. On the river at the west end of downtown stood the Ball Band works — the Mishawaka Rubber and Woolen plant, forty-three acres by the dam — which from 1941 fabricated self-sealing fuel cells and in February 1942, working around the clock for eight weeks on a purpose it was not told, designed and built the three extra fuel tanks for each of the sixteen B-25s of the Doolittle raid: a 225-gallon bulletproof cell for the bomb bay, a 160-gallon bladder for the crawlway, a 60-gallon tank for the lower turret, stretching the bombers' range to some 2,400 miles to Tokyo. Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle visited the plant during production and telegraphed his congratulations after the raid of 18 April 1942. The works' whole war line ran to Army raincoats, Navy deep-sea diving suits, aviator boots, gas masks and fuel cells for the B-17, B-25, B-26 and B-29, the Navy's PBM-3 and the A-20C; its employment peaked in 1943 at 9,446 on the city history's count — "nearly 10,000" on the marker on its ground — with women more than half the labor force on the victory shift; and in March 1943 its Local 65 struck for two days, 7,500 out on the wire account, over twelve and a half cents an hour and a delayed War Labor Board ruling, three-fourths of the plant's output then being war work. On the south side, at 500 South Union Street, stood Dodge Manufacturing, the power-transmission works whose war course the businesses record carries beside Ball Band's. The first war's plant record is thinner and is printed at its size: Ball Band's First World War contracts are not itemized in the record reached — a light-rubber plant of 1915–16 and employment climbing from nearly 2,000 in 1903 to 5,000 by 1923 are what stand — while the town's documented first-war effort ran through its purse: the Fourth Liberty Loan's quota of $800,000 on Mishawaka and Penn Township together, the manufacturers' committee under George H. Williams holding its share before the canvass opened, and the town, in the News-Times's phrase of 6 October 1918, going "a million dollars and better" — "Mishawaka is in the war."

The flu, and the rolls: The epidemic reached the city in the fall of 1918: from mid-October to 15 November public gatherings were prohibited and churches and schools shut, in a city that counted more than three hundred cases and some twenty-five dead — and Armistice Day, 11 November, was celebrated with factory whistles and impromptu parades inside that closure, a closed city cheering in its streets. The flu stands inside the war roll itself: Francis Casper Gehring died of influenza-pneumonia in France on 10 February 1919, and Shelton of influenza at Camp Taylor the October before — two of Mishawaka's twelve First World War dead in the state's Gold Star Honor Roll, the twelve counted name by name in the wars leg, two of them Belgian-born workmen of the town's shoe and rubber shops. The second war's roll, owed for decades, now stands counted in this build's death-roll pass: sixty-six Mishawaka dead — fifty-six Army and Army Air Forces, ten of the sea services — against the county frame of 430 Army dead in the War Department's Honor List. The first-of-its-kind product of the home front is the Doolittle tanks themselves: three rubber fuel vessels of a kind no airplane had carried, designed in secret and in eight weeks by a shoe-and-rubber works on the St. Joseph, and flown once, on the war's most famous single mission.

Sources:

1. Indiana Historical Commission, Gold Star Honor Roll, State of Indiana (1921), St. Joseph County section — the Mishawaka twelve extracted name by name in the wars leg: Oppelt at Camp Merritt, Van Camp and Shelton at Camp Taylor, Gehring's influenza-pneumonia, and the roll's camp geography as printed.
2. The ball-band fragment of this build — the war plant whole: the February 1942 Doolittle tanks and their capacities, Doolittle's visit and telegram, the full war line, the 1943 peak of 9,446 against the marker's "nearly 10,000," the victory shift, the Local 65 strike of March 1943, and the named gap for the First World War contracts.
3. The wars and events fragments of this build — the Fourth Liberty Loan of October 1918 ($800,000 quota, Williams's manufacturers' committee, "a million dollars and better"); the county frame of 430 Army dead (War Department, Honor List of Dead and Missing, State of Indiana, 1946) and the sixty-six of the joined death-roll pass; Armistice Day inside the influenza closure.
4. Peter J. De Kever, Mishawaka: A History, as carried in the culture record — the influenza closure of mid-October to 15 November 1918, gatherings prohibited, churches and schools shut, more than three hundred cases and some twenty-five dead.