Mrs. J.E. Colyar smiled in her booking photo, which appeared on the front page of The Tacoma Times in September 1942.
The Tacoma woman was arrested and suspected of buying more sugar than her wartime rations allowed. She unapologetically admitted to using the black market sugar to make home brew, a crime that could cost her up to $10,000 or a year behind bars.
From liquor to produce, nearly everything was rationed the year the United States entered World War II.
Other things changed: Stay-at-home moms became Rosie the Riveters. Industrial traffic – particularly in port cities such as Tacoma – consumed roads.
Farmers struggled to keep up with demand. And headlines proclaimed that even those “unfit for service” could, in fact, be rehabilitated to go into the military.
Despite that, Colyers’ sidestep of the law – and smugness – was an exception. Americans not only were expected to abide by rapidly changing rationing laws, they also were expected to do it happily: There was a war to be won.
Just before Thanksgiving 1942, rumors spread that soon, even the Sunday drive – one of the few opportunities to get away from wartime jobs and eat a chicken dinner without worrying about whether you had the ration stamps – would be out, too.
Oil companies spread word that rations would be postponed.
When the FBI investigated, Warren Platt, editor of the National Petroleum News, likened the government’s efforts to those of the Gestapo, a comparison that garnered national headlines.
But ads cheerily promoted car-pooling, and citizens remained on task: There was a war to be won.
Sure enough, an ad in The News Tribune in mid-November confirmed the tire- and gasoline-rationing rumor matter of factly: “Must sell all tires over five to the government before November 22,” it began.
Indelicately, the ad continued: Drivers must keep a record of tire care.
Drivers must bring their cars to the federal tire inspector on a regular schedule for inspection.
Drivers would be told by the tire inspector whether, when and what type of replacement tires they’d get.
During the weeklong registration period that followed, thousands collected proof of ownership and stood in long lines at local schools for their stickers.
Lt. William Vacin and his 4-year-old son, Billy, posed for a newspaper photographer after receiving the family’s “A” ration sticker. It entitled them to buy four gallons of gas per week.
Vacin, in his uniform, and Billy, in a miniature soldier’s hat, beamed.
Even Vacin’s wife – a mother, new to town and soon to send her husband off to war – worked up a smile for the photographer.
No time for selfishness. There was, after all, a war to be won.
Niki Sullivan: 253-597-8603
blogs.thenewstribune.com/politics
This is one of a series of stories appearing during The News Tribune’s 125th year. Every Sunday we’ll take a look at what happened during the same week sometime in the past 125 years.
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