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October 1942. Chicago, Illinois. "Salvage. To feed the nation's munitions furnaces, tons of scrap from America's attics and basements are collected every day. Here, a junkman unloads his wagon in a central depot, where the scrap will be segregated and graded for shipment to steel mills." Medium format nitrate negative by Ann Rosener for the Office of War Information. View full size.
While I was too young to participate in the child WWII scrap drives one sees pictured occasionally, I was fully capable at 4 years old (in 1944) of carrying a can of used Crisco shortening to the corner grocery store. Mom told me by doing this I would help the US tanks move closer to Berlin.
My other WWII memories were of sirens blasting for practice air raids while all the lights were turned off and at war's end I was riding my tricycle around the block a la Paul Revere shouting, "THE WAR IS OVER! THE WAR IS OVER!"
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