I know that many youths volunteered for wartime activities during the war, but I don't have sufficient info on the subject. My research on the Internet has failed, I've gotten bits and pieces of info but not much. Can anybody give me ANYTHING on what children's lives were like during the war? What did they learn in school? Bomb drills? etc.etc. Thanks!
Here's some contributions made by children to the war effort in the US: Children in most cities collected what today would be called recyclables: paper, scrap wood , rags, etc. In Chicago for example children collected 36,000,000 lbs of paper or about 65 lbs per child during the war. Children also collected 23 million pounds of rubber scrap, 73,000 tons of scrap metal, and sold $6 million in war bonds. 4-H club children worked farms harvesting 3,000,000 bushels of vegitables from "victory gardens" their clubs set up. They raised 6.5 million chickens, 300,00 pigs, and 65,000 dairy cows. Toy production in the US fell to just a bit less than 7% of the prewar level during WW 2 making new toys all but unavailable.
As an aside to the part about "TOYS", the Lionell toy train company all but ceased making it signature product and shifted production to Garand enbloc clips, and box mags for both the BAR and the .30 Carbine. You might also find some things if you look up Federally sponsored childcare, in WW2. The Lanham Act specifically: Daycares Don't Care - Daycare in the U.S. during World War II And the Kaiser shipyards had their own version of childcare for their working moms: WWIIshipyarddaycare Older boys frequently joined the ASTP (Army Specialized Training Program), while in High School, and went on to careers (or war duty) in the Army and Army Air Corps (Force). See: Army Specialized Training Program I think there were also H.S. programs for the other services as well.
