Huge crowd milled around in the theater district, ignoring the wardens and gawking at the moon. Was held, in April 1942, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia crowed how people вЂњstayed in off the streets, even the children,вЂќ only to learn that Police Commissioner Lewis Valentine had told reporters that a And New Yorkers being, well, New Yorkers, when one of the first blackout drills Many had no armbands or helmets, and air-raid sirens had yet to be procured. In the warвЂ™s first months, the wardens had no gas masks. TheДЄrmy was to send fighters aloft to check out aircraft that hadnвЂ™t been accounted for. They saw a suspicious plane, they telephoned its whereabouts to вЂњplotters,вЂќ most of them women, who used long pointers to place markers on large tables indicating the planesвЂ™ whereabouts.

In addition, thousands of volunteers, mostly men, served at hundreds of observation points - usually rooftops - to scan the skies for planes that were not clearly identifiable as commercial aircraft. Lights were doused at homes and businesses during drills. Their job was to make sure that people headed to shelters or whatever indoor spots were available and that Some 400,000 New Yorkers, about 80 percent of them men, volunteered at varying times to be air-raid wardens. As Miller told it: вЂњHe did not return to his Red Hook crap game In a cruiserвЂ™s engine room as an alternative to showing up for his shift, only to find upon awakening that his ship had gone to sea. Arthur Miller, who spent part of the war as a workman there, wrote in his memoir вЂњTimebendsвЂќ how one workman snoozed In February 1944, the federal War Production Board reported that 134,000 women were employed in New York CityвЂ™sДЈ41 major war plants, nearly 28 percent of the workforce.ДЇor all the vital work at the wartime Navy Yard, there was, of course, malingering. The yard had a wartime workforce of 75,000, including women - formerly confined to sewing jobs there - who were hired for skilled and difficult craft work, as welders and shipfitters.Д«y the way, вЂњRosie the RiveterвЂќ was very much a part of New YorkвЂ™s war effort. And more than 5,000 Allied ships damaged by bombs and torpedoes limped into the yard for repairs. Roosevelt and Kearsarge and landing craft that could carry tanks for beach assaults and inland warfare. The Brooklyn Navy Yard played an important role in the war effort, launching the battleships North Carolina, Iowa and Missouri (site of JapanвЂ™s surrender), the aircraft carriers Bennington, Bon Homme Richard,ДЇranklin D. How many people were employed, and how many ships were produced there? My father worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard during the war.

To this day, whenever IвЂ™m at what is now the ghost of the Navy Yard I remember the bustle of the workshops, the uniforms and flags and the sound of military bands. I recently found a color photo on the Web of the commissioning of the aircraft carrier Franklin Roosevelt and I was there that bright day in 1945 - both my father and grandfather worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The block was excited about a photo spread in the newspaper showing troops wading ashore (I assume they were D-Day photos). Of Fort Hamilton (and the ships in war paint at the Bush Terminal) fighters at Floyd Bennett Field, rationing, kidsвЂ™ scrap drives, A stamps on car windshields, gold star pennants and the day everyone on

I remember Navy aircraft with folded wings parked in the streets (along with tanks) at the armory across the street from the original LoehmannвЂ™s the ships tending the submarine nets in Gravesend Bay in front I was born in Brooklyn in 1941 and have vivid memories of the war far beyond what one would expect from someone so young - I take that as evidence of how deeply involved New York City was in the war.

Radiation island new york during ww2