Our boys were in foxholes and on carrier decks, wading ashore on Pacific islands and flying the Hump over the Himalayas. Wherever World War II played out in its final days, Atlanta was there.
As in every town and city in America, people here got crash courses in geography as they watched a conflict grind toward a bloody conclusion. Where was the Ardennes Forest, anyway? Hiroshima?
And yet, life here went on, too. The police busted black marketers and went after the masterminds behind “the bug,” an illicit lottery. The A&P had weekly sales, just as if our boys — girls, too — were coming for Sunday dinner. People fretted over lost puppies. They gasped over a marital spat that ended with the stroke of an ax.
The Atlanta Constitution, the city’s morning paper, contained accounts of matters mundane and mighty. The same was true for the afternoon publication, the Atlanta Journal (at one time, dear reader, these newspapers were separate, competing businesses).
The AJC spent a couple of days looking back at some of those old newspapers. It selected December 1944, when Adolf Hitler’s staggering forces mounted an immense offensive that came to be known as the Battle of the Bulge. The newspaper also reviewed publications in August and September 1945, when two atomic bombs fell and Japan surrendered, ending World War II.
Let’s take a look back:
Charles Dodys. Ever heard of him? The Atlanta Constitution in December 1944 reported that prosecutors sent him away for five years for his role in “the bug,” an illegal lottery. Dodys, who employed couriers in the enterprise, was fined $5,000 — about two day’s take in “the bug,” officials noted.
On Dec. 1, a Constitution sportswriter made a quick trip to Georgia Tech, which was scheduled to play an Athens university the next day. The headline: “Tech’s Passing Attack Biggest Bulldog Worry.” (The Bulldogs had reason to worry: Tech went on to bash Georgia 44-0.)
On Dec. 16, American and German forces fought in the icy depths of the Ardennes Forest. Also on that day, both Atlanta newspapers reported on an odd tragedy. The Constitution headline: “Death From Nighttime Skies.”
Jimmy Hawkins, 15, who lived on Ponce de Leon Avenue, was walking along the 100 block of Peachtree Street with his neighbor. She later told police she heard a pop, and turned to see the boy hit the ground. He’d been hit in the head — fatally — by a whiskey bottle thrown from a building.
Journal reporters tracked down Mayor William Hartsfield. He was nearly apoplectic.
“It’s come to a pretty pass when an innocent young boy gets killed by a bottle probably thrown by some drunk,” the mayor said.
The Journal turned its attention to other things. The day after reporting the boy’s death, it published an account of “Granny Burnett,” 99. She lived on Techwood Drive and recalled another conflict, the Civil War.
Are kids worse these days? the reporter asked. Granny thought about it. If youngsters get in more trouble in 1944, “I suppose it’s because there are so many more places for them to go and transportation is easier.”
Another Journal reporter tracked down Army 1st Lt. Leon Neel of Thomasville, heading home for a visit after fighting in Europe. “I’m going quail hunting when I get home,” he said. “It’ll be nice for a change to shoot at something that doesn’t shoot back.”
Christmas came, and with it the belief that the next yule season, in 1945, would be celebrated with returned sons and daughters. The Constitution ran a front-page photo of the Central Presbyterian Church’s youth choir. The Journal sounded a somber note:
“The Christmas morning fog hung low over Atlanta like the shadows of war that dimmed the Christmas light in the hearts of men. It was Christmas for children with all the traditional joys, but most adults felt a tightening of the heart as they contemplated the true meaning of our greatest holiday. Atlanta carried on …”
The city carried on into 1945, the year marked by cataclysmic events: Hitler’s April 30 suicide; the May 7 surrender of Germany; the fall in May of Okinawa, the last island before the Japanese islands.
And Aug. 6, when years of secret research came to light in a flash never seen before. A Constitution headline said it all: “Atom Target 60 Pct. Destroyed.” America had dropped the bomb.
The blast in Hiroshima, Japan, obliterated an area exceeding four square miles. It was, officials said, the equivalent of 2,000 B-29s dropping their payloads.
Also in that edition: Mrs. Reuben Kessler went on record about a plague of wharf rats in her neighborhood. “Several times we’ve had to get the shotgun after them,” said Kessler, who lived on Durant Place NE, not far from a school we now know as Henry W. Grady High School. The rodents, she added, were “jitterbugging and waltzing” in her yard.
Two days after the blast, the Journal found a local connection to the Hiroshima bombing.
“The man whose hand unleashed the fateful atomic bomb over Hiroshima and sent it hurtling to its frightful work is the brother of a pretty girl who is shining with pride at her brother’s role in destiny,” a reporter gushed. The “stalwart bombardier” was the brother of Mrs. J.A. Loudermilk, an Atlanta stenographer.
“He loves flying,” his proud sister said. “And he is anxious to get the war over.”
The day after that article appeared, another bomb fell on Nagasaki, with comparable destruction.
The war ended Sept. 2, when Japan surrendered. As the world celebrated, Earl Tucker, 22, pondered what lay in his future. An escaped felon from Cobb, Tucker told police he’d run an auto-theft ring that stole cars in Knoxville, Tenn., and brought them to Atlanta. His accomplices: six other escapees.
At the time of his arrest, “Tucker was drinking,” a reporter wrote. The next morning, in the sober light of a new day, Tucker reconsidered his conversation. “He could not remember saying anything about stolen cars.”
Liquor figured prominently in the article headed, “Irate Wife Kills Husband With Ax.”
The wife, Thelma Powell of Atlanta, told police her husband refused to let her have a drink of his whiskey “unless she paid for it.” She settled the matter, police said, with an ax. He died at Grady; she was booked downtown.
Death was on the minds of everyone in those last days of a global holocaust. The newspapers ran column upon column of the names of servicemen and women who were expected home soon. The flip side of that: news accounts of people originally thought prisoners, or missing in action, were suddenly reported dead.
Constitution Editor Ralph McGill was troubled, too. His worries stemmed from an advertisement for a “handle-talkie” that he’d seen. The ad, McGill wrote, showed a guy holding a large-mouth bass in one hand. In the other was the hand-held, two-way radio.
I'm telling Helen about this, the angler tells his buddy, right now.
“There never will be any peace anymore,” McGill predicted. “… On every fishing trip in the future, on every hunting journey to the wilderness, there will be no peace. Every such party will have at least one man who will be calling up to find out what stocks did, or who won the third race at Belmont, or just calling up to say hello to someone …”
Instant communications, McGill warned, would not be a blessing.
“I do not see how we are going to avoid a great increase in perfectly useless conversation.”
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