Women taking a break after detasseling corn,
Lancaster County, Nebraska, July 1943.
Nebraska's greatest contributions to the war effort were in the production of animals and crops. Nebraskans not only had to help feed American soldiers, but their allies as well. Fortunately, rain and a wartime prosperity came to Nebraska farmers following years of drought and economic depression.
While many of Nebraska's young men and women engaged in farming to help feed the soldiers, many left the farms or other jobs. They joined one of the military services or accepted higher paying jobs working in factories manufacturing war materials.
The Nebraska Farmer magazine expressed the sentiment of many in a poem in their August 4, 1945 issue.
Old Mac Donald had a farm ...
He-e hi, he-e, ho!
Old Mac Donald's hired man
Said, "Good-bye here I go!
I'm working in a war plant
Where I'm getting better dough."
Because many of Nebraska's young men had left farms to join the military, there was a labor shortage in rural areas. Thus, many women helped on the farms.
s
"I think it [my reaction] was, number one, surprise;
number two, I don't think most people [had] even
heard of Pearl Harbor; and three, I felt that the
Japanese were kind of stupid for even attacking a
great, powerful nation like ours, because we put Japan down as a nothing, a tin toy deal... On the day before, I think if you had taken a vote among the people, nobody would have wanted to go to war. As soon as we heard about it people were ready to rush down and enlist the next morning
— Floyd Marian, Hastings High School student,
later
U.S. Army Air Forces C-47 pilot, European Theater.
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Nebraska and World War II
