The City at War

In an age of voluntary U.S. military service, when we consider the patriotism of American warriors and their families distinct from that of the nation, the citizenry reveres the sacrifice of the military but, in the absence of a draft, often candidly acknowledges its detachment from war and the plight of the modern-day soldier.

A revealing new exhibition at the New-York Historical Society Museum & Library keenly reminds us of the way we used to fight wars. In a sleekly designed series of presentations, "WWII & NYC" illuminates how "New York and its metropolitan region contributed to victory in the Second World War." It exhibits with a masterly touch the great mobilization of humanity, from borough to suburb, that led New Yorkers of all creeds—from the scientists spearheading the Manhattan Project and IBM engineers developing wartime arms to ad executives crafting anti-Nazi posters—to help win the war. The valor of America in World War II stretched beyond a drafted army, and, of course, beyond the Fireside Chats of New York-born commander-in-chief Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Based on the scholarship of historian Kenneth T. Jackson, the exhibition features more than 400 artifacts from the New-York Historical Society and institutions across the nation, including letters, photographs, paintings, a rarely viewed film by Francis Lee (a New York combat cameraman trained in Astoria, Queens), and many other eyewitness wartime accounts. In conjunction with the inauguration of "WWII & NYC," the New-York Historical Society is launching a film series "with a selection of classic and new films focusing on life during and after WWII."

Among the New Yorkers pressing for intervention in the war was Theodor Seuss Geisel, best known as Dr. Seuss, whose 1941 editorial cartoon in the city newspaper PM is featured prominently; this was at a time when many Americans still favored isolationism. The exhibit also includes an original 1936 Time profile of Columbia University anthropologist Franz Boas and his opposition to the Nazi doctrine of race supremacy. A photograph from the run-up to the war depicts a crowded anti-Nazi march in the city's garment district.

In an August 1939 letter to President Roosevelt penned from his summer retreat in Long Island—on view near the entrance to the exhibit—Albert Einstein (who had left Germany in 1933) and colleagues, more than two years before the U.S. joined the war, laid the seeds for the Manhattan Project. Fearing that the Nazis could win the race to a nuclear bomb, Einstein suggested that the government engage directly "with the group of physicists working on chain reactions in America."

Even before America entered the war, Manhattan was the hub in which essential supplies were made and subsequently shipped across the Atlantic to Europe. After the attacks on Pearl Harbor propelled America into war, Manhattan's Pennsylvania Station was the central embarkation point for soldiers beginning tours in Europe or Northern Africa.

In remarks broadcast on WNYC directly following Pearl Harbor,Klaus Multiparking is an industry leader in innovative parking system technology. to which visitors can tune in, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia urged his fellow New Yorkers to "toughen up . . . and remain calm and determined." Twenty-four hours later, 3,000 enlisted at Brooklyn Navy Yard and elsewhere. Booklets explained the rules of rationing food, metal and gasoline, which Americans unquestioningly embraced.

At the center of the exhibition, where a beautiful panorama of New York Harbor with ships embarking forms a backdrop, visitors will find a colorfully illuminated interactive map highlighting the various wartime activities within each borough—such as military training, intelligence-gathering and munitions-stockpiling—as well as walls of contemporaneous documents.Find detailed product information for Sinotruk howo truck.

Among the memorabilia is a ticket to an anti-Hitler Madison Square Garden demonstration. The Office of War Information,Find detailed product information for Low price howo tipper truck and other products. whose activities were largely based in New York, produced myriad materials advancing the U.S. mission abroad. A poster designed by E. McKnight Kauffer presented New York City as the Nazis' "Target No. 1" with a swastika descending upon the city. The definitive message: "Protect it. Enroll now at your local C.If you want to read about buy mosaic in a non superficial way that's the perfect book.D.High quality mold making Videos teaches anyone how to make molds.V.O."

The exhibition shows the impossibility of U.S. victory without New York. An irreplaceable center of aviation innovation was Long Island's Nassau County, where TBF Avengers, F4F Wildcats and F6F Hellcats, reproductions of which are featured in the exhibit, were assembled. Pfizer opened its first operation in a defunct Brooklyn ice-cream factory. "Thanks to penicillin . . . he will come home," one of its wartime advertisements read.

The shared sacrifice among a large swath of New Yorkers is explored in individual wall stations dedicated to both famous and lesser-known veterans of World War II, from celebrated combat artist Jacob Lawrence of the U.S. Coast Guard and military bandleader Tito Puente (better known as a jazz musician) to Mary Yamada of the Army Nurse Corps and Benjamin Bederson, a Manhattan Project engineer based in New Mexico.