Time Machine Terms
February 27, 1942
New Tashmoo Canal Impresses Visitors
The first hint of spring weather drew visitors in considerable numbers to the newly constructed Tashmoo Creek at Vineyard Haven, where the firm Turner and Breivogel is making the waterway which will turn the lower half of Lake Tashmoo into an arm of the sea. Although plans of the creek were drawn before the opening was votes, and these plans have been available to anyone, the appearance of the creek, as it begins to take shape, exceeds by far the popular conception of what it was to be.
January 16, 1942
Trial Blackout Proves Successful at Bluffs
The Civilian Defense organization of Oak Bluffs, headed by Dr. Francis C. Buckley reports that the partial blackout held in that town Sunday night, during the bitter cold and with traveling conditions for air raid wardens anything but ideal, was markedly successful. The degree of cooperation shown was gratifying to the officials and the committee feels that the town should be congratulated upon its first effort. Only in five households was it found that the residents had failed to understand the requirements, or were unaware that a test was to be made.
January 16, 1942
Blockade Runners Once Used This Historic Creek
The work of dredging now going on at Tashmoo Creek focuses attention upon one of the historical landmarks of the Island and one of which very little is remembered or preserved. Indians called this locality Chappaquansett, and old records refer to the creek as Chappaquansett Creek, rather than Tashmoo. It is evident that the Indians frequented this place in the olden days, as sizable middens have been located nearby and others are presumably buried beneath the shifting sands or have been washed out to sea.
January 2, 1942
Tire-Rationing Boards Appointed on Vineyard
The setting up of tire-rationing boards in Island towns this week brings the war yet nearer to the Vineyard. These rationing committees one in each town of the Island, were appointed and set up under instructions which came direct to the chairmen of all board of selectmen on Monday night from a former governor, Joseph B. Ely, who is the state administrator of tire rationing.
December 26, 1941
Killed in Philippines
One of the victims of the Japanese surprise attack upon the Philippines on Dec. 7 was John H. Campbell, son of Mr. and Mrs. Fred P. Campbell of New Britain and Oak Bluffs. He had spent all of his summers at Oak Bluffs, except that of 1941, and he had many friends in the town and among the summer colony. He enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1940, and would soon have qualified as a pilot after training in the fundamentals of aviation.
December 19, 1941
Killed in Action
The death in action of John Gillespie Magee Jr. has been announced by the British Air Ministry. A pilot officer, he is reported unofficially to have been shot down while flying a Spitfire. His vivid personality and brilliant mind made an unforgettable impression on those who knew him during his two summers spent on Martha’s Vineyard. After leaving here in the fall of 1940, he suddenly decided not to enter Yale, to which he had been admitted, but to go to Canada to train for the British Air service. He was sent overseas a few months ago.
December 19, 1941
Vessel Lost at Pearl Harbor Once Stranded on the North Shore
The mine layer Oglala which was lost in the Japanese attack upon Pearl Harbor was formerly the 4,200 ton passenger steamer Massachusetts of the Metropolitan Line of the New England Steamship Co. On March 12, 1909, she went ashore on Cedar Tree Neck in Vineyard Sound.
December 12, 1941
Rod and Gun Club Ready to Form Shotgun Brigade
The Martha’s Vineyard Rod and Gun Club, more than 200 strong, will report, in case of emergency, as a shotgun brigade, according to a resolution adopted by the club on Wednesday night. The club discussed possibilities of an invasion with grim and practical earnestness before adopting the resolution, taking a report of the arms owned by its membership which consist of at least one shotgun to a man and a number of rifles. Given any sort of break, the club felt that its membership could add considerably to the unpleasant situation of an enemy should one appear.
December 12, 1941
Vineyard Boys Serving in Far Eastern Forces
A tremor of mixed excitement and dread swept the Vineyard on Sunday when the first news of the Japanese attack on the Pacific islands became known through the radio broadcasts. Not for eighty years has this Island scene been duplicated, when the opening of the Civil War found Vineyard men at sea and in or near the war zone. The opening of this Far Eastern war likewise finds Vineyard men in or near the scene, not merely in ships of commerce, but in the armed forces of the country.
December 12, 1941
Island Accepts Challenge of Air Alarm Quietly
Civilian Defense organizations of the Island responded to their first real call to duty about 1:30 Tuesday afternoon, when air raid signals were sounded the length of the coast, following the report of hostile planes off New York city, a tip which proved unfounded and which some reports say was planned by the government as a test of the air raid facilities of the northeastern coast.
