World War Two
World War Two
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.
December 12, 1941
Island Quota $4,250
Martha’s Vineyard’s share in the $50,000,000 war fund asked by Norman H. Davis, national chairman of the American Red Cross, is $4,250. Mr. Davis’ appeal was broadcast Monday night and alluded to the destruction wrought at Hawaii and other points attacked by the Japanese.
December 12, 1941
Editorial: A Century Lies Between
One wonders what Nathaniel M. Jernegan would think if he were alive. Or his wife. They were together on the whaleship Eliza Mason in 1851 when Captain Jernegan sailed his vessel into Hakodate while Perry was still there. This was one of the first of the treaty ports when Japan was opened, reluctantly, to the world, and Mrs. Jernegan was the first white woman to sleep ashore in Japan for more than two hundred years.
October 17, 1941
Peaked Hill Contours Undergo Marked Change
The contours of Peaked Hill, as viewed from the Middle Road, have changed almost beyond belief, due largely to the construction of the road which winds around its steep sides and has been carved deeply into them. The hill is topped by one of the skeleton towers so largely used for signaling purposes, and is now manned by a detachment of the U.S. Army Signal Corps. The handful of men assigned here, presumably in connection with the tests now going on to prove or disprove the effectiveness of coastal defenses against invasion, is quartered in tents on the hill.
