Mementos from India During World War II

1943-1945 

The U.S. military presence in India expanded rapidly during World War II, growing from virtually zero in early 1942 to over 160,000 troops by August 1945.1 Their mission was to defend the subcontinent against a Japanese invasion, secure vital supply lines, and airlift military aid over the Himalayas to the Chinese Nationalist Army along the perilous route known as “The Hump.” Beyond the base gates, local Chinese restaurateurs offered servicemen affordable places to eat. On occasion, soldiers kept menus from these establishments as souvenirs—artifacts that today offer a glimpse into a largely forgotten chapter of the American wartime experience in India.2

The Hump

Kunming, China
Christmas 1943 

The eastern end of the Himalayan Mountains was called “The Hump” by pilots who flew transport aircraft between India and China during the Second World War. The military airlift over the treacherous Himalayas supplied the Allies in China, including advance units of the U.S. Army. The missions were dangerous.1 In addition to the notable absence of airfields, there were no reliable navigation charts or radio aids and the weather was often  bad. The logistical challenge of operating this aerial pipeline is reflected by a non-traditional dinner at Army headquarters in Kunming, China on Christmas in 1943, where the highlight of the night was a beverage omitted from the official menu.

Mission of Mercy

Budapest, 
1914 

The departure of the steamship on September 12, 1914 was a memorable sight, as 126 American Red Cross nurses stood in their white caps and gray uniforms along the rails where the sea wind blew open their red-lined capes, creating a line of scarlet on the side of the vessel. World War I had erupted a little over a month earlier and now they, along with 30 surgeons and boxes of medical equipment, were sailing from New York on what was called a “mercy mission.” Striving to stay neutral, the United States deployed the American Red Cross to provide medical aid to both sides of the conflict in Europe. Once on board, they were organized into units that would establish military hospitals in seven locations—Paignton, England; Pau, France; Kiev, Russia; Kosel and Gleiwitz, Germany; Vienna, Austria; and Budapest, Hungary.2 A battered menu bears witness to this largely-forgotten expedition that embodied a humanitarian ideal which was ahead of its time. 

Echoes of the Jazz Age

 1919-1929 

“The Jazz Age is over,” declared novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1931, nine years after he coined the phrase. The prosperous era began in about November 1918, when the First World War ended, and continued unabated until the stock market crashed in October 1929.1 This period of cultural transformation marked the birth of modern America. Everyday life was broadly transformed by automobiles, telephones, motion pictures, radio programs, and household electricity. However, the arrival of modernity also sparked a powerful backlash. The conservative counterassault manifested itself in the anti-radical hysteria of the Red Scare, the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, the ratification of National Prohibition, the passage of stricter immigration quotas, and the rise of Fundamentalism. Fifty menus reveal facets of this vast, complicated story. Some of them recall forgotten events; others provide unwitting evidence of societal issues that are with us to this day. 

Freedom from Want

Thanksgiving, 
1943 

Norman Rockwell painted this iconic scene in 1943. Depicting a family dinner on Thanksgiving, the painting “Freedom from Want” was the third of his Four Freedoms series that was inspired by President Roosevelt’s State of the Union Address two years earlier. Unlike the freedoms of speech and worship, and the freedom from fear, the concept behind freedom from want was not commonly understood, or accepted, as a universal freedom. Perhaps for this reason, this picture was also called “The Thanksgiving Painting.” Five menus from Thanksgiving 1943 show us what was happening elsewhere, as the world remained engulfed in the largest war in history. 

Caffeinated Heroism

Akron, Ohio
1885 

This menu from a veteran’s reunion in Akron, Ohio in 1885 features an unusual dinner based solely on the basic rations of a Union soldier during the Civil War—coffee, pork, beans, and hardtack. Although hardtack was usually not served at such banquets, the hard biscuits had been the source of many jokes during the war. And while it came to be regarded as the most nostalgic of the army foods, even the coffee had a special meaning for these veterans from the Buckeye State

War Weary

Neuilly-sur-Seine,
1915-1917 

A hundred years ago this week, Serbian nationalists assassinated the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary and his wife, setting off a series of events that led Europe into war. Although the United States did not enter the conflict until 1917, Americans living in Paris quickly sprang into action, establishing a military hospital for wounded French soldiers. Recalling this humanitarian effort, three menus from the hospital’s annual observance of Bastille Day unwittingly reflect this exhausting war of attrition.

Up the Yangzi River

U.S.S. Helena, 
1906 

The chronology of holiday menus from the U.S.S. Wilmington begs the question as to what the sailors in the Asiatic Squadron ate on normal days in the early twentieth century. For that, we turn to a menu from her sister ship, the U.S.S. Helena, on December 2, 1906, while anchored off Hankow some 602 nautical miles up the Yangzi River. This Sunday dinner for the chief petty officers features delicacies like roast venison and roast pheasant. For dessert, there is the ubiquitous peach pie, presumably made with the local fruit for which this region of China is known. Indeed, it seems that they ate very well, confirmed by a note at the bottom which reads: “This is a fair sample of our usual dinner.” (The CPO cook, J. J. Pinkerton, was reputedly the best chef on the Helena, outclassing those who prepared meals for the crew and the officers.) 

Showing the Flag

U.S.S. Wilmington, 
1906-1918

Caught in a storm off the coast of Luzon on the night of December 20, 1915, the U.S.S. Wilmington rolled 61 degrees, dangerously close to the point where she would capsize. Having narrowly survived the worst roll in her forty-eight years of service, the naval vessel arrived in Manila the next day, safely completing the three-day passage from Hong Kong. The light-draft gunboat was part of the U.S. Asiatic Squadron, charged with defending the Philippines and with upholding the Open Door Policy in China. Typhoons posed one of the greatest threats to the American warships as they sailed from port to port, establishing an authoritative presence in the region by “showing the flag.” Twenty-three holiday menus from the Wilmington reveal the rituals and rhythm of this naval patrol in the early twentieth century.

Christmas, 1864

Philadelphia 

On Christmas Day in 1864, a special dinner was served to the 4,500 Union soldiers housed at Satterlee General Hospital, then the largest army hospital in the country. Satterlee was located in Philadelphia between 40th and 44th Streets, near Baltimore Avenue, in a sparsely-developed area about a half mile west of the Schuylkill River. The sprawling 15-acre facility comprised rows of wood-frame wards and hundreds of tents, as well as a library, a reading room, and a printing shop that probably produced this menu card with an illustration of the hospital on the back. The holiday dinner shown below was provided by Dr. and Mrs. Milton Egbert, whose farm in northwestern Pennsylvania was luckily situated in the center of the nation’s first oil-producing region. In 1859, the early wells yielded only a few thousand barrels, but oil production quickly grew during the Civil War, making the Egberts immensely wealthy. At the time, it was said that no parcel of land in the United States of equal size had yielded a larger financial return than their farm on Oil Creek. 

Returning to the Hellhole

Gettysburg, 
1888 


This week marks the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. Often described as the turning point of the Civil War, it was there that Union forces halted the Confederate invasion of the North in 1863. The ferocious three-day fight produced the largest number of casualties of any battle in the war—over 46,000 men were killed, wounded, or missing.

The Class of 1888

West Point,
1884-1887

When the Class of 1888 graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in June of that year, there were so few cadets that the New York Daily Graphic could easily publish their portraits on a two-page spread.1 Five rare menus transport us back to West Point in the 1880s. In addition to providing a glimpse of the food customs, some of the menus convey a deeper meaning about the long cycle of mourning caused by a sudden death, adding a poignant dimension to these minor historic documents.

The Russian Revolution

St. Petersburg, Archangel & Vladivostok
1912-1918

One of the most intriguing aspects of ephemera is that it reminds us of long-forgotten events. A case in point is provided by three scarce menus from the time of the Russian Revolution. Interestingly, they were saved by people who found themselves on the losing side of the conflict—Russia’s ill-fated bourgeoisie; foreign intelligence officers;  and the United States Army sent to fight the “Red” Bolsheviks.

Enduring Traditions

Cincinnati,
1853 & 1884

When the Burnet House opened in Cincinnati in 1850, the London Illustrated News called it “the finest hotel in the world.” Located on the corner of Third and Vine Streets, the five-story building was designed by architect Isaiah Rogers, already well-known for Boston’s Tremont House (1827), New York’s Astor House (1836), and the Exchange Hotel (1841) in Richmond. Crowned by a dome forty-two feet in diameter, the hotel featured panoramic views of the Ohio River and the Kentucky hills. Large, ornate, and expensive, the Burnet House catered to a well-to-do clientele, as shown by two menus, one reflecting a passing social custom, the other reminiscent of a historic event for which the hotel would be long remembered.

Let There Be Peace

Richmond, Virginia
1883

One hundred and eighty-nine Union veterans from Newark, New Jersey boarded a train in October 1883 heading for Richmond where they would attend a banquet with their former enemies in the Civil War. When I discovered a menu from this dinner, oddly printed on a Confederate banknote, I became curious about this unusual reunion in the former capital of the Confederacy.

Mixed Icons

Occupied Japan, 
1949-1955

  
This cover illustration, showing Santa Claus flying through a Japanese gate toward Mount Fuji, represented a new style of graphic design. It appeared on a Christmas menu at the U.S. Tachikawa Air Base in Occupied Japan in 1949. What was different about it was that it showed Western holiday images in the same pictorial space with the iconic symbols of Japan. This exuberant scene stood in stark contrast with the deep despair that had been prevalent in Japan during the years immediately following World War II. By the end of 1945, more than 350,000 U.S. military personnel were stationed in Japan, supervising almost every aspect of civilian life. Sometimes called the “Confusion Era” in Japanese art history, this chaotic period was also disorienting for the Americans who participated in the Occupation. However, by the time this Christmas menu appeared, the situation had improved considerably.

Fat Man

Hanford, Washington
1944

Hanford Engineer Works (1944)

Soon after a woman sold me an old Christmas menu online, she wrote to let me know something about it. Her father had been a machinist who rode the rails looking for work in the 1930s. He eventually landed a job at the Hanford Engineer Works in Washington State, where he worked for the Manhattan Project during World War II. In 1944, he enclosed this holiday bill of fare in a letter to his family in Chicago as a way of reassuring them that he was okay. There was a hand-written notation on the back of the menu that summarized its story. It read “atom bomb job.”

Andersonville Beans

Lackawanna County,
1886-1890

It was startling to discover a dish called “Andersonville beans” on the menu from a Union Ex-Prisoners of War Association banquet in 1889. Andersonville, the largest Confederate prison during the Civil War, was a hellhole in Georgia, where nearly a third of the prisoners died of starvation or disease. A quarter of a century later, this local veteran’s group in Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania had the curious idea of naming a bean dish after the infamous prison.