Food on the home front, food on the warfront: World

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Apr 18, 2017 - The third article in this issue, Kaete M. O'Connell's “'Uncle Wiggly Wings': Chil- ... of healthy, brand-name foods, courtesy of Uncle Sam. Note. 1.
Food and Foodways Explorations in the History and Culture of Human Nourishment

ISSN: 0740-9710 (Print) 1542-3484 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gfof20

Food on the home front, food on the warfront: World War II and the American diet Tanfer Emin Tunc & Annessa Ann Babic To cite this article: Tanfer Emin Tunc & Annessa Ann Babic (2017) Food on the home front, food on the warfront: World War II and the American diet, Food and Foodways, 25:2, 101-106, DOI: 10.1080/07409710.2017.1311159 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/07409710.2017.1311159

Published online: 18 Apr 2017.

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FOOD AND FOODWAYS , VOL. , NO. , – http://dx.doi.org/./..

INTRODUCTION

Food on the home front, food on the warfront: World War II and the American diet Tanfer Emin Tunca and Annessa Ann Babicb,c a

Department of American Culture and Literature, Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey; b Department of American Studies, SUNY College at Old Westbury, Old Westbury, New York, USA; c Department of History, Kentucky Wesleyan College, Owensboro, Kentucky, USA

Food has been an inextricable part of American warfare since the inception of the nation. From the traveling cooks of the Revolutionary War, to the advent of canned provisions during the Civil War, to the renaming of German dishes such as sauerkraut (liberty cabbage) and hamburgers (liberty steaks) during World War I, to the rise of Asian cuisine during World War II and the Vietnam War, to the surge in Middle Eastern cuisine and the French fries/freedom fries controversy of the post9/11 era, military conflict has impacted the American diet both on the warfront and on the home front (Tunc 193–195). While international politics and domestic propaganda initiated and sustained many of these dietary changes, some outlasted the wars with which they were originally associated, becoming a permanent part of American culinary culture. Canned food, for example, was originally designed for soldiers and travelers who could not always access a freshly cooked meal (Tunc 212). Immediately after World War II, surplus provisions were sold in supermarkets, and manufacturers—mostly to ensure their own survival—began marketing canned and other packaged foods to middle class civilian consumers as items that would facilitate their busy lifestyles. Eventually, “instant” food was democratized through mass production, becoming a generic and inexpensive part of American life (Shapiro 8). As Anastacia Marx de Salcedo contends, the US military even developed many of the technologies currently used in the food industry, including a plethora of the processed products we consume, in its quest to provide combat rations to soldiers. Manufacturers adapted these foods—which range from powdered cheeses, to instant drinks, to cured meats—to the civilian market, not only strengthening the military-industrial complex but also transforming the national palate and creating new foodways based on processed cheeses and canned meat products (Marx de Salcedo 7–8, 80, 146–148). Clearly, the degree to which the US military shapes the American diet cannot be underestimated. War has also prompted Americans to rethink their consumption of food, ranging from the improvement of domestic beer brewing (when patriotic Americans refused to consume German beer), to the conservation and home gardening movements of CONTACT Annessa Ann Babic ©  Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

[email protected]

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World Wars I and II, to more recent efforts centering on organic and green consumption after Americans witnessed what chemicals could do to the human body during the Vietnam War (Levenstein 85, 178–179). Food has served as points of contention between war-torn nations, with Hershey Bars and Coca Cola functioning first as soft power cultural “envoys of peace,” and later as insidious portents of the American capitalism and imperialism that many associate with “hard power” US global intervention (Pells 199–203). This special issue of Food and Foodways explores the meaning of food in relation to American wars, specifically World War II, as we have recently commemorated the 70th anniversary of the end of the monumental event (1945). The Second World War defined American politics, culture, and society for more than half the 20th century, especially when one takes into consideration the long aftermath of the war—the Cold War. This issue excavates the ways in which World War II impacted American foodways and Americans’ relationship with certain food products, particularly eggs and chocolate, while spanning topics such as war and food scarcity; food as social, cultural, economic, and political currency; food, war, and children; propaganda and patriotism; nutrition during wartime; and transnational interactions within the context of war and food. In 1996, Food and Foodways made a pivotal contribution to the literature on World War II and food through a special issue (6.2), guest edited by Amy Bentley. The issue, which featured four articles on the Second World War and foodways, grew out of a conference, “Eating for Victory: American Foodways and World War II,” held at the University of Colorado at Boulder in October, 1993. As Bentley wrote in her Introduction, at the time, Though much ha[d] been written about the wartime home front, including experiences of women and African Americans, Japanese American internment, and local accounts of the war, less ha[d] been written specifically about food, arguably one of the most important symbolic elements of the wartime home front, and one of the most important elements of US wartime materiel. (Bentley, “Introduction” 73)

The issue approached the topic of World War II and food in the multidisciplinary way (literary analysis, social history, southern/regional studies, consumer studies, and cultural anthropology) that was commonly deployed in the 1990s. It included essays on the “use of food as a powerful and compelling metaphor” in American literature “to express emotions and sentiments about the war”; “the significant changes wrought by the war to the South as a region, and to individual rural Southerners who moved to such cities in search of higher paying war work”; “the promotion of one of the best known symbols of American culture,” Coca-Cola, to explore “connections between food and the war”; and how “media images of women and food were used to portray American society as ordered, calm, and stable, particularly with regard to established hierarchies of race and gender” (Bentley, “Introduction” 76–78). The 1996 issue made the salient connections that were needed at the time, especially in terms of how race, gender, class, geography, language, visual images, and the media are indispensable categories of analysis in investigations of war and food.

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In her issue, Amy Bentley also acknowledged some of the major shortcomings in the World War II literature. Namely, that few works focused on both the home front and the warfront, and almost none attempted to be transnational in scope, despite the fact that they centered on a “world” war. Bentley was astutely aware of this weakness in her own issue, conveying that all four essays, except for part of Mark Weiner’s essay on Coca-Cola, concentrated on the home front, and not the battlefront. She noted that, while the articles examine many interesting and important questions, they do not touch on other areas, including a comparative regional approach, a stronger class-based analysis, and specific ethnic groups’ experiences. Nor does this special issue include that infamous American meat product to which the war gave birth: Spam. Cross-cultural/international comparisons of food and World War II need exploration. Waiting to be written are comparisons of US experiences of food and the war with those of Europe, Asia, and the former Soviet Union. (Bentley, “Introduction” 78)

Twenty years later, an expanding range of journal articles, journal issues, and monographs have surveyed the subject of World War II, the United States, and food (e.g., Bentley, Eating for Victory; Carpenter; Collingham; Hamilton; Wansick; Witkowski; Yang; Yellin). Yet, some of the gaps highlighted by Bentley—especially the lack of transnational investigations—remain in the literature. This special issue of Food and Foodways enriches the existing work on World War II and food by focusing on some of the interstices—the forgotten culinary stories, events, and interfaces—of the war. Moreover, by emphasizing food at war, and by expanding the American experience beyond the boundaries of the US, this issue complements Bentley’s emphasis on the home front and addresses some of the shortcomings outlined in her Introduction. When one erases chronological, geographical, and disciplinary borders, “a web or contact zone” emerges that reframes American food studies transnationally, across eras and academic specialties. “Multidirectional flows of people, ideas, and goods,” and “social, political, linguistic, cultural, and economic crossroads” are “generated in the process” (Fishkin 21–22). Furthermore, when American food studies is reconceptualized as a transnational discipline that transcends traditional time demarcations, new—and equally important—perspectives surface. In the context of World War II, what occurred domestically becomes just as significant as the ways in which American soldiers engaged with Pacific Islanders or local Germans. How American soldiers, and later Americans in general, shaped European foodways after World War II becomes just as much a part of American food studies as changes in eating habits in the United States during the Cold War (see Vester; Inness; Shapiro; and Levenstein, for example). By examining food in the context of the Second World War through this framework, this special issue of Food and Foodways also promises to be a major intervention in the cultural studies of war, expanding understandings of how conflict altered the conceptualization of the American diet at home and at war, and how the politics of battle changed eating habits domestically and abroad.1 The first article in this issue, Bruce Makoto Arnold’s “‘Your money ain’t no good o’er there’: Food as real and social currency in the Pacific Theater of World War II,”

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explores the function that American military food played as social, cultural, and economic currency in the Pacific during the Second World War. As Arnold elucidates, food had multiple functions: it was a form of barter currency in place of legal tender, and was also a form of social currency that gave men stationed in the Pacific a way to occupy their otherwise regimented lives. Food was also significant in this context because it boosted soldiers’ masculinity, creativity, and morale, while serving as a transnational bridge between cultures: they could either gift food to locals or indigenous peoples, trade it for other necessities, or use it to negotiate for resources that would aid the war effort. In the same vein, as Arnold notes, food became a hub around which individuals from different cultures came together. It served as a common source of experience and facilitated social bonding. Phillip T. Rutherford’s article, “On arms and eggs: GI egg mania on the battlefields of World War II,” expands many of the themes considered by Arnold. Rutherford argues that the egg was the most prized food item among American soldiers during the Second World War. It not only represented a taste of home, of a traditional family Sunday breakfast back on the farm, but it also was a relatively “sanitary and safe” source of protein (it came in its own protective casing, after all), especially given the questionable foodstuffs on the European and North African fronts. Much like in the Pacific, where C- and K-rations became transnational currency, eggs also became bargaining chips for soldiers, who would willingly trade Hershey bars with local Italian farmers and their families for eggs, which for the American GI represented the stability and warmth of home. The third article in this issue, Kaete M. O’Connell’s “‘Uncle Wiggly Wings’: Children, chocolates, and the Berlin Airlift,” focuses on the significance and symbolism of chocolate, on the home front and the warfront, during World War II and what became the Cold War. O’Connell examines the story of Lieutenant Gail Halvorsen, who came to be known as “Uncle Wiggly Wings” during the Berlin Airlift of 1948–1949, due to his special mission as the “Candy Bomber.” Specifically, Halvorsen was charged with the task of dropping chocolate bars, attached to mini parachutes, to boost the morale of German children. This mission not only helped build political and cultural bridges between former enemies but also promoted a benign representation of America abroad while selling American citizens on the continuing project of German rehabilitation. The latter, of course, would be instrumental in justifying America’s involvement in European affairs during the Cold War, especially its efforts to create capitalist markets for US products (through the Marshall Plan, for example) in the wake of the Soviet Union, which was vying for authority in the aftermath of World War II. This issue of Food and Foodways is rounded out by an epilogue by co-editor Annessa Ann Babic entitled “Foods of war, and wars on food: The American military commissary and (re)shaping the American diet.” The epilogue pulls together many of the threads and themes explored in the articles by assessing the current state of food within the US military using commissaries as a case study. Here, Babic traces the growth of the commissary network over the course of the twentieth century, specifically its expansion during and after World War II. Moreover, she conveys how

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brand name foodstuffs found in commissaries, such as Kraft mayonnaise and cheese slices, Keebler cookies, Rice Krispies, and CW Post cereals, tell more than just the standard tale of American consumption, branding, and culinary imperialism; they also create zones of belonging and parameters of exclusion, especially when costs exceed a military family’s budget. As this introduction suggests, since the Second World War, the “military-shopping complex” has worked hand-in-hand with the military-industrial complex to construct the erroneous image, conveyed transnationally, that American soldiers and military families are basking in an abundance of healthy, brand-name foods, courtesy of Uncle Sam.

Note 1. There is also a growing literature on World War II and its impact on food in other nations. Notable examples include Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Duffett, and Drouard; Knight; Brassley, Segers, and Van Molley; Mosby; Moskoff; and Cwiertka. While some refer to the impact of Americans, American culture, and US policy on international foodways and practices, most elide the subject. This is an area of transnational studies that clearly deserves further research.

Acknowledgments We would like to thank the authors for their contributions, the anonymous peer reviewers for their input and suggestions, and Food and Foodways’ editors, particularly Carole Counihan, for their support of this issue.

References Bentley, Amy. Eating for Victory: Food Rationing and the Politics of Domesticity. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1998. ———. “Introduction.” Food and Foodways: Explorations in the History and Culture of Human Nourishment 6.2 (1996): 73–79. Brassley, Paul, Yves Segers, and Leen Van Molley, eds. War, Agriculture, and Food: Rural Europe from the 1930s to the 1950s. London: Routledge, 2012. Carpenter, Stephanie. On the Farm Front: The Women’s Land Army in World War II. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003. Collingham, Lizzie. Taste of War: World War II and the Battle for Food. New York: Penguin Books, 2013. Cwiertka, Katarzyna J. Cuisine, Colonialism and Cold War: Food in Twentieth-Century Korea. London: Reaktion Books, 2012. Fishkin, Shelley Fisher. “Crossroads of Culture: The Transnational Turn in American Studies.” American Quarterly 57 (2005): 17–57. Hamilton, Alissa. “World War II’s Mobilization of the Science of Food Acceptability: How Ration Palatability Became a Military Research Priority.” Ecology of Food and Nutrition 42.4/5 (2003): 325–356. Inness, Sherrie. Cooking Lessons: The Politics of Gender and Food. London: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2001. Knight, Katherine. Spuds, Spam and Eating for Victory: Rationing in the Second World War. Syttroud: The History Press, 2011.

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Levenstein, Harvey. Paradox of Plenty: A Social History of Eating in Modern America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. Marx de Salcedo, Anastacia. Combat-Ready Kitchen: How the US Military Shapes the Way You Eat. New York: Current, 2015. Mosby, Ian. Food Will Win the War: The Politics, Culture, and Science of Food on Canada’s Home Front. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2014. Moskoff, William. The Bread of Affliction: The Food Supply in the USSR during World War II. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pells, Richard. Not Like Us: How Europeans Have Loved, Hated, and Transformed American Culture since World War II. New York: Basic Books, 2008. Shapiro, Laura. Something from the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America. New York: Penguin Books, 2005. Tunc, Tanfer Emin. “Less Sugar, More Warships: Food as American Propaganda in the First World War.” War in History 19.2 (2012): 193–216. Vester, Katharina. A Taste of Power: Food and American Identities. Oakland: University of California Press, 2015. Wansink, Brian. “Changing Eating Habits on the Home Front: Lost Lessons from World War II Research.” Journal of Public Policy and Marketing 21.1 (2002): 90–99. Witkowski, Terrence H. “World War II Poster Campaigns: Preaching Frugality to American Consumers.” Journal of Advertising 32.1 (2003): 69–82. Yang, Mei-ling. “Creating the Kitchen Patriot: Media Promotion of Food Rationing and Nutrition Campaigns on the American Home Front during World War II.” American Journalism 22.3 (2005): 55–75. Yellin, Emily. Our Mothers’ War: American Women at Home and at the Front during World War II. New York: Free Press, 2004. Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Ina, Rachel Duffett, and Alain Drouard, eds. Food and War in Twentieth Century Europe. London: Routledge, 2016.