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Mobile, ALBefore the war, Mobile, Alabama, was a sleepy southern town of 112,000, whose only real industry was shipbuilding. Once the cotton and slave trading capital of Alabama, it was a city deeply divided by race. World War II utterly transformed the city and its economy. It became the second largest city in Alabama, as tens of thousands of people streamed into the area from small towns and farms all over the south. The federal government made a documentary film, "Wartown," about what was happening there. More than 15,000 people from Mobile served in the armed forces; 300 died in action.
96 records found for “Mobile, AL” |
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Black Marines of the 51st Defense Bn. -- John Gray's unit -- with a gun named "Lena Horne." 1945.
Source: National Archives (127-N-121743)
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Despite the bravery of African Americans in all of America’s previous wars, despite the argument made by the NAACP and others that “a Jim Crow army cannot fight for a free world,” the armed forces of the United States remained strictly segregated.
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Shipyard workers mill about in front of the entrance to the Alabama Dry Dock and Shipbuilding Co. in Mobile. Clyde Odom worked here as a foreman.
Source: The University of South Alabama Archives (Addsco 3-416)
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Workers pass through the gate at the Alabama Dry Dock and Shipbuilding Co. in Mobile.
Source: The University of South Alabama Archives (Addsco 3-416)
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Portrait of Mobile's Clyde Odom at 18 years. He would serve as a foreman at Alabama Dry Dock and Shipbuilding during the war.
Source: Clyde Odom
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Clyde Odom grew up in Mobile and went to work as a mechanic at the Alabama Dry Dock Ship and Building Company in October, 1940. He became a foreman during the war and worked twelve hours a day five days a week, ten hours on Saturday, eight hours on Sunday. . .
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Getting time off on Sunday made one feel like they had a vacation.
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Two children deliver metal for the war effort to a Mobile scrap yard.
Source: The University of South Alabama Archives (MN-528 E)
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Dwain Luce was born April 25 1916, and grew up in Mobile. His father was in the lumber business. Luce graduated from high school in l934 and from Auburn in l938, with a reserve commission. After graduation he went to work at his family's cannery business in Mississippi. On December . . .
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Mobile's Dwain Luce, left, with friends Hunter Marstan, Jack Manning and Stuart Waring. Luce, a glider pilot, would see action in Sicily, Italy, Normandy and Holland as part of Operation Market Garden.
Source: Dwain Luce
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Mobile's Dwain Luce and his wife Margaret. Luce, a glider pilot, would see action in Sicily, Italy, Normandy and Holland as part of Operation Market Garden.
Source: Dwain Luce
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Mobile's Dwain Luce poses for a snapshot. Luce, a glider pilot, would see action in Sicily, Italy, Normandy and Holland as part of Operation Market Garden.
Source: Dwain Luce
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Emma Belle Petcher was born March 27, 1923 in Millry, Alabama and when she graduated from high school in 1942, decided to go to Mobile in search of work. She received a high score on a mechanical aptitude test, and was put into a nine month training program for maintaining . . .
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A gas purchase on a lonely road nearly leads to a fatal shooting.
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After graduating from high school, she headed for Mobile.
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By 1943, six million women had entered the work force, and nearly half of them were working in defense plants.
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Portrait of P.f.c. E.B.. Sledge, K Co. 5 Marine Regiment, in Marine dress blues. 1946. Sledge served at Peleliu and Okinawa.
Source: The Sledge Family
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Eugene B. Sledge was born in Mobile November 4, 1923, the grandson of Confederate officers. Bookish and frail as a child, he had been taught to hunt and fish by his physician father and spent much of his free time roaming the woods on the outskirts of town with his . . .
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E.B. Sledge of Mobile after the fighting ended in Okinawa.
Source: The Sledge Family
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Eugene Sledge, left, and his brother, Lt. E.S. Sledge, in downtown Mobile on Christmas eve. 1942. Sledge would follow friend Sidney Phillips into the Marines and survive Peleliu and Okinawa.
Source: The Sledge Family
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