Cooking on the American Homefront During WWII

What other powers from WWII would you like to see me cover in this series?

Born in 1941, my parents jokingly, referred to me as a "bonus baby", as my arrival meant an increase in the household's sugar and coffee rationing stamps. In fact, I still have, 80 years later, a couple of those old rationing booklets, with a few unused stamps that were left when rationing was lifted at war's end.

My grandmother always talked about the emergency steak she made....for my dad. My dad would always refer to it as meatloaf, which would irritate my grandmother. Good times

I would love to see a video on the Japanese internment camps! My auntie was put in the camps when she was 9. Her family had a farm in California. A neighbor bought the farm when they were forced to leave, kept it for the years they were gone, and gave it back to them when they were released. I always loved that story of kindness.

You have to remember that we where in the depression before the war. There where already Community Gardens where the Gov provided the seeds. Also a lot of people had gardens and raised Chickens and Rabbits. The only difference was there wasn’t a lot of money in the 30s to buy food, compared to everyone having jobs and money during the war, but limited supplies. Both scenarios required people to stretch their food.

My grandma used to talk about her memories of rationing. She was a teenager during WWII, and one of the things she found hardest was the shortage of nylon stockings. One time she was able to finally get a new pair, but she accidentally left them on the bus on the way home. She was still mad about that 70 years later!

Loved this video! I almost never comment on the internet — I’m 66 years old. My mother (born in 1922) was a daughter-at-home with my grandparents during the war. I loved to discuss that time with her. Because they lived on a farm they didn’t use most of their ration coupons during that time — they grew and canned their own food and had cows, pigs, and chickens. The exception was the sugar ration. I found it so sweet and interesting when she discussed their sugar ration. She said they made sure to purchase the sugar that they were allowed. I asked her if they enjoyed having it for special treats. She said, “Oh no!” — and, I was confused. Then she explained that they donated almost all of it, except the little they needed for canning. She said there was always someone needing sugar for a “funeral spread” or to make cookies to send to the “boys.’’ When she said that, I cried. It still brings tears to my eyes. Perhaps you could do a video using WWII era recipes of cookies sent to the “boys.”

Thank you so much for talking about the Japanese internment during WWII. As a Japanese American whose family was in the US and interned during WWII. It gets brushed over A LOT when talking about WWII in the US and a lot of people underestimate how much Japanese Americans contributed to US agriculture and how much they lost during the internment. The camps were built in blazing deserts with sandy soil, yet with a lot of care and hard work, many were able to make gardens flourish. I would love to hear your dive into what the Japanese Americans ate in the internment camps. I remember my Grandma telling me stories about how food was often split up between the Issei (first generation) and Nisei (second generation). The Issei tended to want more traditional Japanese foods and often tried to make substitutions (dishes like teriyaki fried spam) while the Nisei would be happy with more classical "American" foods like hot dogs. My family still enjoys spam as it was such as staple in my Grandma's childhood. An interesting area that you might want to look into is mochi. Mochi is an essential part of Japanese culture and there's pretty much no New Years celebration without mochi. Many of the interned Japanese Americans weren't given access to the glutenous rice needed for mochi, so they made due with regular steamed rice and added their sugar rations in. My Grandma remembers that what was made wasn't quite mochi, but it made her happy to have something close to familiar. If you're interested in mochi (and if I'm correct about you being in LA) then I would recommend trying to get into contact with a Japanese mochi shop called Fugetsu-Do. They've a family run business that's been in Little Tokyo in LA since 1903. During the war, they lost their business and were interned. One of the family members continued making mochi and manju for his fellow detainees. The same family still runs the shop (4th generation now) and they really love sharing the history of Japanese Americans so you may be able to get some inspiration from them.

As a Japanese-American from Hawaii, I only ever learned the stories of the internment camps through my pursuit for my history degree in college. I learned about what my grandparents had to go through during Pearl Harbor when they lived on the Big Island, but I would love to see what you could find in your research on the food of the internment camps! I love your videos and your platform is such a great way to dissect the big events of history that we learn in class and factor in the human aspect of everyday life for these people that had to live it.

My neighborhood was built in the 40s and a lot of the houses still have old rabbit hutches that people used to raise rabbits for meat during the war. They are all just used as storage spaces around me now- most people don't know what they were for. Regarding the Japanese internment camps: the internees were not necessarily making Victory Gardens- the government wanted the camps to be self-sufficient and demanded production. The internees just happened to be so good at farming they produced big surpluses (on what was also pretty garbage land, by the way). This would be a good story to look into- it shouldn't be forgotten.

My mother lived through WW2 in England. Her dad worked delivering coal and would often take delivery trips into the countryside. He would pass by orchards with no one available to pick the fruit, so they let him bring bags of it home if he would pick them. Mom had plenty to bring to school, which made her very popular.

My grandma used to serve up chipped beef, meetloaf, and Salisbury steaks on a regular basis. Even though rationing was long gone, she stayed frugal and creative with her meals for the rest of her life.

So interesting to hear the internment camp angle. I've never considered that. My wife's parent were in the camps. Her dad worked on HIS dad's strawberry farm in Torrance, CA before the war. They made a good living. Back then they were called "truck farmers" - aka tenant farmers... My understanding is that my wife's grandfather, as a first generation Asian immigrant, by law could not own land, so tenant farming was his only option. I'd love to hear more about the food grown at the camps during the war. I heard SO MANY stories from my in-laws...

My mother was English and lived there during the war. Growing up, she used to tell us how little food they had to survive on. My father was an American GI and, of course, had access to American rations. I was born in August of 45. Shortly after my birth a social worker came to my mother's house and ask why she had not picked up the imitation vitamin C drops for me. My mother brought her into the parlor and showed her a huge bowl of oranges my father had given her. Remember, they had not seen fresh oranges in several years. The social worker shyly asked if she could have one. My mother gave her a couple.

People often talk about turning to hunting and fishing for meat in a situation like that, but the fact is during the Great Depression wild animals like deer, elk, and wild turkeys and wild fish like trout and bass were hunted / fished almost to extinction in many parts of the US before rationing even happened. It took decades and fish and game reintroduction and management to bring the wildlife populations back to normal.

My grandma was born at the front end of the Great depression and grew up under the Great depression and subsequently was a young adult during world war II and these sort of things are still deeply ingrained into her the way of life

I got a recipe off of another YouTuber which was doing recipes from 30s or 40s cookbook and it was mock sausage. It was made using milk, lentils, and post grape nuts. Now I was raised as a Seventh-Day Adventist and grew up with vegetarian or meet analogs so this mock sausage wouldn't be strange to me. When I made it and I cooked it in the frying pan my 87 year old mother who stood right there was eating the sausage as quick as I was cooking them, and she didn't like meat analogs but she sure loved these! They were delicious!

@9:35 i know some fun facts about the rubber shortages! Because the US imported so much rubber, they had to develop a synthetic rubber to replace it. Once they created it, the US government contracted a company called B.F. Goodrich to convert an old oil refinery in Louisville Kentucky to a synthetic rubber plant. The location is called Rubbertown now. They chose the city because they calculated that no foreign bombers had the fuel capacity to hit it and return to a coast to land on a carrier. The plant was massive, like 2 square miles. They still have the old watch towers from the war where they would guard for air raids. There's an old submarine buried on the land that is used as file storage now. The plant sold off more than half its land to a half dozen other chemical plants, but its still one of the largest producers of synthetic rubber in America.

My mom grew up in the '30s-early '40s, she inherited this cookbook from her mother. My dad was a POW for the 2nd half the war, his PTSD caught up with him in the '60s, when I was growing up, and his descent into alcoholism impoverished our family. My mother made the Wheaties and milk steak a lot for dinner. There were four of us kids. She would make a mushroom gravy and we'd have it with mashed potatoes and roasted carrots. We liked it, it was really quite a delicious meal. None of us complained. My mom died 30 years ago. I don't know what happened to the cookbook. One of my siblings has it probably.

I feel like a lot of people forget that despite how rich the US was at the time (due to no bombing) a lot of stuff was still rationed and recycled. Car clubs/pooling encouraged less fuel usage, rationing of food like eggs and butter, every bit of scrap metal was used to where even the Oscar’s were made out of plaster