Tag Archives: World War II

Mormon history

In His Own Words: Arnold Ga—n, 1950

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Early in 1950, Addie Cannon Howells, editor of The Children’s Friend, received an unusual letter from a 12-year-old boy in Germany who had unexpectedly found a copy of the magazine.

Dear Editor Adele Cannon Howells:

Excuse me of my letter! I got a magazine “The Children’s Friend” from July 1948 years which I find in forest, when I was seeking old iron. Maybe a soldier of U.S. who was in forest of hunting lost it. It was torn, but for me a fine magazine. I read it and it was for my shield-soul a refreshing. So much poems and news and educations, methods and true words I never find in a German magazine.

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Utah history

Our Mothers Answered the Call (Utah history)

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American women first wore the uniforms of the United States military during World War II, when they were organized into the WACs (Women’s Army Corps), the WASPs (Women Airforce Service Pilots), the Navy WAVES (Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service), the SPARs (a contraction of the Coast Guard motto Semper Paratus, “always ready”), and the Women Marines. National WAC director Oveta Culp Hobby spoke in Salt Lake in 1943, proclaiming that “This is a new age; it calls for new ways of expressing our love for our country; it makes different demands upon us.”

American women responded by joining the auxiliary corps and providing services that freed able-bodied men for combat duty. Within the first year, the WACs alone had filled enough positions to create four full combat divisions. One manual noted that some assignments were routine and others glamorous, “but whatever the job is, every WAC knows that a paper not properly routed today may mean insufficient supplies to our fighting men tomorrow.”

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Mormon history

On the Eve of War, 1940

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Elder Thomas E. McKay, formerly president of the Swiss-German Mission, was appointed to serve as president of the European Mission, with headquarters at Salt Lake City, during World War II, keeping in touch with our members in Europe and providing for their welfare as best he could at such a distance and under wartime conditions.

On April 5, 1940, he reported in General Conference on the state of the Church he had left when he and the last of the elders from the U.S. had had to leave Europe.

… People that I met on my first mission, forty years ago, have sons now in the mission field, or they have been. Babies that I blessed on that first mission are now leaders, one of them presiding over the West German Mission. Many of the parents, who were Sunday School children at that time, have had sons in the mission field. Continue reading On the Eve of War, 1940 →

Mormon history

Missionary Evacuation, 1939: A First-Person Account

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Elder Joseph Fielding Smith
47 East South Temple Street
Salt Lake City, Utah.

Dear Brother Smith:

Some time ago it came to my attention that you would be interested in hearing the story of the departure from Germany of some of the missionaries whom you took care of during the “evacuation” of two years ago. Probably this would be a good time to give you my “story.”

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Mormon history

Cut Off by War: The Norwegian Saints Report, 1944

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Although Norway did not suffer the battlefield or bombing damage of much of the rest of World War II Europe, Norway was occupied by Germany early in the war and cut off from trade and free communication with the world. For four long years, church leaders in Salt Lake City heard nothing from or about the Saints in Norway.

Then in September 1944, a small group of people smuggled themselves out of Norway, escorted by men armed with machine guns, over a route they were forbidden to describe. One of those men carried with him a letter written by an unnamed church leader in Norway, to be delivered to a church worker in Sweden (their names would probably be discoverable with access to church archives, but neither leader was named when this letter was released before the war ended). The Swedish leader, with greater access to communications, forwarded the letter to Thomas E. McKay, acting president of the European Mission.

What would you want to report about the Saints in your care under those circumstances?

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Mormon history

Three Musketeers: Servicemen’s Meetings in the Canal Zone, 1942 (corrected date)

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Three weeks ago, Eric Russell posted at By Common Consent a description of Going to Church in Iraq, featuring a photograph of the bright, well furnished chapel annex where his Al Asad Group meets. He described the order of their services, their equipment, the organization of the Church – these servicemen’s groups in a seemingly unlikely region of the world are part of a formal stake structure, and the Church has developed a rhythm to provide leadership by setting apart potential group leaders before Latter-day Saint soldiers are even deployed.

These servicemen’s groups are the modern successors to a long history of providing religious support to LDS soldiers. I suppose we could say that goes back at least as far as the Mormon Battalion of 1846, or even to the march of Zion’s Camp in 1834. Here at Keepa, we’ve talked about the World War I chaplaincy of B.H. Roberts and about a serviceman finding smoothly running LDS services in the jungles of New Guinea toward the end of World War II.

In the opening days of World War II, before many LDS chaplains were in place or even before the Church had really organized itself to support servicemen away from home, LDS soldiers still managed to find each other and experiment with ways of continuing LDS life in war zones. One such group of soldier-elders, calling themselves “The Three Musketeers,” formed an unofficial group at Fort Clayton, in the Panama Canal Zone, in the early summer of 1942.

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Mormon history

The British Mission in World War II: “We Shall Come through This Great Struggle Unconquered”

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For just over a century, from its founding in 1837 by Apostles Brigham Young and others, to the outbreak of World War II, the British Mission had been led by “elders from Zion.” These (mostly American) elders, assisted by home (British) missionaries, both brethren and sisters, did the bulk of missionary work in the British Isles, and also ran the local churches. Transient elders, not local priesthood bearers, were the branch leaders, planned and conducted the meetings, organized the Mutuals, collected the tithing, taught most of the Sunday School classes, published the Millennial Star, arranged the immigration, conducted the church courts, gave the blessings, performed the baptisms, and even organized many of the entertainments.

This (to me, unhealthy) state of affairs grew naturally from a time when all converts were young in the faith and emigrated to Nauvoo or to Utah as soon as they could raise the means. But by 1939, when foreigners were ordered by the British government to leave Britain, the British Mission had thousands of long-term, sometimes multi-generational, members. Somehow, the old pattern had persisted, and these local members had had very little experience in governing their own church affairs. Newly appointed mission president Andre K. Anastasiou (1894- ), successor to Hugh B. Brown (who, with the last three “elders from Zion” had sailed from Britain on January 12, 1940), described the situation:

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Mormon history

They “Shipped the Books”: World War II Missionary Evacuation

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[We have recently shared thoughts regarding missionary evacuations, or at least the preparation for them. Steve C sends this report of a time when missionaries were indeed evacuated, from Europe, at the beginning of World War II. Steve C’s report will be followed in a few days by the stories of some of the individual missionaries who successfully — and dramatically — reached the safety of neutral countries.]

THE FIRST EVACUATION: SEPTEMBER 1938

In the late 1930s war loomed across Europe. In March, 1938, Hitler annexed Austria. In June, M. Douglas Wood took over as mission president of the West German mission. Shortly after Wood’s arrival, J. Reuben Clark, visiting Berlin, met with the German mission presidents; [1] they began drafting contingency plans to evacuate missionaries from Germany in the event of war. Commenting on the irony, Wood stated, “We were just going to our assignment and we were all pepped-up to get excited about starting our mission and here we were trying to find ways to get out.” [2]

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