Riding on Bald Tires, Spring–Fall 1942

A month after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt committed the U.S. to a massive increase in military materiel to insure superiority over Axis enemies. This included, for 1942 alone, 60,000 planes, 45,000 tanks, 20,000 antiaircraft guns, and 8,000,000 tons of shipping.[1] One of the shipyards that would increase output was Mare Island in Vallejo, about forty miles from Jack and Alice’s Santa Rosa home. During World War II nearly four hundred vessels were launched from Mare Island.[2] This meant an increase in jobs for local workers, and the pay was good.

Launch of the Tunny (SS-282), Mare Island, 30 June 1942, 
when Jack was working there[3]

Jack quit his job at Poulsen’s and took advantage of openings in the war industry, tripling his salary. “We loved living in our little home, and then around the first of May I looked for a job at Mare Island shipyard where they were building and repairing ships. The demand was high for people, so they’d take pretty near everybody that could walk and talk, anybody that came along. I got a job over there as a ship fitter helper, bending and fitting the big metal plates that go on the ships. I didn’t know anything about it, and I didn’t like it. I really didn’t like ship fitting, but I was making ninety cents an hour then. Boy, that was big money!

“The fellas who were working down there from Santa Rosa commuted a good hour both ways every day. The government had provided buses for us to ride on, but they were slow, and we could make better time in a car. I was commuting mostly with a fella by the name of Mel Acquistapace. He had two vehicles transporting workmen from Santa Rosa to Mare Island. Newt Garrett drove one, and Mel drove the other, an old DeSoto.

“Rationing was in effect, and tires and gasoline were hard to get. Mel would get recapped tires, but we rode on bald tires the biggest part of the time. Naturally we had lots of flats. It was nothing to have a flat in the morning and a flat in the afternoon going down to Mare Island and back and sometimes a delay in getting to work or home.”[4]

Save Rubber, published with the permission of The Wolfsonian – 
Florida International University (Miami, Florida)[5]

Jack was twenty-one years old. He was married, owned his own home, and had a well-paying government defense job. His life was comfortable except for one shadow, the draft. Events of the fall of 1942 would change his life forever.

The war was not over and showed no signs of letting up.

Jack and Alice, fall 1942, before enlistment

On 6 October 1942 California’s draft boards set up procedures for calling married but childless men for induction. They would be selected according to their registration period and then their order number.[6] Those registered in October 1940, the first registration, would be called first. Jack had signed up in the third registration, so he probably would not be called right away. Still, the possibility hung over his head; it was just a matter of time. He took matters into his own hands.

“The draft was pretty close on my heels, getting closer to my number, so I thought about enlisting so I could get into the branch of the service that I wanted, rather than not knowing where I was going, or what type of service I was going to be in.”[7]

Jack never learned to swim, and his mother had instilled in him a strong fear of water.[8] That and his experience at Mare Island probably convinced him that he wouldn’t join the Navy. About the same distance from Santa Rosa as Mare Island lay Hamilton Field, an Army Air Force base. “Oct 22, 1942. Today I took the day off from work at Mare Island and went to Hamilton Field to enlist in the U.S. Army Air Force.”[9] Jack’s decision was made.

The rest was up to the U.S. and the direction of the war, out of his control.

Mare Island Naval Shipyard, No. 70 Iron Fitters[10]

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[1] “U.S. to Carry War to Enemy All Over World, F.R. Pledges,” The Press Democrat (Santa Rosa, California), 7 January 1942, p. 1, cols. 7–8.

[2] United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service, “National Register of Historic Places, Inventory – Nomination Form, Mare Island Naval Shipyard,” 6, digital image (https://npgallery.nps.gov/pdfhost/docs/NHLS/Text/75002103.pdf : accessed 3 November 2017).

[3] United States Navy, “Stern view of the Tunny (SS-282) on the building ways at Mare Island Navy Yare, Vallejo, CA., 30 June 1942,” digital image, NavSource Online: Submarine Photo Archive (http://navsource.org/archives/08/574/0828212.jpg : accessed 3 November 2017).

[4]  Jack J. Kellar, Autobiography, 1998; two ninety-minute cassette tape recordings; held and partially transcribed by the author. Also, Jack J. Kellar, interview 12 April 1993 about his first years after high school by Judy Kellar Fox; cassette tape recording and transcription held by the author.

[5] Walter Dubois Richards for the U.S. Government Printing Office, Save Rubber: Check your Tires Now, offset lithograph poster (Washington DC: U.S. Office of War Information, 1942); digital photo by Silvia Ros, The Wolfsonian—Florida International University, Miami Beach, Florida.

[6] “State Draft Boards Call Married Men,” The Press Democrat, 7 October 1942, p. 1, col. 2.

[7] Jack J. Kellar, Autobiography, 1998. Also, Jack J. Kellar, interview, 12 April 1993.

[8] Personal recollections of the author. His mother’s brother had died by drowning.

[9] Jack J. Kellar, “My Life in the Service,” diary, unnumbered first page; held and transcribed by the author. The diary is a preprinted fill-in book, My Life in the Service (Chicago: Consolidated Book Publishers, 1941). Jack began the section titled, "The Following Pages Contain the Diary of My Life in the Service." He completed about five months of narration, often at long sittings, not daily.

[10] Historic American Buildings Survey, “Mare Island Naval Shipyard, No. 70 Iron Platers, California Avenue, west side across from Drydock 1 near Ninth Street, Vallejo, Solano County, California,” photograph; digital image, Library of Congress, (http://www.loc.gov/item/ca2507/ : accessed 3 November 2017).