Christmas with the world at war

By Benjamin Sanderford

The first week of December 1941 passed normally in Johnston County as folks began to make ready for Christmas.

W.T. Woodard of the county welfare department announced that his agency would keep a list of poor families so that more fortunate citizens could help them enjoy the holidays, Mattie Lassiter set December 8 as the start of the Christmas Seal Sale for tuberculosis relief and thousands of children from all over Johnston gathered at the courthouse for the third annual Santa Day on December 6.

As the boys and girls collected their presents from Kris Kringle, Japanese warships were sailing towards Hawaii.

The news of the December 7 raid on Pearl Harbor came as a bolt out of the blue, especially for Johnstonians who had family at the base. By the 19th, Navy electrician Willard Zadock Holland of Kenly was known to be among the 2,403 Americans killed during the Japanese attack.

This demoralizing news followed another shocking development: Germany and Italy, Japan’s partners in the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis, declared war on the United States. On December 11, the German dictator, Adolf Hitler, launched a venomous rant against the “sheer, satanic malice” of the fictitious international Jewish clique that, he claimed, had manipulated the U.S. government into the war.

The absurdity of this assertion would have reminded Johnston County folk that they now faced an enemy who was as crazy as he was murderous.

Given the circumstances, it is not surprising that county police arrested an elderly hobo with a German accent. Fortunately, the hobo, one Julius Klenk, turned out to be merely an escaped patient of a hospital in Pennsylvania and was sent back there.

Meanwhile, Sheriff Kirby L. Rose responded to the German-Italian declaration by calling a meeting of officials from all of Johnston’s communities to discuss plans for civilian defense.

Others reacted in their own way. Postmaster Everett Stevens, National Defense Chairman of the Johnston County Red Cross, led a campaign to raise $5,000 for war relief while Professor W.R. Collins, Principal of the Johnston County Training School, organized his teachers and students to buy defense stamps. Judge John J. Burney made a more heavyhanded contribution to the war effort while judging the cases of three black men who had pleaded guilty to liquor law violation by sentencing them to road service unless they enlisted in the armed forces.

It was a grim time, so people treasured their yuletide festivities all the more. The Aeolian Music Club held its Christmas Cantata in Smithfield on December 14 as planned with Flora Parker directing the choir. The next day was the turn of the Lucy Hood Circle of the Methodist Woman’s Society of Christian Service to hold its Christmas program complete with a sermon from Rev. B.H. Houston, exchanging of gifts and refreshments.

At these and other gatherings, Johnstonians could socialize, celebrate the holidays and forget the desperate struggle they were in, if only for a few hours.

There were many presents that Christmas, but none could compare to the one the Crumpler family of Selma received five days earlier. After the Pearl Harbor attack, the Navy Department had listed Seaman First Class Charles Leroy Crumpler, Jr. as killed. The family was devastated.

Then, on December 20, young Thomas Crumpler received another telegram that transformed mourning into celebration. Thomas ran home and shouted when he saw his father, “Roy, Jr. is not dead! Roy Jr. is alive!”

This was only the beginning of Johnston County’s experience of the Second World War, as the Hollands would not be the only family to lose a loved one. Neither the Atlantic nor the Pacific would shield Johnston County from the outside world, but folks here would endure, not least because they knew that Christmas, the most wonderful time of the year, would come.

Benjamin Sanderford, a resident of Clayton, studied social science at UNC Greensboro. He can be reached at benwsanderford@ gmail.com.