In This Issue

Cinderblock houses under construction at TOD Park in 1943 helped to ease Utah's housing shortage. USHS collections, gift of Tooele Army Depot.

Just as Utah was one of the three or four states most profoundly affected by the Great Depression, so too was it among those most greatly impacted by the advent of World War II. A rural-oriented population accustomed to the cyclical fluctuations of a mining-farming economy suddenly found itself on an accelerating economic track toward full employment and industrial growth. Significant demographic shifts occurred virtually overnight, as did long established social patterns Men went to war, women went to work, new military installations popped up on the landscape, and smokestack industries came to the Wasatch Front. Change was obvious and ubiquitous.

The five articles selected for inclusion in this issue reflect the nature and variety of that change. The first article focuses on the West Desert and development of Wendover Air Base. It not only suggests some interesting generalizations about geography as a factor in the Utah war equation but also reaffirms the long-range nature of World War II consequences The third article offers similar food for thought as it scans the larger defense industry expansion in Utah and the many ways it influenced daily life at the time. Appropriately, between the two we hear from the person for whom all the home-front activity was sustained: the soldier in the trenches. Paul Saunders's reminiscence of his POW experience is a poignant narrative that begs to be read again and again.

The fourth article also spotlights prisoners—the Japanese Americans interned at Topaz Here the author looks primarily at young internees—those coming of age during that difficult experience—and documents their war experience at a personal level certain to pique the interest of every reader.

Bomber crews training for that great climacteric over Hiroshima had not even deployed from Wendover before the implications of the Atomic Age were being felt in southeastern Utah Howard Balsley, a central figure in the postwar uranium boom, is the subject of our final selection. His story is typical of most Utahns who lived through the war. He never saw combat, but the pace of his life was greatly quickened as he encountered exciting new directions and opportunities.