By Bill Levin, FOMA board member
Within a few days the 250th celebration of our nation’s founding will take place with great social media fanfare on July 4, 2026. How different July 4, 1942 must have felt to service members, their families, and their fellow citizens!
It would have been the first July 4 since the United States entered the Second World War. On Midway, debris from the Battle of Midway, July 4-6, 1942 was less than a month old and cleanup would have just begun. When those working on shore looked out to the Pacific Ocean, they would have been reminded of young men, ships and planes, forever lost to the sea during that battle.
In the 48 states, the celebration of the holiday was reported to have been resolute and quiet, despite that it fell on a Saturday. Readers were greeted by J.N. “Ding” Darling’s editorial cartoon in their morning newspapers titled “And It’s No Fourth of July Picnic,” in which Uncle Sam defends the flag from attackers whose hands dripped gore.
Later that day, radio listeners heard President Franklin Roosevelt’s radio address, short and austere, in which he noted “Never since it first was created in Philadelphia, has this anniversary come in times so dangerous to everything for which it stands. We celebrate it this year, not in the fireworks of make-believe but in the death-dealing reality of tanks and planes and guns and ships. We celebrate it also by running without interruption the assembly lines which turn out these weapons to be shipped to all the embattled points of the globe. Not to waste one hour, not to stop one shot, not to hold back one blow—that is the way to mark our great national holiday in this year of 1942.”
Today we see the U.S. seizing strategic advantage by breaking the Japanese code in the spring of 1942, empowering the military advantage to push back hostile forces while costing them four aircraft carriers and a heavy cruiser during the Battle of Midway itself, thus creating a major turning point. A century before that, Danish philosopher Søren Kirkegarrd confided to his journal, “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” Americans of 1942 heeded President Roosevelt and marked the holiday by going back to work.