These days there's much talk about the economy and war. In 1934, the year I was born, the U.S. unemployment rate was 21.7 percent. And while the fat cats had already taken a Wall Street bath, the plain folk in my old neighborhood who were lucky enough to still have a job helped those who didn't.

By 1942, the year after the United States entered World War II, the unemployment rate dropped to 1.2 percent. Almost every able-bodied American was either in the military or employed to support the war effort. At the time the cynics suggested the Republicans get us into recessions and the Democrats get us into wars. Stupid observation.

The second Sino-Japanese war began in 1937. In 1939 Hitler occupied Poland and Britain declared war on Germany, but since our homeland wasn't threatened the United States did not declare war against Japan until two years later, on December 8, 1941. I was seven years old.

My dad, a veteran of World War I, tried to enlist in the army but at age 47 they sent him home. Later he would pick up his white Civilian Defense helmet and command the unit that protected Midway Airport in Chicago. Our coastal cities lived in fear of attack, there were blackouts, rationing and prayers that the young men and women in the neighborhood who had gone off to war would return whole.

We lost more than 400,000 Americans in the war but had no civilian casualties, and the war ended the day before my 11th birthday.

During World War II the nations of Europe sacrificed more than 40 million lives. More than 20 million of those killed were civilians, including 13 million in the Soviet Union and Poland alone. And in the Pacific our ally China had 10 million civilians killed.

There were those who wondered whether, if the United States had joined Britain at the outbreak of the war, there might have been fewer people killed. One can only imagine what might have been.

This column is a result of a dinner Frank had with young friends who asked what he remembered about the Depression and the War. Hard data was taken from various Internet sources. Contact him at fburge@cmp.com.

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