Collection of Air Warden/Air Raid Precaution Mimeographs

(1)  Lecture Manual for Air Raid Warden Instructions, March 9, 1942.  Mimeograph, 11x8 inch sheets; 28 leaves and 27 leaves of appendices.Printed by the WPA in San Francisco.

(2) Course Outline, Aerial Bombardment Protection.  11x8 inch mimeograph sheets, printed by New York University, College of Engineering, 1942. 

with (2b) Separately printed and bound sections of the above.  Chapter XIX (Air Raid Shelters), pp 59-72. 

(3) Air Raid Shelter Requirements, by Horace W. Peaslee (Chair, American Institute of Architects).  1942.  16pp. Mimeograph sheets.

All rare.  The three: $350.00

From the Pamphlet Collection, the Library of Congress.

 

Lecture Manual for Air Raid Warden Instructors is in its way a remarkable document revealing some of the thinking and interpretation on the chances for the invasion of the American west coast just a few months (March 9, 1941) following Pearl Harbor.   Undertaken and published by the Workers of the Writers' Program ('of the Works Projects Administration in Northern California") it was a product of one of the number of the Roosevelt administration's social engineering programs that had a long lasting effect. 

The first chapter, "It Can Happen Here" is more about the mechanics of responding to an enemy aerial attack than qu8estioning whether the attack might occur--the writer assumes that such an event was possible, and so precautions and preparations must be made--there is no question mark at the end of the chapter's heading. 

Overall I think that this was an excellent organizational effort for at least dealing with controlling the situation on the ground--providing a grid in which actions could be interpreted and responded to

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