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.The United Service Organizations (USO)

- Foundation -
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At the request of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, an umbrella organization was created in New York on February 4, 1941, to coordinate the efforts of six civilian volunteer agencies in order to provide improved united homeland support on behalf of American service personnel. These initial six civilian volunteer agencies were the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), the Young Men’s Christian Organization (YMCA), the National Catholic Community Service (NCCS), the National Jewish Welfare Board (NJWB), the Traveler’s Aid Association“ (NTAA) and the Salvation Army.
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The name of this newly founded private non-profit charitable organization was the United Service Organizations for National Defense (later shortened to United Service Organizations).  The USO was devoted to providing social and morale support to both male and female members of the United States Armed Forces, primarily through programs offering diverse entertainment and recreational opportunities during off-duty hours.
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Quelle:The Women's Memorial
The Service Women's Lounge
of a Hawaii-based USO Club
........ American service personnel were stationed at posts throughout the United States and in overseas locations spanning the entire globe. For many of them, this was the first time they had traveled so far from their homes, and they sought a comfortable non-military atmosphere in which to relax. The USO met this need by providing a “Home Away from Home.”

During the Second World War, the USO maintained clubs in over three thousand locations, where over twelve million men and women were given the chance to enjoy a vital and morale-boosting “Time Out” from the war.

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President Roosevelt was appointed as the first USO honorary chairman, a position later transferred to each American president in turn.  From its inception, the USO was financed exclusively by private citizen contributions donated generously by the American people. ........

USO banner featuring President Franklin D. Roosevelt
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- USO Clubs und Canteens -
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A typical USO Club in Austin, Texas
........ USO clubs and canteens were opened throughout the world.  Within the United States alone, the government made 300 buildings available for USO use.

Since normally available facilities were insufficient to fill the need, many unusual places were utilized to accommodate USO requirements. These included churches, cabin huts, museums, barns, yacht clubs, old rental properties and even railway sleeping cars.

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At the USO clubs, serviceman or servicewoman could meet other people, converse and dance, watch movies, play party games, follow sports or listen to music.  While there, one also had the opportunity to relax and simply rest, write letters home, read a book, obtain personal assistance if necessary, or simply drink a cup of coffee or eat doughnuts.

Many USO clubs offered washing machines and other laundry services, which enabled service personnel to properly clean, iron and sort their clothes. The clubs additionally helped to search for relatives and provided information about local and city tours from remote bases. The USO maintained more than 3,000 clubs at its peak in 1944.

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Cover of the February 1942 
Saturday Evening Post
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Quelle: USO
Members of a Mobile USO Canteen pass out 
doughnuts to American soldiers
...... There were also motorized USO units, which offered soldiers a welcome mobile alternative to camp life in remote areas where access was very difficult.

These “mobile USO canteens” provided soldiers with meals and beverages. Some vehicles were also equipped with film projectors and stocked with urgently needed supplies.

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Not since the American Civil War had wartime effort given such a feeling of national unity and solidarity within the United States. This patriotic zeal awakened the desire in most civilians to actively contribute to the welfare of their soldiers. On the home-front, numerous young women volunteered to be USO hostesses within local communities. At the USO clubs these ladies danced appreciatively with lonely soldiers, played cards to cheer lonesome troops, and participated in table games like Ping Pong to boost morale. They helped the soldiers to write letters, mended clothes and sewed on buttons, and manned photo studios, workshops and libraries.  For example, the USO distributed over 13 million books and 3 million magazines to American military personnel stationed throughout the world. By the end of the war, more than one and half million Americans had volunteered their spare time to work for the USO. ....
Quelle: www.normajacketucker.com
USO Hostess Jacke Tucker was elected
as National USO Queen of 1944
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Quelle: http://www.nebraskahistory.org/
Segregated USO Club 
for Black personnel in Nebraska
.... Although the public pronouncement of the USO promised Welcome to all uniformed men and women without discrimination on the basis of race, faith or skin color, segregation was a widespread legal and social fact of life in wartime America.  The military also practiced racial segregation and much religious and social stigmatization based on differences in wealth and class background. Labor unionist and other suspected communist influences were especially frowned upon, and there was fear in some towns that the USO effort might offer rallying points for the “masses” of soldiers. 
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The unfortunate American segregationist attitude, which at the time was both officially and unofficially endorsed, mandated the separate establishment of USO clubs for different minorities and even religiously persecuted groups. This adverse racial atmosphere forced most USO clubs to operate exclusively for either White or Black soldiers.  For example, USO clubs designed to host Black servicemen and servicewomen were furnished accordingly. They were stocked with “suitable” games, “non-threatening” books and “harmless” movies for “colored” people. Afro-American entertainers were largely confined to playing before Black-only unit audiences.
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- Stage Door Canteens -
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American show-business stars and performers enthusiastically joined the ranks of the USO to make an important contribution to the war effort.  The first “Stage Door Canteen” opened on Times Square in New York City where servicemen and servicewomen could meet, intermingle, dance and share meals with film and show celebrities free of charge. This success led to the opening of more Stage Door Canteens elsewhere throughout the country. The popular Stage Door Canteens were sponsored by the American Theater Wing organization. .......
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Bette Davis serves soldiers 
in the Hollywood Canteen
........ Actress Bette Davis and actor John Garfield were instrumental in having the film industry of Hollywood, California, open the Hollywood Canteen in 1942. Under Bette Davis’s guiding direction, this particular USO club enjoyed spectacular popularity and became quite famous. Numerous Hollywood giants and leaders freely donated their services to the celebrated establishment.
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- USO Camp Shows -
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The USO Camp Shows was incorporated on October 30, 1941, as a distinct entity to provide live entertainment programs for the troops serving in both rear and forward areas.  USO Camp Shows Inc. was subordinated to and supported by the USO.
 
Entertainers and artists skilled in a wide range of variety performances (actors, singers, dancers, mimes, musicians, jugglers and even painters who made GI sketches for them to send home) volunteered for the shows. 

They traveled throughout the United States and toured forward bases throughout the world providing live entertainment for USO Camp Shows in front of appreciative soldiering audiences.

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Bob Hope at a 1945 performance
in Fritzlar, Germany
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Marlene Dietrich wearing her USO uniform
........... Many well-known Hollywood film stars and musicians participated actively in the USO Camp Shows. These included notables such as Judy Garland, Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Frank Sinatra, Marlene Dietrich, Ann Sheridan, the Marx Brothers, James Cagney, James Stewart, Gary Cooper, Danny Kaye, Al Jolson, Fred Astaire, the Andrews Sisters, Joe E. Brown, Lucille Ball, Glenn Miller, Martha Raye, Mickey Rooney, Betty Hutton, Dinah Shore und Bob Hope, as well as many, many others.
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USO entertainers were sent wherever American troops were stationed –whether in the deserts of Egypt; the cold tundra of Alaska; bomb-ravaged Belgium; isolated patrol bases like Bermuda; the key ports of Brazil; the jungles of Burma; the frigid wasteland of western Canada; front-line China; battlefield Germany; rocket-threatened England; combatant France; frozen Greenland; tropical Guam; the Pacific bastion of Hawaii; the crucial Atlantic island of Iceland; the Soviet-aid-corridors of Iran and Iraq; wartime Italy; Atlantic shipping base of Labrador; war-scarred Luxembourg and the Netherlands; the rain-forest supply point of New Caledonia; the rugged battle terrain of the Philippines or lend-lease harbors in the Soviet Union. ..... Quelle: Alaska's Digital Archives
USO starlet signs autographs
for sailors in Alaska
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The entertainment artists who voluntarily toured the USO clubs, military bases, field camps and hospitals were soon given a cherished nickname by the troops, “Soldiers in Greasepaint” (Soldiers wearing theatre makeup). 
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Quelle: http://www.airmuseum.ca
USO show aboard ship at Pearl Harbor
(Honolulu) Hawaii in 1945 
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Quelle: http://www.nebraskastudies.org/
USO entertainer at the Fort Crook Hospital
in Omaha, Nebraska
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Just as the appearance of these USO entertainers played a crucial role in maintaining soldier morale in all areas visited, their tours also rendered lifelong individual impressions on the participants themselves.  The soldiers constituted an extremely grateful and inspirational audience which the entertainers themselves rarely experienced in postwar public performances, and thus boosted their performance levels.  The arduous and sometimes dangerous USO tours also bonded many entertainers and directors together with shared experience into durable friendships that reshaped Hollywood as a global movement after World War II.
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........ Kay Francis, Carole Landis, Martha Ray und Mitzi Mayfair (above) began their USO tour in late 1942 and went to England, Bermuda, North Africa and Ireland. Their tour experiences became the basis of the 1944 movie, “Four Jills in a Jeep.”
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The USO entertainer was often exposed to the same dangers as the soldiers. They were not safe in cases of enemy air strikes or ground offensives, and many were sickened because of hardship and lack of adequate medical safeguards or medicine in many areas.

Many USO entertainers died, fell ill, suffered injury or were incapacitated during hazardous USO tours. Among other accidental mishaps, a single 1943 plane crash near Lisbon, Portugal, claimed the life of musical star Tamara Dreisen and badly injured the wondrous singer Jane Froman.

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Renowned singer Jane Froman on a USO Tour
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Between 1941 and 1947 there were more than 428,000 USO Camp Show performances, which entertained more than 173 million military men and women in uniform. The USO Camp Show routes were scaled back in 1947 but regained popularity after 1951 because of the United Nations war in Korea. The original USO Camp Show, Inc., was finally dissolved in 1957 when its vital entertainment task was directly assumed by the USO, which continues its legacy for United States servicemen and servicewomen though the present day.
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(Many thanks to Shelby L. Stanton for English translation and additions)
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